‘It’s a delusional thing we have’: Despite that Lions loss, Vikings fans are feeling good

Karl Heinrichs — aka “Sir Death,” the Minnesota Vikings superfan and a leader in the Viking World Order fan club — has a trait that’s rare for this tortured fan base: He’s relentlessly optimistic.

So when the Vikings laid an egg in their last regular season game, sure, Heinrichs was angry. How could they not score a touchdown in four trips to the red zone? How could quarterback Sam Darnold sail so many passes high? How could the Vikings so badly squander a road to the Super Bowl that ran through U.S. Bank Stadium?

For one day, Heinrichs felt awful. Then he found perspective. Nobody thought this rebuilding season would lead to the playoffs. Even if the Super Bowl odds as a wild-card team playing on the road are slim, the squad’s future is still bright. The Vikings have the big things right: The general manager, the head coach, and, hopefully, future quarterback J.J. McCarthy.

No matter what happens Monday night against the Los Angeles Rams, no matter what happens the rest of the playoffs, Heinrichs sees this 14-win season as a gift.

And despite the scars of 64 years of letdowns, Vikings fans are accepting this season’s gift with open arms.

Lose to the Rams? Bummer. Don’t get that elusive trip to the Super Bowl? No one thought this was a Super Bowl team anyway. Angry that the Vikings yet again seem cursed? This season felt like anything but a curse.

Just look to Sir Death. Nobody is more invested in the Vikings: “This isn’t just a team; it’s my life,” said Heinrichs, who lives in a Vikings-themed house in Stillwater and has $70,000 in Vikings tattoos covering his body.

And this season helped him through the most difficult time in his life.

A year ago, Heinrichs thought he’d never attend another game. He had lost his 21-year-old daughter, Justice, to suicide. So many Viking memories were tied to his daughter: When he visited her fourth-grade classroom in gameday gear, when she had front-row seats and blew him a kiss on the field pregame.

How could he enjoy the future with all that in the past?

Then superfan friends flooded his house for a memorial. They raised money for the funeral. His daughter, Heinrichs thought, would want him to keep being Sir Death.

So he did.

Then this season of joy happened. Each win felt like a balm for Heinrichs’ pain.

“The whole season was a blessing,” he said. “This has been about more than football.”

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Fans’ day-after reaction to the Lions loss was predictable.

“I’ve seen this happen before,” said Justin Ites, 48, a lifelong Vikings fan from Iowa. “I let my mind accept we have a chance in the postseason. Now, I’m very uneasy.”

The central trait of any Vikings fan is fatalism, forged through decades of heartbreak. Every fan can pick their most painful moment: Any of the four Super Bowl losses in the 1970s. The Herschel Walker trade. Gary Anderson’s missed field goal in the 1998 NFC championship game. Getting blown out in the 2000 NFC championship game. Brett Favre’s interception in the 2009 NFC championship game. Blair Walsh’s shank in the 2015 playoffs. Getting blown out by the Philadelphia Eagles a week after Stefon Diggs’ Minneapolis Miracle. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

But the Vikings are not some laughable, hapless franchise. They’re not the Chicago Cubs before they won the 2016 World Series. They’re not the Cleveland Browns with their history of failure. The Vikings are usually good, sometimes great, just never the best. Their history is darker, more complicated.

And fans wear that as a badge of honor.

“It’s one of most rewarding and heartbreaking experiences known to man, the highest of highs met with such bone-crushing lows,” said James Heidelberg, 39, of Brooklyn Park, who put an Adam Thielen jersey on his newborn son in the hospital.

“That inexplicable meltdown against the Lions — it’s almost like all hope went out the window,” said Barry Laws, 58, a lifelong fan in Florida. “It’s like the Vikings deploy guys at the most integral positions with self-destruct buttons. The biggest question is, who keeps pushing that button?”

Gabriele Greco, the administrator of the Italian Vikings fan club, stayed up at his home in Milan, Italy, until the Lions game ended at 5:35 a.m. local time, texting with fellow fan club members: “We share our pain, almost constant pain, together. It feels a little bit better like that. It’s a delusional thing we have. We like teams that don’t win anything.”

“The franchise has this legacy of making mental mistakes,” said Earl Baker, 62, who has been a fan since their first Super Bowl loss in 1970. “It’s baked into the karma of the franchise. I’ve detached, because they hurt you so much. You put a shield over your heart.”

“Now that we’re in playoffs, I let myself build that hope even more,” said David Henry, a lifelong Vikings fan in Arkansas. “Until the shoe finally drops.”

And yet: Hope, still.

Greco uses an Italian phrase when talking about this surprising season: “é tutto grasso che cola” — basically, it’s all gravy.

“All these horrible games and memories are going to make it so much better when we actually do win a Super Bowl,” said Mike Rohl, a South Dakota state senator from Aberdeen, S.D., and season-ticket holder. “The struggle makes the destination so much greater.”

“It’s like a spouse: You stay committed to them in good and bad times,” said Taniesha Dvoskin, 46, a season-ticket holder from Minneapolis. “It’s faith — faith that someday they’ll get there, and it will be just as amazing as we always hoped it would be.”

***

Sports fans are a superstitious bunch. If you ate teriyaki wings and the Vikings pulled off an improbable comeback, you better order the same wings next game. It can feel like you, the fan, is affecting them, the players.

Fatalism can feel infectious too.

That’s something Vikings fans admit they must change, despite a history girding them for disaster.

“If anyone has a right to believe there’s a curse, it’s a Vikings fan,” Heidelberg said. “If you believe in that, it’s just bad juju out there. If you truly believe the Vikings will be the Vikings, if you’re already writing off Sam Darnold after one bad performance — it impacts the team’s chances. There’s a little bit of magic in getting to the Super Bowl. We need that true belief.”

Which is why, perhaps, we should take a lesson from Sir Death. Whether the Vikings win or lose Monday night is obscenely important to Heinrichs. And yet he realizes we must cherish all of this season’s unanticipated joy, no matter the ending.

Like the Vikings, Heinrichs has been knocked down plenty in life, including stints in federal prison on drug convictions. Like the Vikings, he’s always gotten back up.

“I’ve thought my life was over so many times,” Heinrichs said. “Every time I’ve been down and out and thought my life was over, I’ve come back bigger and stronger than before.”

Tragedies happen, like Heinrichs’ daughter’s suicide or Vikings draft pick Khyree Jackson’s death in a car wreck before playing an NFL game. Those things are never forgotten. More than 100 Vikings fans have given Heinrichs gifts this season: A purple and gold afghan, a wreath decorated with his daughter’s photographs. Jackson’s death has been present throughout the Vikings’ magical season: His initials on helmet decals, his empty locker.

Sports are just entertainment, but they help us process life. This season has helped Heinrichs through his grief.

The Vikings have had so many heartbreaks: Wide left. 41-donut. Favre’s throw across his body and into the Saints’ arms. Wide left again.

But every ending means a new beginning.

It’s the same with Heinrichs. Not long after his daughter’s death, he met someone. They started dating. They went to Vikings games together. With each unexpected victory, her belly got bigger and bigger. At a fan party before the November game in Jacksonville, Heinrichs proposed. She said yes, and 500 fans broke into the Vikings fight song.

Their baby is due two weeks after the Super Bowl.