There have been a couple of interesting developments over the course of the past couple of days leading up to the matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Minnesota Vikings.  The first was the revelation from a Cardinals' "insider" the day after the Vikings' 30-17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals.  The rumor has been circulating that the Cardinals knew whether the Vikings would be passing or running the football based on the stance of left tackle Bryant McKinnie.  If McKinnie put his left foot farther back, the Cardinals anticipated pass. . .if it was farther up, they looked for the run.

While this might have something to do with some of the success the Cardinals had against Minnesota, I still think it's quite a bit of hand-wringing over nothing.  Honestly, are we to believe that if there was such an obvious tell from the Vikings' offense, it took professional football coaches until Week 13 of the season to exploit it?  I doubt it. . .the Vikings' offense would have been getting overrun since September if that were the case.  I think what we saw on Sunday night doesn't have anything to do with stances or anything else.  It had to do with the Cardinals putting together their best game of the season, the Vikings playing their worst game of the year, and those two events coinciding on the same Sunday night.  Do I think the Vikings would get whipped that badly if they had to face the Cardinals again?  Not at all.  Arizona still might win the game, mind you, but I don't think they'd dominate the Vikings the way they did on Sunday night.  Obviously, I'm a bit biased, and your mileage may vary on such matters, but that's my view of things.

Second, as Anthony pointed out in a FanShot yesterday, Chad Ochocinco is already at it, telling Adam Schefter via Twitter that when he scores against the Vikings. . .and you'll note his usage of the word "when" as opposed to "if". . .he was going to take the horn away from the Vikings' mascot and use it himself.

(Do we tell him that the horn sound that plays after first downs is pre-recorded, or do we just let him look for the horn for about half an hour or so?  If. . .not when. . .it happens, mind you.)

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by Ross D. Franklin - AP

3 days ago: Minnesota Vikings' Chester Taylor kneels on the ground after being stopped short of the goal line in the second quarter during an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals Sunday, Dec. 6, 2009, in Glendale, Ariz. The Vikings had to settle for a field goal on the drive. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

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I'm going to start moving this feature up to earlier in the week in an effort to allow us to move on to the next game more quickly.  So, with our weekly look back at the Vikings' red zone performance, here's this week's installment of the Vikings Red Zone Review.  As always, the Vikings Red Zone Review is brought to you by the good folks at Comcast.  Comcast brings you the NFL Red Zone channel every week, and it's your way to keep in touch with all the biggest plays from every NFL game week in and week out.  It's great for fantasy players, or for the late games when you're not sure which game you want to view while celebrating the Vikings' latest conquest.  The Red Zone Channel is your season ticket for every single NFL game, and nobody brings it to you like the folks at Comcast.

What kind of performance did the Vikings put together in the red zone last weekend?  Let's have a look and find out.  After all, with the kind of performance that the Vikings put together against Arizona, you could probably expect that this wouldn't take very long.

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See this? Way too early to think about pressing it. (Picture via Dr. Tedi Koehn)

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The 2008 Arizona Cardinals.

The 2007 New York Giants.

The 2006 Indianapolis Colts.

Those three teams have a couple of things in common.  The first is that they all went to the Super Bowl.  Two of those three teams, the Giants and Colts, won the Super Bowl in the years listed.  But that's not the main thread that connects them. . .not for the purposes of this post, at least.

Each of those three teams went on to represent their conference in the biggest game of the year. . .and they each had a game late in the season where they got their butts collectively handed to them in a manner that made people wonder if they were legitimate contenders or not.

Remember Minnesota's trip to Arizona last season?  Tarvaris Jackson threw four touchdown passes, Adrian Peterson ran wild, and the Vikings blasted the Cardinals to the tune of 35-14. . .and that wasn't even the worst loss the Cardinals suffered that month, as they went out the next week against the New England Patriots and got hammered by a score of 47-7.  But, lo and behold, five weeks after the loss to the Patriots, there they were, representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, and were two minutes away from winning the whole ball of wax.

