Vikings' Blair Walsh admits 'it is my fault' after botching 27-yard FG attempt

MINNEAPOLIS – The Minnesota Vikings locker room here for the past two seasons has been the largest in the NFL because it was built for and is the property of the University of Minnesota. The Vikings have used the on-campus TCF Stadium while their new building is being constructed a couple miles away, closer to the city center.

College teams have about twice the number of players as the NFL and Minnesota made the "Murray Warmath Locker Room" the largest in the country, 60 cherry wood lockers on each arced side of the room.

Blair Walsh sat in front of his on Sunday afternoon, sat in a state of disbelief and demoralization, sat with the knowledge that his hooked 27-yard field goal with 26 seconds remaining will be the critical memory of Minnesota losing to Seattle here, 10-9.

He sat, for a moment, and overwhelmed by pain, overwhelmed by failure, cried into his arm.

Walsh is one of the league's best kickers. Prior to the final attempt, he was 37-of-42 on the season, including 10-for-10 inside 30 yards and 31-of-32 for his career from that distance – "hell of a time [to miss]," he said. Now with a playoff victory on the line, he failed to properly follow through, pushed it left where a prevailing wind was willing to help send it into NFL history as an all-timer of a botched boot.

"I have no idea what happened," Walsh said afterward. "But I can tell you this, it is my fault. I know [holder] Jeff [Locke] did his job and [long snapper] Kevin McDermott did his job and I am definitely the only one who didn't do my job. So that is on me."

The ball was actually presented to Walsh with its laces facing him, often a sign of pending trouble. Locke said he should have done a better job, but Walsh shook that off as not relevant and kept repeating the same mantra.

Blame me.

And in many ways, people did. Reality is reality. Yes, he'd made three other field goals, including challenging shots from 43 and 47 yards. Yes, he'd been there to bail out an offense that kept stalling near the goal line. And yes no one play decides a football game, even a final kick. Adrian Peterson fumbled. The defense buckled in the fourth. There were missed tackles and dropped passes and on and on across 60 minutes of the sport.

Still 27 yards is just 27 yards, almost comically easy for a professional kicker regardless of sub-freezing temperatures, playoff pressure, or anything else.

"He's got to make it," coach Mike Zimmer said.

"I couldn't believe it," Peterson said. "I thought it was fake."

There is no other way to sugarcoat it. There is no other way to pretend this wasn't a horror show of an ending. This isn't kindergarten, feelings sometimes get hurt.

"It didn't feel good off my foot and I kind of knew right away," Walsh said. "… When you pull it to the left like that you didn't stay long enough into the kick and commit through it enough. And that is what I didn't do. I had done it all day so I am not sure why I didn't there."

Later he sighed.

"It's ridiculous."

Inside that massive locker room postgame, where players tried to thaw out, run through the blur of the action and prepare for an abrupt end of the season, it would've been easy, so easy, for players to avoid Blair Walsh. You could slip out to the right, leave to the left, never venture all the way over to his area.

The biggest football locker room in America could've been full of divide and disfavor, rolled eyes and pointed fingers at a kicker who'd undone three hours of frozen pain and blew a potential playoff run. Often kickers are part of the team, but only so much because they are rarely in the trenches bleeding alongside the others.

Instead the opposite happened. Player after player, teammate after teammate sought him out, came all the way over and patted their kicker on shoulder, told him to keep his head up, gave him a measure of comfort that did little in this depressed moment, but should help in the days to come.

"You have some of the best teammates in the league on this team," Walsh said. "All being in support of me."

This is pro football, not high school, not even college. This is business, a business that asks for everything – time, focus, health – and then asks for more. It starts in the heat of training camp and ends in the cold of January.

This is often about money and legacy and careers and sacrifice and no one needs to pretend that it always has to be some rah-rah filled movie. This is grown man stuff.

Yet sometimes, even in its lowest moments, it can remind you of just how close these groups are. And at times inhumane pursuit producing raw humanity. Sometimes you watch men who’d lost so much – opportunity mostly – put all that aside and stand up in front of the media and stand up for their guy.

"He's the reason why we were in the game in the first place," linebacker Anthony Barr said.

"He's won a ton of games for us," quarterback Teddy Bridgewater said.

"There are plays throughout the game that you can pick other than that," defensive end Brian Robison said.

"I just told him, 'Hey man, you know we love you,' " Peterson said.

Walsh didn't hear those and others. He was packing up and heading off, trying to grieve through the worst moment of his career – "life of a kicker," he noted. They weren't done directly for him. They were done though.

This was something positive out of everything negative, this was a professional offering no excuses, owning all of the responsibility.

"It is my fault," Walsh said.

And then this was the rest of the team trying not to let him.

"We win as a team," Barr said. "We lose as a team."