NINA MOINI: Well, heading into halftime, it looked like Super Bowl 60 could make history with the first ever shutout. The New England Patriots had not scored a single point against the Seattle Seahawks, neither team had scored a touchdown, but by the end of the game, Seattle had 29 points to New England’s 13. The Seahawks win means former Minnesota Viking quarterback, Sam Darnold, now has a Super Bowl ring. Joining me to talk about this, the Winter Olympics, and more are sports contributors, Wally Langfellow and Eric Nelson. Hey, guys.

ERIC NELSON: Happy Super Monday, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Long time no talk. It’s great to talk with you both, and after an eventful weekend. So Sam Darnold seems like he had a bit of a glow up, as the kids say, after departing the Vikings. Eric, you were there for the Super Bowl. Do you think the Vikings are wondering what could have been?

ERIC NELSON: Yeah, absolutely. woulda, coulda, shoulda. I don’t think the optics, Nina, could be any worse for the Minnesota Vikings, because as you said, Sam Darnold is now a Super Bowl champion quarterback one year after the Vikings chose not to resign him. The Seahawks will have a Super Bowl parade in downtown Seattle on Wednesday. That’s going to be jubilation for the Emerald City. And if you look at Darnold, counting his one year in Minnesota and then this past season in Seattle, his record is 31 and 7. So he has silenced the critics who labeled him a bust after a slow start to his career.

Now there are some other Minnesota fingerprints, Nina, on this Seattle Seahawks team. How about Trent Kirchner, the Seahawks VP of Player Personnel, he went to St John’s. And Seattle’s John Schneider, who was the Seahawks general manager, went to St. Thomas. This is proof that a Johnny and a Tommy can actually get along and make things happen. They build bridges up there in Seattle.

Some other notes on the Super Bowl. I called it a throwback win. The Seahawks were paced by their dominant defense, known as the Dark Side. Running back, Kenneth Walker, who played at Michigan State, was the game’s MVP.

And they had a Moneyball kicker. Jason Myers booted a Super Bowl record five field goals. And that Seahawks defense, they had more sacks than a supermarket, as they bagged up Drake Maye six times in the game. Maye melted in the Super Bowl spotlight. Seattle had a pick-6 touchdown from Uchenna Nwosu, who took a interception 45 yards to the house in the fourth quarter to ice the game. Walker ran for 135 yards and also had two catches for 26 yards.

And one other Super Bowl week note. Larry Fitzgerald Junior, the ex-Minnesota Vikings ball boy who grew up in Minneapolis, went to Holy Angels High School, he goes into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility after an outstanding career with Arizona. And Nina, how about this? Only 76 of the 387 people in the Hall of Fame have been voted in on the first ballot. So good job, Larry Junior, who’s a quality person as well as being an outstanding athlete.

NINA MOINI: Oh, and I’m just like, where is Eric? Because I’m hearing this music in the background. I’m like, is he still at a Super Bowl afterparty? But it sounds like you’re at the airport.

ERIC NELSON: Yeah. SFO waiting for a flight, Nina.

NINA MOINI: All right. Well, thank you for doing this with us. Wally, let’s talk about the Olympics. So, Minnesotan skiing legend. Oh, this was awful. Even I know about this. Lindsey Vonn had a devastating crash yesterday. What’s the latest, will you tell us about it and how she’s doing?

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Oh, yeah. It was horrible to watch. I watched it live on tape yesterday, and to watch the build up to it and to watch her in the starting gate, and they had great nat sound of her getting herself psyched up, getting her– it was just– and she got out of the gate, and 12.5 seconds later, it was over. I mean, it just ended that fast.

It was horrific. She came out of the gate, if you hadn’t seen it, and she hit as she was making a turn. She hit a bump, went mid-air, hit one of the gates with her shoulder, it twisted her. She tried to correct mid-air. It didn’t happen.

She went down hard. And she ended up with a broken left leg, and she had to be airlifted out. She’s in stable condition with a broken left leg. Obviously, it’s over now. And I would assume that her competitive skiing career is over as well at the age of 41.

