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DETROIT — Last Sunday, Minnesota quarterback Sam Darnold entered the victorious Vikings locker room and was greeted by his teammates, who promptly doused him with water and then lifted him off the ground.
It was something pure and special, out of a jubilant NCAA March Madness upset or perhaps a Hollywood movie where eyes would roll that such a thing doesn’t happen in the real world of professional sports.
Yet it was real — real emotion, real appreciation for a 14th regular season victory and the quarterback who helped deliver it.
The next night, as has become custom around Detroit games the last year, fans that had flocked to a road game in San Francisco celebrated the Lions 14th win by filling the stadium with chants about their own quarterback … “JAR-ed Goff, JAR-ed Goff.” Teammates sometimes joined in for the rallying cry of a new contender.
The Lions (14-2) and the Vikings (14-2) will match up at Ford Field here on Sunday in one of the most consequential regular season games in NFL history. Never before has two teams with this many victories met in the regular season, let alone with a division title and the NFC’s No. 1 overall seed on the line (the loser drops all the way to five).
“This is what you’re in it for, man,” Detroit coach Dan Campbell said. “Ultimately this is it. I mean, you couldn’t write a better scenario, you couldn’t come up with this. … It just doesn’t get any better than this. This is fairytale stuff.”
Part of the fairytale is the unlikeliness of the two quarterbacks — and central figures — of this match-up. In 2007, an 8-0 New England team defeated a 7-0 Indianapolis squad in an historical late clash of unbeaten teams. Those teams were QB’d by Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, respectively, another chapter in a long-standing rivalry between two league MVPs and future Hall of Famers.
This is Sam Darnold and Jared Goff.
This came out of nowhere; two California quarterbacks (Darnold of Orange County and USC, Goff of Marin…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/jared-goff-vs-sam-darnold-the-epic-qb-battle-no-one-saw-coming-193900208.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2025-01-02 19:39:00
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