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No real other way to say it. . .you guys straight-up beat our asses from one side of the field to the other.  Easily the ugliest performance that the Vikings have put together all season long.  I knew that we couldn't win without pressure on Warner. . .well, we didn't get any pressure on him, and he ripped us to shreds.

Maybe we'll see you guys again sometime in January.  Good luck to you guys the rest of the way. . .especially when you play Green Bay in Week 17.  (-:

Things have continued to get uglier for the Vikings, as the Cardinals have extended their lead to 17 with a couple of Neil Rackers field goals.

Brett Favre has never overcome a deficit of more than 14 points. . .but, hey, there's always a first time. . .right?

Right!?

Cardinals 27, Vikings 10 as we go to the final quarter of play.

The Vikings opened the third quarter with a 25-yard field goal off the foot of Ryan Longwell.  After that, the quarter was owned by the Arizona Cardinals, as Kurt Warner found Anquan Boldin from 39 yards out and Larry Fitzgerald from 34 yards away to put the Cardinals ahead 21-10 going into the locker room.

The Vikings are going to need to make some serious halftime adjustments in order to overcome this.  This is the biggest deficit the Vikings have faced this year. . .will be interesting to see if they can do what's necessary to get the job done tonight.

Minnesota gets the ball coming out of the locker room, and will have to answer the bell if they want to keep themselves in this one.

Join us for the third quarter of action!

Action-packed first quarter thus far, as the Vikings and Cardinals have each put up a touchdown to give us a 7-7 tie after the opening stanza.

Minnesota's TD came on a 3-yard pass from Brett Favre to Visanthe Shiancoe, and Arizona scored on a 2-yard pass from Kurt Warner to Anquan Boldin after a huge Steve Breaston punt return.

The game continues right here!

MINNESOTA VIKINGS (10-1)	GAME #12	ARIZONA CARDINALS (7-4)
	@

After being at home since their Week 9 bye, the Vikings finally have to travel away from Minneapolis, heading to Arizona to face the Cardinals.  Both teams lead their divisions going into this one, and the Beloved Purple can lock up a playoff berth for themselves with a victory tonight, as well as put some distance between themselves and Arizona in the race for a first-round post-season bye.  After playing some pretty bad teams over the course of the past three weeks, now they have to face one of the NFL's better squads.

So, what are the keys to victory for the Beloved Purple this evening?

1) Get after the opposing quarterback - It's still unknown at this point whether the Arizona offense will be run by Kurt Warner or Matt Leinart this evening.  In either case, the Vikings are going to have to get pressure on the quarterback.  One thing to remember about the Cardinals is that their line is a little backwards, with their better offensive tackle at RT rather than LT, as the left-handed Leinart should be starting.  Their normal LT is also out with an injury, so Jared Allen should be licking his chops going into this one.  The Four Norsemen of the Apocalypse are going to have to get pressure and allow the back seven to cover the Cardinals' outstanding group of receivers and tight ends.

2) Take what the Cardinals give you - The Cardinals' pass defense has been pretty bad this season, ranking 29th in the NFL in terms of yardage allowed at 258.3 yards/game.  Their rush defense has been alright (13th in the NFL), but if they attempt to stack the box in order to take away Adrian Peterson, the Vikings' red-hot passing game is going to have to be able to take advantage of that.  Fortunately for the Vikings, they're riding a stretch that saw Brett Favre named as NFC Offensive Player of the Month for November after averaging almost 300 yards and 3 touchdowns a game.  If the Cardinals are determined not to let Peterson beat them, the odds are pretty good that Favre will.

3) Win the turnover battle - The Vikings have averaged exactly one turnover per game in their first 11 games of the year, and that's a trend they need to have continue if they want to have success against a team the caliber of Arizona.  The lack of turnovers by the Vikings have them sporting a +8 takeaway/giveaway ratio on the season, while the Cardinals enter the game at -4 (17 takeaways, 21 giveaways).  Both Warner and Leinart are susceptible to turning the ball over if they're pressured, which makes it that much more important to get pressure on them from the very start.

