Vikings' comeback win stirs big celebration from Gophers football team — with one exception

When Patrick Peterson intercepted Josh Allen's overtime pass on Sunday, a celebration erupted on the Minnesota sideline at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., as the Vikings finished a thrilling, 33-30 victory over the Buffalo Bills.

Some 950 miles to the west, another celebration erupted, this one in the training room of the David and Janis Larson Football Performance center at the University of Minnesota.

"At least 80 players are in the trainer's room right before the team meeting, and we almost have to push the team meeting back,'' Gophers coach P.J. Fleck said. "They're all getting treatment, but they're watching it and going nuts because the Vikings won.''

There was one dissenter in that room: Gophers head athletic trainer Mike Sypniak, a Syracuse graduate who spent one year as an athletic training intern with the Bills.

"Seventy-nine out of the 80 are just razzing Mike Sypniak,'' Fleck said, laughing.

Fleck was thrilled for Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell and his staff.

"What KOC's doing over there — I've had a chance to be around him and observe him some — he's a special guy, he's got a special staff. … We're fans over here for sure.''

The wild finish in the Vikings-Bills game had Fleck recalling a similar game for the Gophers in 2019: the 38-35 double-overtime victory at Fresno State, which ended when safety Antoine Winfield Jr. swooped in out of seemingly nowhere to intercept a pass that ended the game. Also in that game, wide receiver Chris Autman-Bell caught a 20-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-13 with 46 seconds left in the fourth quarter, getting a foot barely in the left corner of the end zone to tie the score 28-28. Fleck has a picture of that TD on his office wall.

"If he has a size 12 [shoe], it's incomplete. Size 11, it's complete,'' Fleck said. "Those are the things that you really can't explain, but at the end of the year, it all makes sense.''

Fleck opened his Monday news conference by offering sympathy to the Virginia football program, which had three players shot to death late Sunday night. Junior wide receiver Lavel Davis Jr., junior receiver Devin Chandler and junior defensive end/linebacker D'Sean Perry were killed, and two other students were hospitalized.

The suspect in the shootings, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., has been taken into custody and charged with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony. Jones was on Virginia's 2018 roster as a running back.

"Just want to start by sending our deepest condolences and thoughts and prayers to the UVA community for what they're dealing with this morning, what they'll continue to go through,'' Fleck said. "It's just horrific and tragic.''

* Fleck said quarterback Tanner Morgan (upper-body injury) is progressing "really good'' and was at practice Sunday. "The medical staff has him, so they just let me know what he can and cannot do each day, and then we'll just keep developing him throughout the week and see if we can get him on game day,'' Fleck said.

* Fleck said defensive end Danny Striggow, who missed the Northwestern game after injuring an arm at Nebraska the week before, possibly could play against Iowa.