Vikings stumble with 8 false starts, Loons forge ahead in playoffs

NINA MOINI: Two words could sum up the latest Vikings game-- false start. In football, teams get penalized when offensive players move before a play officially begins, and yesterday, Minnesota racked up eight of those false start penalties. That's more than any home team since 2009. The confusion helped fuel the Vikings' loss to the Baltimore Ravens, with a final score of 19 to 27. With me now to explain this and other sports news are our regular sports contributors, Wally Langfellow and Eric Nelson. Hi, guys. Happy Monday.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Happy Monday, Nina.

ERIC NELSON: Happy Monday, Nina.

NINA MOINI: I have to say, it's offensive that the offensive players-- [LAUGHS] had so many of those false starts. What was going on there, Wally?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Well, I don't know. It's funny you should say that because Alanna, your producer, sent me a note this morning and said, we're going to talk about the false starts. Can you explain it? And I said, well, I wish--

NINA MOINI: That was just for me, probably.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: No, and I said, I wish somebody would explain it to the Vikings. I mean, they did it so often it was almost ridiculous. It really was. Eight of them. So basically what they do is they move before the ball is hiked. That's the simplest way to explain it. And you can't do that.

NINA MOINI: The name kind of says it, if I'm being honest, but thank you for explaining.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Yeah, well, I mean, I'm just--

NINA MOINI: False start.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: --just kind of trying to simplify it in the simplest terms. They're moving before the ball is hiked, and they can't do that. So as a result, they're starting five yards further back than they normally would. And you're right, this hasn't happened in what, 16 years? A home team. Now, this typically would happen on the road. So for example, Baltimore typically would have had trouble with it because of the noise that's provided by the home team's crowd.

Well, you're not supposed to do this at home. At home, you have the advantage of the crowd not interfering with the quarterback calling out signals and telling the offense when to move. So, yeah. And some of it, though, was I think JJ McCarthy, the Vikings quarterback, he's trying to draw Baltimore offside. Well, what happens is he gives what they call a hard count. And that didn't fool Baltimore, but it fooled his own teammates. So that's exactly what.

So anyway, beyond that, McCarthy was so-so. He wasn't terrible. He wasn't great. He certainly wasn't as good as he was against Detroit. He threw two interceptions. Those are key. Here's another key stat-- he had several of his passes batted or tipped at the line of scrimmage. Part of it is his height. The other part is what Baltimore did defensively, getting hands up in his face so his passes coming out from behind the line of scrimmage were tipped before they could even get to the receiver. So a lot of things like that going on.

Vikings, in all, were penalized 13 times for 102 yards. You can't do those type of things against a good team. And the good news is that Vikings defense played fairly well. They held Lamar Jackson, who's one of the best quarterbacks in the league. He just threw for 178 yards. They held Derrick Henry, one of the best running backs in the league, to just 75 yards. Yet they just couldn't get it going offensively, because of all those penalties. Without question, yeah.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. So Eric, when do the Vikings have a chance to bounce back? What do you think they're going to be focusing on this week?

ERIC NELSON: Well, Nina, I've got some good news for the Purple Nation out there listening-- the Vikings are not playing a team this coming week named after a bird. Because Minnesota's already lost this season to the Falcons, the Eagles, and the Ravens in Minneapolis.

NINA MOINI: Oh, very superstitious.

ERIC NELSON: Maybe it's karma because they don't have bird-proof glass on US Bank Stadium. Now, I do want to mention the Vikings play the Seahawks November 30 in Seattle, so another bird loss is possible. But the opponent Sunday is Chicago, and they're no longer the Bad News Bears. Chicago came back, knocked off the New York Giants on Sunday in the Windy City.

Caleb Williams threw a touchdown pass in the fourth quarter, their quarterback, and he ran for the game-winning score with 1:47 left in the game. And the Bears are six and three. They're much improved under their rookie head coach, Ben Johnson. And if you remember, the Vikings and Bears met in week one on Monday Night Football in Chicago, and Minnesota had to rally to win that one 27-24.

Meanwhile, around the NFC North, Detroit doubled up Washington on Sunday, winning 44 to 22 as Jared Goff threw three touchdown passes and Jahmyr Gibbs ran for 142 yards and two TDs. By the way, Seattle won 44 to 22 against Arizona yesterday, meaning there were a pair of 44 to 22 scores in the same week. That's an extremely rare final score in the NFL.

