Howie: Now, the Vikings will lean on a rookie QB to finally break the curse? Please.

MINNEAPOLIS — You have to hand it to us Minnesotans. After 60-plus years of dashed hopes, gut-punch endings, and enough frostbitten heartbreak to fill every fish house on Mille Lacs, we still show up every summer like bright-eyed kids on the first day of hockey practice, convinced this might finally be the season the Vikings figure it out.

Never mind the history — that long, grim purple scroll that reads like a cemetery plot map. Never mind the front office’s brand new master plan, which somehow involves giving the ball — and the fate of every poor fan who still owns a purple horn — to a rookie quarterback, J.J. McCarthy, whose knee was practically held together by duct tape and prayers a year ago. A kid with exactly zero NFL snaps under his belt, now expected to hold steady behind a line that spent last season doing a credible impression of swinging saloon doors?

Because sure, why not? That’s about as Vikings as it gets.

Meanwhile, defensive coordinators in Green Bay, Detroit and Chicago are probably still wiping wing sauce off their playbooks from draft weekend, giddy over the prospect of throwing blitz packages at this rookie so exotic they’d make a NASA engineer squint. Overload left, crash right, delayed corner off the slot. Force him to panic — then watch him dump it three yards to a tight end who’s immediately flattened by a linebacker with about 80 pounds on him. That’s the grand offensive strategy? Please.

And while all that’s happening, our All-Pro receiver, Justin Jefferson — the most electrifying talent in purple since a lanky kid named Randy Moss decided to moon Lambeau — will be out there running long, lonely wind sprints, waving a hand downfield for a ball that’ll never come. If he’s lucky, maybe the rook will spot him twice a game, underthrow it by a yard and we’ll call it progress.

Ask any lifer perched at the bar at T-Bonz or soaking up some questionable lighting at the Gopher in West Duluth. They’ll shake their heads, take a long pull on a lukewarm Grain Belt and start rattling off the old hits like a sad local jukebox.

Drew Pearson’s push-off in ’75? “Biggest screwjob north of Chicago politics,” they’ll growl.

Darrin Nelson’s dropped pass at the goal line in ’87? “The Metrodome roof would’ve collapsed from the cheers if he’d caught it. Instead, it nearly collapsed from groans.”

Gary Anderson’s perfect season sailing wide in ’98? “I still see that ball hooking in my nightmares. We were already planning Super Bowl parties. Bought the dip and everything.”

Brett Favre in ’09? “Just slide, Brett. Hell, fall down, we’d have kicked the game-winner. But no — guy throws a pick across his body because he’s Favre. That’s our legacy.”

And don’t even whisper “Blair Walsh” at a Duluth backyard barbecue unless you want the mood to turn darker than a Two Harbors snowstorm in January. That poor kid probably still has nightmares of that 27-yard hook against Seattle.

Sure, there was the Minneapolis Miracle. We’ll cling to that one forever — a flash of magic when the football gods apparently had better things to do than torment us. But true to form, it lasted about as long as a fairway at Enger Park in April before Philly slapped the grin right off our faces a week later.

Now, we’re told to trust this process all over again. To buy jerseys, fork over for tickets and keep gulping down $14 beverages at U.S. Bank — that shimmering glass palace that’s become less a home-field advantage and more a very expensive heartbreak gallery. It’s like we built a monument to all the ways Minnesota can be disappointed, and we’re still happily paying to tour it eight Sundays a year.

Maybe this rookie really is different. Maybe he’s got Tarkenton’s feet, Culpepper’s arm (minus the butterfingers) and the kind of icy nerves you only get by growing up around deer stands and snow drifts. Maybe next February we’ll be standing ten deep on Nicollet Mall, confetti in our hair, tears freezing to our cheeks as we finally get to see a Lombardi hoisted in purple gloves.

But if you’ve lived here longer than a spring pothole, you know better. You know it’s more likely we’ll be back at these same bars, same stools, ordering another basket of pickled herring or mini tacos and telling the same old stories of “what might have been.” Because that’s what we do. Hope, hurt, laugh, hope again.

We say it every year, like some half-drunk church hymn: “Maybe next season.”
And who knows — maybe that’s the real curse. Not that the Vikings keep losing, but that we keep believing.

So buckle up, Minnesota. Stock the fridge. Keep the jumper cables handy. And get ready to add one more page to our scrapbook of heartbreak. Because odds are, by next January we’ll be saying the same old line we’ve polished to perfection:

“Hey, at least it’s almost Twins season.”