Jamie Erdahl's Super Bowl pick has Vikings enacting revenge on old foe

Minnesota native and Good Morning Football host Jamie Erdahl has her favorite team finally winning its first Lombardi Trophy this season, she revealed on NFL Network on Thursday morning. And the team she has the Vikings beating in the Super Bowl, if it were to play out that way, would be cathartic for Minnesotans on multiple levels.

To kick off a four-minute monologue, Erdahl said she was on Reddit late at night and found a ranking of the best Super Bowls that never happened. No. 1 on that list was Vikings vs. Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII.

In 1998, the Vikings went 15-1 with the best point differential and the best offense in the NFL. In the AFC, John Elway's Broncos were second in both of those departments. But the two heavyweights never met in Miami because Gary Anderson famously missed his first kick all season, setting up Morten Andersen's overtime winner in a heartbreaking Vikings NFC championship game loss to the Falcons. Denver went on to cruise to a blowout against Atlanta in the Super Bowl.

"It's my worst childhood memory," said Erdahl, who grew up in Bloomington, MN and sounded the Gjallarhorn before a game at U.S. Bank Stadium last season. "You're hearing a lot about how people are trying to fix their childhood traumas. This one is absolutely unfixable for me, perhaps until this year. I was 10, I cried into the back of the couch in mid-January of 1999 when two different outcomes happened on two different field goal attempts to two different kickers with the same last name.

"It happened, it was horrific, and it kept the Minnesota Vikings from facing the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 33, in what dark places on the internet argue is the greatest Super Bowl that never happened. But what if, nearly 30 years later, it happens? What if I think the Broncos and the Vikings will be playing in the Super Bowl in mid-February of 2026?"

Not only would that be the Super Bowl 33 matchup that never happened, it would pit the Vikings — or at least their fans — against an old foe in Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who was famously the coach of the Saints during the other most heartbreaking loss in recent Vikings history, the 2009/10 NFC title game. Minnesota fans everywhere will forever resent Payton for the Saints' Bountygate scandal in that game against Brett Favre and the Vikings.

After talking about Bo Nix and J.J. McCarthy and two elite defenses that would make Vikings-Broncos such a compelling Super Bowl matchup, Erdahl unzipped her hoodie to reveal a purple No. 9 McCarthy jersey.

"To heal my 10-year-old heartbreak, the sweet sound of the Gjallarhorn will fill the air — the crisp, crisp mid-February air," she said. "And the Minnesota Vikings, in their fifth Super Bowl appearance, will finally, for the first time in the history of the organization, win a Lombardi."