As usual, the game is going to kick off in about an hour and a half or so.  We had a pretty good amount of participation in the open thread for the less meaningful (for us) games, and hopefully we can carry that over to the Game Thread here.  The Saints won today, so the Vikings need a victory to keep pace with them.  Here's hoping it takes place!

Couple of reminders. . .please try to keep the pictures to a minimum so as to keep from slowing down the thread for some folks.  Also, please keep the swearing to a bare minimum as well.  "Damn" is okay. . .most of the "harder stuff" is not.

Other than that, let's enjoy the game!

SKOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL VIKINGS!!!!

Yep, for us Viking fans, kickoff is still a little more than eight hours away, but the rest of the league will kick off the early games in about an hour or so.

In NFC North action, the Detroit Lions will travel to play the team that Minnesota will play host to next week, the Cincinnati Bengals, while the Chicago Bears will try to keep from embarrassing themselves any further this season when they host the St. Louis Rams.  The Packers, who are currently leading the NFC wild-card chase, don't play until Monday night when they host the Baltimore Ravens.

The rest of the Week 13 schedule is as follows:

EARLY GAMES

Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Carolina Panthers
Oakland Raiders @ Pittsburgh Steelers
New Orleans Saints @ Washington Redskins
New England Patriots @ Miami Dolphins
Philadelphia Eagles @ Atlanta Falcons
Tennessee Titans @ Indianapolis Colts
Denver Broncos @ Kansas City Chiefs
Houston Texans @ Jacksonville Jaguars

LATE GAMES

San Diego Chargers @ Cleveland Browns
Dallas Cowboys @ New York Giants
San Francisco 49ers @ Seattle Seahawks

Discuss it all here while you're getting ready for the game that matters!

Upon inspection of the injury reports for both teams going into tonight's duel in the desert, each team has one very significant name listed, and the status of each of those players is up in the air at this point in time.

For the Vikings, that player is obviously cornerback Antoine Winfield, who has been absent from the Vikings' lineup since the second quarter of the Baltimore game.  We had heard that #26 would be back for the game against the Seattle Seahawks, but found out that he had been deactivated prior to the start of the game.  Winfield himself had said that he expected to be back for Minnesota's game against Chicago, but he was inactive last week, too.  With the Vikings having to face the best trio of receivers they'll see this year, and perhaps in the entire National Football League in Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin, and Steve Breaston, the Vikings could certainly use the services of Winfield this evening.

Of course, the Vikings' pass defense has been doing okay without Winfield, and have gotten some playing time for some of the guys that are lower on the depth chart, such as Karl Paymah and rookie Asher Allen.  That experience will only help this team as the post-season draws closer.

Winfield has told the Star-Tribune that he will be a game-time decision for tonight.  I hope that he's out there, but I think the Vikings can still win without him.

Speaking of the Cardinals' passing game, their main concern lies with the man responsible for pulling the trigger on that attack, quarterback Kurt Warner.  Warner suffered a concussion against the St. Louis Rams a couple of weeks ago, and missed the second half of that game, along with the Cardinals' loss to Tennessee last weekend.  Warner's agent has said that he would be "surprised" if Warner didn't start for the Cardinals tonight, but there hasn't been any truly definitive word as to how clear Warner is at this point.  Obviously, the Arizona offense becomes much less frightening if Matt Leinart starts at quarterback, but the Vikings' defensive line will definitely need to get after whichever player starts this evening.  Minnesota leads the NFL in sacks, but the Cardinals have only allowed 18 sacks in 2009, fifth-fewest in the NFL.

These two players could potentially be difference makers in tonight's matchup of two on the NFL's best teams.  It will be interesting to see if either or both of them take the field for their teams.