Yes, with the past couple of days going the way they've gone, and dealing with douchenozzles left and right, I've taken a break for a day or two.  However, I've been remiss in my duty to recap the final week of the Daily Norseman Fantasy Football League for 2008.  So, let's do that here now!

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Despite the fact that it's clearly listed in the site guidelines that some people are, obviously, too stupid to read. . .

If you're a fan from another team that comes here strictly to troll, I will ban you.

If you attempt to register another account. . .and I can see the IP addresses, so it's not hard to tell if it's you. . .I will ban you again, and I'll politely ask the admins to ban your IP from the site, if not from the entire SBNation network.

A fan of one of the NFC North's also-rans pulled this garbage yesterday.

If you're so insecure and have so little going for you in your life that you feel the need to come to our site and run your yap to fans of a team that's better than your team, then you are, truly, to be pitied.  And you can take your pitiful ass to someone else's website and see how long your garbage lasts there.

Yeah, the Vikings lost yesterday.  Your team didn't even freaking play.  Know your place.

It's been about 24 hours since the Minnesota Vikings' 2008 season ended. . .and about eight days since the season ended for Green Bay and Chicago (because, apparently, some people still need to be reminded). . .and in typical Viking fan fashion, we've already started looking forward to the 2009 NFL season.  Even with as disappointed as we are after the loss yesterday, it stands to reason that we have every reason to be optimistic about this team next season as well.

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Well, the Vikings slugged it out with the Eagles for four quarters.  They let up one big play to the one guy that they couldn't afford to give up a big play to late, and did nothing offensively in the second half.

Overall, however, this was a pretty successful season for the Vikings.  They captured a division championship, fought hard in the first round of the post-season, and have a lot of things to build on going into 2009.

Oh, and for you newly registered Bear and Packer fans that are planning on coming over here just to troll?  Keep in mind. . .regardless of today's result, your team is not as good as our team.  You have nothing to say, and nobody that's interested in hearing you say it.

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on a well-deserved victory.  We'll go over the game more tomorrow.  Enjoy the rest of your evening, ladies and gentlemen, and remember. . .the Minnesota Vikings are the 2008 NFC North champions, and we've had a hell of a time here for the last 6+ months covering it all.

Well, you guys did what you needed to do. . .slugged it out with us for four quarters, got a big play when you needed one, and pretty much shut us down in the second half.

Best of luck to you guys against the Giants next week.  I'll be pulling for you guys to represent the NFC now that we're not in it any more.

And now I've reached the 75 word limit.

Thus far, the Eagles' only touchdown has come from the right hand of Tarvaris Jackson, and the Minnesota defense has done a pretty good job against the Eagles thus far.

On the other side, the Vikings have put together a couple of nice scoring drives, and find themselves trailing by 2 at halftime.

Minnesota has the momentum going into the locker room. . .let's see if they can turn it into something positive.

SKOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL VIKINGS!!!!

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (9-6-1)	ROUND 1 (FIGHT!)	MINNESOTA VIKINGS (10-6)
	@

Well, this is it, folks. . .the moment that we've been waiting for since 2005 (or 2001, if you're talking strictly about home playoff games).  The Beloved Purple will be taking the field in January for the first time in the Daily Norseman era to take on the Philadelphia Eagles, who many experts have already pegged to move on to next week's divisional playoffs.

Surprisingly, on a personal level, I'm way, WAY less nervous about the Vikings this weekend than I was last weekend.  That doesn't mean that I'm expecting them to go out and just roll the Eagles this afternoon (though I am picking them, naturally), but I'm much more optimistic now that they're in the post-season than I was when their January fate was still in doubt.

That said, I expect today's game to be quite a nail-biter.  The Eagles are a good, if fairly inconsistent, football team.  I don't think they're as good as they looked in their 44-6 pasting of the Cowboys last weekend, but I don't think they're as bad as they looked in their 10-3 loss at Washington the previous week, either.  They fall somewhere in between. . .much like the Vikings do.

The Vikings have two very obvious keys in this game, one on offense and one on defense.  Offensively, Adrian Peterson needs to hold on to the damn football, and Tarvaris Jackson has to not make costly decisions in the face of the blitzes he's going to be seeing from Philly this afternoon.  If the Vikings can go through this game with no more than one turnover, they should be able to win.  The Eagles thrive on turnovers and pressure, and the Vikings really need to consider throwing in some screens and swing passes early in the proceedings in order to negate that a bit.

The defensive key is even more simple. . .contain Brian Westbrook.  The Eagles' receivers are, for the most part, not particularly scary, but Westbrook's versatility makes him a real monster and the one guy that the Vikings really need to key on.  Note how the key is not stopping Westbrook, because it's very rare for him to be completely stopped, but containing him and/or slowing him down is something that this Vikings' defense is capable of doing, in my opinion.

We're about 3 1/2 hours away from game time, ladies and gentlemen.  Sit back, relax, grab your beverage of choice, check out the early game, and discuss all the playoff action right here.

SKOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL VIKINGS!!!!

None of the home teams were supposed to win in the first round of this year's playoffs?

Oops!

In today's early game, the Cardinals, who had looked absolutely awful for most of the second half of this season, shut down Michael Turner and stopped a red-hot Atlanta Falcons team by a final score of 30-24.

In the late game, the Chargers, who got into the playoffs due to a combination of their own hot streak and the Denver Broncos completely falling apart, managed to do enough to beat another red-hot team in the Indianapolis Colts in overtime, 23-17.

The talk all week was how all four road teams were favored this weekend, and this could be the first weekend ever where the four road playoff teams won all four games in the wild card round.

This bodes well, I suppose, for the Vikings. . .since the national consensus seems to be that the Eagles are simply going to show up at the Metrodome tomorrow, and that should be enough for them to thoroughly destroy the Vikings.

Yes, much to the chagrin of Pro Football Talk and numerous other whining, pathetic cry babies, tomorrow's playoff game between the Vikings and the Eagles will, indeed, be shown on television in the Twin Cities area, just like everywhere else.

Still no update on the progress of playoff ticket sales in Green Bay or Chicago.  Hopefully those numbers will be available sometime around. . .I don't know. . .2027 or something.  (That's the year 2027, not 8:27 PM for you military types.)

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