Who Should Receive The Game Ball For The Vikings This Week?

Well, I probably should have gotten this up sooner. . .my bad for having forgotten about it.

With the Vikings getting their second win of the season by beating the Carolina Panthers on Sunday afternoon, somebody needs to get the Game Ball of the Week. We've got ourselves a few candidates for this one, so let me just get right to it.

S Husain Abdullah - A Vikings' safety up for a game ball? Yep. On the Panthers' last drive, Abdullah made two big plays. . .he cleaned up a Chad Greenway blitz to rack up a sack of Cam Newton to put the Panthers in a long yardage situation, and on a Newton throw to the end zone, he broke up a pass intended for Greg Olsen. It's not often that we recognize the Vikings' safeties for anything positive, so I thought Abdullah (and his oblongata) merited a mention in this one.

DE Jared Allen - Allen had another great game, getting a fumble recovery and another strip/sack to go along with five other tackles. At the halfway point of the Vikings' season, he has 12.5 sacks, which puts him on pace to surpass the mark set by Michael Strahan for most sacks in a single season (the record currently sits at 22.5). Unfortunately, thanks to DeMarcus Ware's insane four-sack performance on Sunday night, Allen's lead in the NFL sack race is now just half a sack. But he had a big impact on the game on Sunday.

RB Adrian Peterson - He got shut down for most of the first half on the ground, but a funny thing happened. . .the Vikings had a quarterback in the game that remembered that the best running back in the NFL is pretty good at catching the football, too. Peterson turned in the best receiving performance of his career on Sunday, with five catches for 76 yards and a touchdown. Oh, and he still managed 86 yards and a score on the ground, too.

QB Christian Ponder - In his second NFL start, and his first start on the road, Ponder outdueled his rookie quarterback counterpart, Cam Newton. Yes, Newton had better numbers with more yardage and three touchdown passes, but Ponder had the smaller number where it mattered the most. . .in the turnover column. He didn't play perfect football, certainly, but he improved from his previous start, which is exactly what you want to see from a rookie quarterback. He's becoming what the kids call "money" on third downs, too.

Those are the ones I can think of. If anyone has any other candidates they'd like to talk about, that's what the "other" selection is for.