Bears vs. Vikings 2013: Overtime in the NFC North
For the second straight game, the Minnesota Vikings played in overtime. This is becoming their forte.
Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The NFC North could be the league's most bizarre division. It features two talented teams that couldn't take advantage of an injury to Aaron Rodgers, a tie and now an overtime loss to the division's worst team. The Chicago Bears can't help but throw up their hands and accept they were beaten on the back of a superior game by Adrian Peterson, while the Minnesota Vikings have become the league's overtime veterans.
Peterson was the focal point over at the Daily Norseman. This season hasn’t been kind to Minnesota, particularly at the quarterback position, but the team has always been able to lean on its stellar running back.
And then there was Adrian Peterson. With a groin injury that has him running, visibly, at less than 100%, the man simply refused to allow the Minnesota Vikings to lose on this day. Earlier in the game, he became the 28th running back in NFL history to go over the 10,000-yard mark for his career, and he just kept building from there. He wound up with 211 yards on 35 carries, allowing him to join Tiki Barber and O.J. Simpson as the only running backs in NFL history with at least five 200-yard rushing games (Barber has six).
It’s an astonishing statistic and completely understandable following his MVP win in 2012.
The mood was a touch more somber over at Windy City Gridiron. A loss on Sunday made it significantly tougher to project the team’s road to the playoffs, relying on a Detroit loss. The Bears squandered a perfectly good opportunity to take a step forward and put some pressure on the Lions in a game they should have won.
The Bears are now 6-6 with the Detroit Lions sitting at 7-5. The Bears drop another conference game, meaning their only real chance at the playoffs now is to have the Lions drop more than they win for the rest of the season. We'll have more on that later this week.
Chicago and Detroit are guilty of keeping the door open far too long. It remains to be seen if their missteps will come back to bite them.
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