2005 Minnesota Vikings NFL Handicapping Review

 

By Tom Wilkinson

 

Buyer beware is the sports betting warning that should always be given out in BOLD CAPS to those members of the sports handicapping community that consider the Minnesota Vikings on their list of football picks. Few teams in pro football are as confusing and challenging to sports handicapping methodologies as the Vikings are, which is quite a statement when it comes to pro football wagering.

Coming off a 9-7 season in 2003 in which the blew a spot in the playoffs in the season finale at Arizona by allowing a 4th and long conversion, the Vikings were touted to have resolve and determination to gain the playoffs in 2004.

Minnesota got off to a solid 5-1 start straight up in 2004, beating the sports betting odds in four of those six games. Many online sports betting blogs began featuring posts touting the Vikings as a team that had overcome themselves and as a team that had matured into a bona fide NFC contender. Then, with more and more sports betting players beginning to believe in them, Minnesota became the REAL Vikings again.

Taking that 5-1 record into a home game against the New York Giants, the Vikings were blown out 13-34 as 6.5-point chalks, nuking more than a few bankrolls in the process. Online sports betting blogs that only one week before were touting the Vikings were now ripping them as being the “same old” team with the same old problems of inconsistency, which is not much of a testament to the stability of sports betting players.

To their credit, the Vikings beat the sports betting odds in three of their next four games. They entered Chicago as a 7.5-point favorite against the lightly regarded Bears with a record of 8-3 straight up and 7-4 against the sports betting odds. Once again the Vikings were getting credit at online sports betting blogs for having their act together and appeared at the top of many lists of football picks. They then proceeded to get beat by the Bears 14-24, which began a streak in which the Vikings would blow 6 of their final 7 games against the sports betting odds. Interestingly enough, the only game in which they paid off sports betting players was a playoff game at Green Bay in which they confounded even sports handicapping experts with a 31-17 win as 6.5-point dogs at the very location of so many of their worst defeats, Lambeau Field.