NFL POINDEXTER: THE LINGERING DOUBT

Will the Vikings, like others before, let an earlier loss linger?

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Antoine Winfield is living in the moment.

In 1994, the Cincinnati Bengals special teams coach was a guy named Marv Braden. Like most special teams coaches, he was colorful and naturally high-strung. He walked fast and he talked a lot—in a sort of incessant monologue. That summer, from the first day of camp, Braden found a daily reason to summon the name of Browns punt returner Eric Metcalf.

At the time, Metcalf was the most electrifying player in the league and the Bengals would run into him in Week 1. Braden was, shall we say, concerned about Metcalf. During the middle of camp, he even interrupted a film session to show a clip of the former Texas Longhorn star returning a punt against Pittsburgh the previous year. On opening day, sure enough, all of Braden's fears were realized as Metcalf took not one, but two punts to the house. The Bengals lost that game and did the same over the next eight. Did that nervous beginning have anything to do with the dreadful season?

The baseball season is a marathon. Over the course of 162 games you have time to tweak things and work out more than a few kinks. Same with basketball. Eighty two games spread out over eight months gives you room for reflection and growth. But the sixteen games in a football season play out like a sprint. And the laws of sprinting dictate that a bad start usually ensures a less than successful race. So every team, looking to build enough momentum to carry them to money time—better known as the month of November—wants to explode from the blocks. If it doesn't happen, and you lose in Week 1, the next game hangs over the practice field like a cloud. Another loss in Week 2 is the foundation for a losing streak, which is grist for a lost season.

The Minnesota Vikings are one of those teams on the edge this year. They find themselves smack dab in the middle of the NFC North, surrounded by the reinvigorated Bears, the improving, albeit inconsistent Lions and the reigning division champs in Green Bay. But the Vikings, who won five of their final eight games last year, boast the game's best running back in Adrian Peterson. And after Brett Favre took his show to Gotham, Minnesota became the division big dog, at least on paper. So this past Monday night, when the Vikings went to Lambeau, there were great expectations.

Vikings cornerback Antoine Winfield had them. Five minutes into the second half, Winfield squared off against Donald Driver, the Packers' best receiver. Driver came off the line of scrimmage, and when Winfield failed to get his hands on him, Driver went unimpeded up field. He caught a beautifully thrown ball and sailed 68 yards down the sideline for an apparent touchdown. It was nullified when a Packer's O-lineman was called for being downfield.

For Winfield, the play was a microcosm of Week 1: though the Vikings lost 24-19, in Winfield's mind, the game never happened. "I give it a good 24 hours," he says. He insists that amounts to ample time to accomplish successful decompression.

You expect this from a cornerback. Guys who play the corner know, better than anyone, that if a coach's angst bleeds into a player's psyche, disaster is imminent. On every play, he battles both quarterback and receiver. This makes every corner an athletic version of Socrates Fortlow, the troubled protagonist in the Walter Mosley novel, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.

Winfield doesn't want the bad vibe to build up into something more. "You can't beat yourself up over things," he said. "If you do that, you can't play the next week. Or the week after that. You just can't let it linger."

Any lingering doubt could prove especially costly this Sunday. It's a true psychological battle. Will concerns about the errors of Week 1 make Week 2 a mental trap? Winfield, like every defensive back in the league, knows that when taking on the Colts of Manning, Harrison and the crew, the ill-prepared defender will get clowned. But it's the quest to avoid 0-2 that looms even larger. The most salient fear is that a team will press too hard, and do things out of character in order to right a ship that hasn't even taken on much water.

Winfield shows no concern. "Hey, my first pick with this team (in '04) came against Peyton," said Winfield. "I've always done well against him."

But I still wondered if that's what happened to the Bengals back in '94.

Jim Anderson would know. The Bengals' running back coach has been a part of 25 season openers—all of them in Cincinnati. He was there then and he was there last Sunday when the Bengals opened their season with a loss to the Ravens.

Winfield doesn't want the bad vibe to build up into something more. "You can't beat yourself up over things," he said. "If you do that, you can't play the next week. Or the week after that. You just can't let it linger."

Anderson says he doesn't remember Marv Braden's summer of discontent, but he has his own philosophy. "Historically, things occur early in a season and a team doesn't gel as quickly as you'd like," he says. "But you can't ever have any fear." Anderson knows that a loss in week one, just like a loss at any other time, requires a clinical approach, not an emotional one. If you're emotional at 0-1, what is left at 0-3? So this upcoming week, he'll do what he's done the past 24 years. That's lending council to Bengals running back Chris Perry, who in his first year as a full time starter, had a decent game except for a lost fumble. "You make the necessary corrections," says Anderson. "You don't ever linger on anything."

There's that word again.

Once a team overcomes the temptation to loiter on a loss, the next step is trusting that your teammates are competing in this game, not mulling over the last. Football is based on trust. If I'm rushing the passer, I have to trust the guys covering down field. I can't watch them do it, not if I'm going to do my own job.

I was thinking about slow starts, and particularly that '94 season when Anderson reminded me that the Bengals opponent this Sunday is Tennessee. Somewhere in Nashville, Titans quarterback Vince Young, the most physically gifted player at his position, is visibly drowning in the burden of expectations. If a guy isn't mentally or emotionally ready to play, no coach will let him line up on Sunday. But if he is allowed to play before he's ready, his teammates can't worry about that. Like I said, they're too busy doing their own jobs.

For any player or team seized by angst this week, Anderson offers a not-so-empty platitude. "What the mind dwells on, the body acts upon."

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