Where do Packers and Steelers losses rank among NFL Playoff blowouts?
By Josh Hill
3. Giants 41, Vikings 0 — 2000 NFC Championship Game
The Minnesota Vikings of the late 1990s and early 2000s quietly remain one of the more impressive teams in recent NFL history. The ’98 team is one of the most prolific offenses ever and will forever be connected to playoff heartbreak thanks to the Championship Game loss to the Falcons.
But the playoff heartbreak was a theme that didn’t go away, and culminated in a 2000 blowout loss to the New York Giants. Despite having Randy Moss, Daunte Culpepper and other offensive weapons, the Vikings walked into the Meadowlands and failed to score a single point. The game is still remembered by Minnesota fans as a game in which the Giants were reading play calls from the opposite sideline — a claim less insane in a post-Patriots cheating era.
The fact remains, though, that the Giants beatdown of the Vikings was an anticlimactic end to a run by the Vikings that never turned into what it could have been. Starting with that 1998 team and ending with the 2000 team, it’s an era in Minnesota sports that will always sting as a missed opportunity. Minnesota made it back to the playoffs once in the next seven years, while the Giants went on to get roasted by the Ravens in Super Bowl XXXV