We have seven weeks before the Vikings host the Saints on *Monday Night Football for the 2017 regular-season opener, so Vikings.com's writers are taking a look each week at a "memorable Monday" in franchise history.*
Minnesota is 27-32 all-time on *MNF, and the Vikings are scheduled to play twice this season on the series that launched in 1970.*
We'll continue the series with the 31st-ever appearance on *Monday Night Football by the Vikings, when Minnesota visited the San Francisco 49ers on Dec. 18, 1995, at 3Com (Candlestick) Park. It was the teams' third meeting on Monday Night Football *and second in as many seasons.
Click ****here*** for the first recap in this series.*
Click ****here*** for last week's recap.*
49ers 37, Vikings 30
Weather:Cloudy skies| Temp:49 degrees Fahrenheit| Humidity:86 percent| Wind:N 7 mph
Tickets distributed: 70,050 | Attendance: 64,975 | Time of game: 3:23
MIN 0 20 7 3 | 30
SF 21 6 3 7 | 37
This game featured two Hall of Fame quarterbacks and a pair of Gold Jacket receivers duking it out.
Warren Moon threw to Cris Carter time and time again, and Steve Young kept finding Jerry Rice.
Carter raked up 12 catches — a Vikings record in a Monday Night Football game — for 88 yards and two touchdowns as he and Minnesota rallied from a 21-point deficit to tie the game at 27 in the third quarter.
Rice, however, posted 14 catches for 289 yards and three scores (8, 46 and 31 yards).
Moon finished 22-of-39 passing for 224 yards with three scores but was sacked five times.
Young completed 30 of 49 passes for 425 yards with three scores and was sacked one time. He was intercepted twice.
Orlando Thomas picked off Young's second pass of the game, and Donald Frank intercepted Young in the second quarter. Frank's 42-yard return to the San Francisco 2-yard line led to Carter's second touchdown catch of the second quarter, which made it a 27-17 game with 2:40 left in the first half.
Thomas then recovered a fumble by Rice to end San Francisco's next possession. After the teams swapped three-and-punt possessions, Moon led the Vikings 63 yards over eight plays in 50 seconds to enable Fuad Reveiz to kick a 43-yard field goal as the first half expired.
Minnesota's 20 points in the first half were in spite of the Vikings converting just 1-of-9 third downs.
San Francisco's special teams delivered a 78-yard punt return touchdown by Dexter Carter in the first quarter, but Jeff Wilkins had one extra point blocked by Fernando Smith and missed another wide left in the second quarter.
After Moon found Jake Reed for a 6-yard touchdown in the third quarter to tie the game at 27, Wilkins recovered and connected on a 20-yard field goal to put the 49ers up 30-27 with 4:20 left in the third quarter.
Young added a 6-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter for a 37-27 lead.
Minnesota scored on a 38-yard field goal from Reveiz with 6:42, but San Francisco played keep away the rest of the game. Young converted a third-and-10 with a pass to Brent Jones, a third-and-2 with a 14-yard pass to Rice and a third-and-1 with a 4-yard scramble.
The loss dropped the Vikings to 8-7, and they fell the following week in the season finale.
