Vikings vs. Redskins: Vikings Set Sail in D.C., Win 17-13

An afternoon of giving for the holiday season.

Numerous penalties were called against the Washington Redskins. Not so many against the Vikings.

A clear pass interference against either Chris Cooley or Brandon Banks on the same play by two different Vikings defenders was not called in the third quarter. Then a very sketchy facemask penalty was missed on Brandon Banks during a fourth-quarter punt return. Penalties caused crushing damage to Washington's momentum throughout the game.

Big plays were scarce in this game, and the turnover-happy Vikings did not get the ball taken away once.

Brett Favre did not show any signs of having a bad ankle today, including the back-breaking run at the two-minute warning during the fourth quarter that pretty much sealed the deal.

With no Redskins timeouts left, the Vikings ran out the clock, and Leslie Frazier gets a win in his head coaching debut after the firing of Brad Childress.

The Vikings pick up their first road win of the season against a team who is trying to battle off injury and keep a .500 record.

Let me get to the Gameday Grades this week:

QB: C. Donovan McNabb was called upon to beat the Vikings by himself. Well, he didn't do it, giving an average performance in the process.

RB: F. The running game failed. Completely. A total of 29 rushing yards for the entire game. Enough said.

WR: C. A good couple of catches, but way too many drops to be effective. Consistency is the name of the game, and the Skins game was off this week. It appears that Joey Galloway getting waived neither helped nor hurt the Redskins ability to catch.

TE: A. Fred Davis and Chris Cooley started off the game with a lot of production and good catches. The game plan then shifted somewhere else. The part of the game plan they were in, they played extremely well.

OL: C. Actually...they picked up blitzes fairly well today. The only problem they had was they couldn't block for the running game, and the Vikings blitzed on nearly every play. Five sacks is pretty high, but all in all it wasn't a horrible showing against one of the best defensive lines in the NFL.

DL: D. The push they got against the Vikings running game was not that good. Favre is less than mobile, and he was only sacked twice. But...they did get a really good stop on 3rd-and-1.

LB: B. London Fletcher covered the entire field, literally. Visanthe Shiancoe was about 30 yards deep early in the game, and Fletcher covered him one-on-one. Rocky McIntosh and Brian Orakpo made their presence felt.

CB: B. A couple of blown coverages, but they played pretty well. Phillip Buchanon pretty much made one mistake against Greg Lewis late in the game. But an interception against the turnover-prone Brett Favre would have been nice. Carlos Rogers messed up twice on the same drive, and it cost the Redskins big.

S: C. LaRon Landry is missed. There is no doubt. Kareem Moore is doing his best to fill in, but he is not Landry. Reed Doughty did end up getting five tackles, albeit pretty uneventfully.

K: A. Graham Gano made two kicks over 40 yards and made his PAT. His kickoffs were deep. He played well.

P: A. Hunter Smith got a lot of chances to showcase himself and he made the most of it, including a punt from his own end zone that ended up on the Vikings 30.

Coaching: C. Let me see if I can guess the game plan past the first quarter: Run the ball once, go nowhere. OK, now throw it seven times. That was pretty much the offense. The defense was more reactive than proactive. They could not get a good enough push to bring down the physical running of the Vikings, and only two sacks on an immobile Brett Favre is horrible. No takeaways. That's it.

Sadly, the Redskins could not battle through the injuries to keep the Vikings winless on the road. FedEx Field was pretty quiet with two minutes left in the game.

Next week, the Redskins travel up I-95 to see the New York Giants, who are coming off a nail-biting victory against the Jaguars.

See you next week, Hail!