The Minnesota Vikings 2022 Preseason

 

The Minnesota Vikings 2022 Preseason

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for August 27, 2022

The NFL was back in Minnesota on Saturday night.  The Swank Family renewed our season tickets so we could cheer on our beloved Vikings on their journey to the Super Bowl!

US Bank Stadium was pretty full for a preseason game.  I guess a lot of people have Vikings Fever this year.  It's very contagious.

Miss Sheri was my date for the evening which excited me almost as much as getting to watch football for a few hours!

Preseason football gives us a taste for what's to come, but it's hard to get too thrilled when you know you're not going to be seeing many starters play the game.  It was announced shortly before game time that the Vikings would be sitting 27 players this evening.  So we ended up watching a bunch of people we've never heard of before and most likely will never hear of again, but it was still live football and we were ready to go!

The Vikings are under new leadership this year.  Kevin O'Connell is getting his first opportunity to be a head coach in the NFL following his successful year as the offensive coordinator for the Super Bowl champions, Los Angeles Rams.  We're excited to see what he can do.  We liked the former head coach, Mike Zimmer, but understand it was time for a change.  Skol!

The game itself was pretty dull and the local team struggled to score.  We were excited to watch 2nd year quarterback, Kellen Mond, lead the team but he struggled quite a bit.  So much so that the team went out and hired a new backup QB a couple days later.  Maybe the third year will be the charm for this young man.  Let's hope so anyways.

Our opponents for the week were the San Francisco 49ers.  Although they didn't play any of their starters either so it was mostly watching a whole bunch of people you've never heard of before play some pretty average football.  And they beat us by a score of 17-7.  Fun stuff.

Our home opener in the regular season is against the team that Minnesota fans love to hate.  The audience was already ready for the matchup.

On Sunday morning, Grandma Linda joined us for breakfast at Charlie's on Prior.  We were celebrating Miss Sheri's 55th birthday.  She likes going out to breakfast so it made for an even happier birthday than usual.

On Monday, I flew to Chicago for a couple of days.  I was there to join a prospective customer for a tour of Oracle's Industry Innovation Lab in Deerfield, Illinois.

I'm a geek at heart so visiting a technology lab is right up my alley.  They have a variety of experiences to showcase Oracle technology innovations with demos in robotics, virtual reality, drones, and other interesting things to see.  I had to keep reminding myself that I was there to meet with the client and not there to play with all the fun toys.

They even had a police car from the future on display.  It has high tech camera technology and can get real-time information from the cloud to help the police in a variety of situations.  I was hoping to see Robocop being deployed out of the back hatch, but they didn't show that part so I'm not sure if that capability has been enabled yet.

On Friday night, we had our annual Fantasy Football Draft Night.  Steve "Cuds" Cuddihy is the best commissioner in the business and hosts quite an event with visual effects, a catered meal, open bar, and a live auctioneer.  It's always a rock and roll kind of evening.

It's been quite a few years since I've won the championship, but I really feel like this is going to be my year.  Let's Go!!