And tonight Philadelphia, six and two, at Green Bay, five, two, and one. The Super Bowl champion Eagles will play the Packers in Northeastern Wisconsin. Game time temp, 32 degrees, right at freezing. And the first-place Packers have a half-game lead over the Lions in the NFC North. And if you're keeping score, the Vikings right now are at the bottom of the division in fourth place.

NINA MOINI: Yikes. All right.

ERIC NELSON: Ouch.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. So a team that did really well, big weekend for soccer fans, Wally. The Loons played the Seattle Sounders in the final game of a best-of-three series, and it sounds like it was about as close of a playoff game as you can get. Tell us about what happened.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Yeah, ridiculously close. They won on penalty kicks, 7 to 6, with the goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair getting what turned out to be the game-winning penalty kick goal. And then Seattle's goalkeeper had a chance also, but his kick hit the crossbar and so Minnesota ends up winning and they advance to the Western Conference Semifinals. That's the good news.

The bad news is that San Diego beat Portland, and so now Minnesota will have to travel to San Diego. And this is not a best of three now. Now it's just win or go home. So it's a one-gamer in the next round, which is kind of odd. It's best two out of three in the first round, but the next round is just one game. So they go to San Diego, and that's two weeks from today, so that's the Monday before Thanksgiving. For you Vikings fans, that's the day after the Vikings go to Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

So they've got a couple weeks to wait. Partially that is because there's an international tournament and the MLS, the Major League Soccer, they take this next week off in order to let their players go play in this international tournament. So you got to wait two weeks for more soccer, but as I said, the good news is they advanced. The bad news is they do have to go to San Diego, because San Diego knocked off Portland yesterday.

NINA MOINI: All right, Eric. Eric, I do want to catch folks up on basketball and hockey. Do you want to start with the Timberwolves?

ERIC NELSON: Yeah, we can do that. And by the way, I'd take a trip to San Diego to watch a soccer match. That actually sounds kind of fun to me. But yeah, the Timberwolves were actually in Northern California last night and they thumped the Sacramento Kings 144 to 117. Anthony Edwards, Ant, scored 26 points to lead the way. Jaden McDaniels chipped in with 21 for Minnesota.

The T-wolves are starting to play better. They're now six and four on the season, and they'll take on Utah tonight in Salt Lake City. And on Friday, a game that I happened to be at, the Timberwolves dominated the Jazz in a 137-97 win in Minneapolis in what they call the NBA Cup. It's an in-season tournament. And probably the highlight for a lot of folks-- or for some it may have been a lowlight-- the Timberwolves unveiled their fluorescent-green-colored floor. Yeah, it was rather wild-looking. But they were able to get the win, and we'll see what they do tonight against Utah in the rematch.

As for the Wild, they played last night at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul. They get a shutout over Calgary, 2-0. Goalie Jesper Wallstedt stopped all 36 shots he faced, second career shutout for Wallstedt. Matt Boldy, one goal, two assists for Minnesota. The Wild, like the Timberwolves, starting to pick things up a bit. They've won four of five.

They're back on the ice tomorrow night in St. Paul. San Jose and Minnesota will play. Both teams have 17 points, and the Sharks are no longer swimming at the bottom of the NHL ocean. I mean, they were really bad the last few years, but San Jose is an improving team and the Sharks have won three straight games. So this will be an interesting match-up to see if the Wild can keep their winning ways going against San Jose.

NINA MOINI: OK, and Wally, that was a really good summary of all the teams. We have just about a minute left. Do you want to talk about some news of some more sports gambling charges that broke yesterday? This one involves Major League Baseball.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Yeah, there were a couple of players from Cleveland who were suspended earlier in the season, Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase. Emmanuel Clase was one of the top relief pitchers in all of baseball the last several years. They were both indicted by the DOJ-- this came down yesterday-- on gambling charges and face a possible 65 years in prison.

And basically, what it comes down to is they were purposely throwing pitches that would be in the dirt. They would be balls. And then they were alerting these gamblers as to when they were going to throw these pitches, and then they would bet on those pitches. They're called prop bets. And this is obviously a huge black eye for baseball, to have something like this going on. So these guys are in some serious trouble. They'll never play baseball, Major League Baseball again, if they are found guilty of this. But it sounds like they have a ton of evidence against these two. So Cleveland's out two pitchers, and baseball's got another black eye.

NINA MOINI: All right. Thanks, you guys. Have a great week.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Yeah, you too.

ERIC NELSON: All right, see you, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Those are our sports contributors, Wally Langfellow and Eric Nelson. Thanks to them, as always.