She had done so much to get to that point. She was skiing, of course, with the torn ACL in her left leg. And this just makes it even more devastating, I would say. But a long, storied career comes to an unfortunate ending, that’s for sure. The silence was just, you could hear a pin drop on that ski hill yesterday.

NINA MOINI: And Lindsey is from St. Paul, right? Minnesota’s own. Has had this amazing career. So that was tough to watch.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: Yeah. And she grew up on Buck Hill out in the–

NINA MOINI: Burnsville.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: –southern suburbs. And yeah, it was just difficult to watch. The good news out of that event, however, is that an American did win it. Breezy Johnson had a spectacular run. So she wins gold for the US in the exact same event. She had gone a little bit before Lindsey had taken her fall. So that was the good news.

A couple of other Minnesota notes. Minnesotan, Jessie Diggins, the only American woman to ever win in the cross-country skiing. She fell during her event over the weekend.

She did recover and ended up finishing eighth. She said point blank afterwards, she said, I’m in the best shape of my life. She said, I have no qualms about it. So she made a nice recovery after falling to finish eighth.

NINA MOINI: Sounds like it.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: It really is spectacular.

NINA MOINI: Yeah.

WALLY LANGFELLOW: And she’s got other events coming up. So I think that she’ll certainly be in the mix going forward, hopefully to get yet another medal. And then the women’s hockey team, which of course, features several Minnesotans, several players from the Minnesota Frost as well. Team USA is playing this afternoon.

They play Switzerland. And then tomorrow is the big match with Canada. They’re the co-favorites with Canada, of course. It’s only a preliminary round match, but the winner, I would guess, is going to be riding high going into what they call the medal round to see who wins the gold medal. It’ll come down to those two teams. USA has dominated in their first matches so far.

NINA MOINI: That’ll be fun to watch. The Timberwolves had kind of a rough weekend, I understand, Eric. What happened for the Wolves?

ERIC NELSON: Yeah, a clunker weekend, Nina, to put it nicely. Yesterday, Sunday, the subpar Los Angeles Clippers knocked off Minnesota, 115 to 96, in Minneapolis. Now the Clippers do have a guy by the name of Kawhi Leonard.

He’s elite. He did score 41 points. He had eight rebounds and four steals, but the Clippers are just 25 and 27 on the season. This is not the kind of home loss a team with championship aspirations like Minnesota should have or experience. But it was even worse Friday night.

New Orleans 119, Minnesota 115. This is a major red flag loss for the Timberwolves because the Pelicans are a bottom-feeding team in the NBA. Their record is 14 and 40. So the Timberwolves led by as much as 18 in the third quarter in that game. And they allowed New Orleans to come back and win on their home floor.

You would think that would have motivated them for the game yesterday against the Clippers, but it was a carryover instead. So tonight, I’m throwing down the gauntlet, Nina. A must-win for the Timberwolves.

They take on Atlanta, another team similar to the Clippers. They’re 26 and 28, subpar. Minnesota now 32 and 22. The Timberwolves can ill afford another home loss to a below average team. It would be a huge setback. Remember, they’re number sixth right now in the West.

And the last two years, they’ve been in the Western Conference Finals, the NBA so-called Final Four. So if they want to start getting back to where they’ve been, they got to stop losing these just red flag games. And by the way, Minnesota has one more game against Portland. That’s at home. And the Trailblazers aren’t very good either.

And then there’s the All-Star break coming up this weekend in Los Angeles at the Intuit Dome. So Minnesota has a chance to finish with a couple of wins and have a little momentum going into the break. If not, boy, there’s going to be a lot of stuff swirling around the team.

NINA MOINI: All right. Well, I want to thank you both so much. Eric, get home safe, and we’ll talk to you next week.

ERIC NELSON: Thanks, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Thanks, guys. That’s sports contributors, Wally Langfellow and Eric Nelson.