The Minnesota Vikings are in a state of turmoil. Adam Thielen pointed out that Kirk Cousins isn’t all that great at playing quarterback. Stefon Diggs wants a trade. They lost to the guy backing up Mitch Trubisky. The team continues to be named after an historic group of warriors known for their savagery despite playing in a climate-controlled environment. All bad looks. And all of this on the heels of achieving national relevance this summer for the first time since the Randy Moss days.
What’s causing the problems? It could well be the same thing that caused the relevance in the first place.
Lizzo.
When the musical sensation’s hit single, “Truth Hurts,” began its climb to the top of the charts, people across the country were reminded of the existence of one of the NFL’s most notoriously mediocre franchises, thanks to the line “New man on the Minnesota Vikings,” which implied she had a new beau from among the group of purple-clad men based out of Minneapolis who have never won a Super Bowl and have never even played in one since they began playing indoors.
The song, to be clear, is a bop. And its catchiness may well have destroyed the Vikings.
You see, while the song was released back in 2017, it didn’t achieve mass popularity until this year. Which means the man the musician dated—if she dated a Viking at all—may well no longer be a Viking, or may no longer be her beau.
Still, it’s easy to imagine the locker room conflict this has caused. Undoubtedly, all of the Vikings except for probably Cousins and maybe whoever their punter is know the song, and undoubtedly, all have been trying to figure out who’s dating Lizzo. But with no Lizzo being dated, their speculations likely ended nowhere, and suspicion likely mounted, until everyone was so mad at each other that Diggs said, “Hey, I think I liked things more back in Maryland,” and Thielen said what everyone was thinking.
Now, we see if the Vikings can put things back together, while waiting to see if another Lizzo single might further break things down or take aim at an intra-division rival such as the Lions, whom the Vikings are battling for third place. A calamitous scene, to be sure.
