When Bears kicker Robbie Gould drilled home a 38-yard, game-winning field in overtime Monday night, giving Chicago a 20-17 win over Green Bay, the Minnesota Vikings may have moved one step closer to the inevitable.

That sentiment is inescapable for many Vikings fans, who might say their team took two steps closer to elimination in the last 36 hours. First, the Vikes fumbled away a chance to clinch the NFC North at home Sunday afternoon, coughing up the football four times and losing 24-17 to playoff-bound Atlanta.

Then in the waning seconds on Monday night, Bears DE Alex Brown blocked an Atlanta field-goal attempt for the win before Gould moved the Bears into a first-place tie with Minnesota.

This is familiar turf for the Vikings, who have made just one playoff appearance since winning their last division crown in 2000. The team hasn’t come through late in the season, especially when it’s had a legitimate shot at the playoffs.

A year ago, they were 8-6 and held down the final wild-card berth with two weeks to go. The Vikes could have nailed down a spot in Week 16, when they hosted 7-7 Washington. The Skins shut down Adrian Peterson in a 32-14 victory, however, and went on to secure that wild-card berth. A week later, the Vikings still had a chance to play in January, but needed a Washington loss in the season finale. That didn’t happen, and the Vikings were struck by fumbilitis and lost at Denver, 22-19 in overtime.

Two years earlier in 2005, their previous flirtation with the postseason, the Vikings were 8-5 through Week 14. They and the Cowboys shared the same record for the final wild-card seeding, and the Vikes needed to win a critical game at home against the Steelers, also 8-5. Veteran QB Brad Johnson, who had taken over for the injured Daunte Culpepper when the team was 2-5, finally had an off day facing the stingy Pittsburgh defense in an 18-3 loss. Other contenders also lost, so the Vikings were still in the playoff mix in Week 16, but they dropped a 30-23 decision to the 5-9 Baltimore Ravens and were eliminated.

In 2003, the Vikings started 6-0, but then lost four in a row and needed a victory over Arizona in the season finale to claim a wild-card bid. The season appeared to be saved when the 3-12 Cardinals trailed 17-6 coming up on the two-minute warning. They stunned the Vikings by scoring two touchdowns in the final two minutes, including a game-winning, fourth-and-long toss from Josh McCown to Nate Poole for a 28-yard score as time expired. The Vikings lost 18-17 and went home.

Minnesota’s only playoff appearance since winning the NFC Central title in 2000 came in 2004, a year after the disaster in the desert. Even that year, however, the 8-8 Vikes lost four of their last five games and backed into the playoffs.

There hasn’t been a Vikings team to get excited about in December since that last division title.

Chances are, most Vikings fans will be simply awaiting the inevitable when the defending Super Bowl champion Giants visit the Metrodome on Sunday. They root for a team that has won its season finale only once in the last five years -- and the one time, in 2005, was a meaningless game against the Bears. The Vikings had already lost back-to-back contests to Pittsburgh and Baltimore to fall out of the playoff hunt.