Seahawks-Vikings most-watched early Sunday wild-card game

It took a missed 27 yard field goal to keep them in the game.

Burfict was penalized for lowering his shoulder and hitting defenseless receiver Antonio Brown in the head after an incompletion with 22 seconds left and the Bengals holding a 16-15 lead. Instead, Vikings kicker Blair Walsh, a guy who made 34 of 39 field goal attempts this season and didn’t miss a single one from inside 30 yards, shanked the ball wide left. On the third possession, they drove 52 yards to the Seattle 9, the key play being Bridgewater’s 24-yard pass to tight end Kyle Rudolph to the Seahawks’ 18 with 1:26 left.

“It’s so quick that I don’t know what happened”, a teary-eyed Walsh said after the game via ESPN. And I think Richard Sherman also came close earlier in the game to blocking one of the field goals.

Coach Mike Zimmer said he thought the snap was a little high. But he hooked his final attempt, made into the wind in -32 C conditions with the laces turned in on the hold.

But as Walsh scrolled through his phone inside the locker room of TCF Bank Stadium, he said he tried to avoid the anonymous critics that all too often turn to threats.

Walsh’s teammates were supportive of their kicker despite the heartbreaking loss. The Vikings did enough to nearly win the game, but they would ultimately fall short. “Not going to abandon him now”. He didn’t blame the snapper or the holder, even though the laces were definitely in. It’s really how Walsh deals with it.

“It’s my fault”, he said. “I don’t need to give you the times, but it was considerably faster”. I’m the only one who didn’t do his job. With the Seahawks back in the playoffs getting set to take on the Minnesota Vikings this past week, Carroll was sacked up as he usually is for the big game. Social media hasn’t been kind to Walsh and the Vikings after a defeat that seemed colder than the sub-zero temperatures the game was contested in.

Carroll said there was no setback, simply Lynch telling the Seahawks staff he didn’t have the confidence he needed to run with his style in a playoff game. “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it”. Especially on the sideline with the heated benches and everything.

“It’s cool, man”, Norman said. “It did not affect us at all”.

“I think we were fortunate that we got the win”, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. However, the special teams units can win or lose a game.

But trailing 11-0 early in the second quarter, two-time NFL MVP Rodgers and the Packers suddenly began to show the sort of ability to gain yards in chunks and put points on the board they had been missing while losing six of their final 10 games and letting the NFC North title slip away. It’s the first time he played in every game since 2012. He became the foundation for the best five-year stretch in the history of Seahawks football as Carroll and general manager John Schneider have been giving him autonomy between and sometimes during games in exchange for yards and touchdowns on Sundays. Before that they had lost four times in three seasons to the Seahawks, including 31-17 in the divisional playoffs last January in Seattle. It’s the first road-team sweep that has happened since the current playoff format was adopted in 1990. And Marshall Faulk and Michael Irvine – both Super Bowl champions and members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame – were very critical of Walsh on The NFL Network.