The Vikings and Patriots are going to the Super Bowl, according to Google and the NFL

The NFC and AFC championship games are this weekend, and two of the four teams will emerge victorious and move on to face each other in the Super Bowl. All of that has yet to happen. On Sunday, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New England Patriots will fight it out in the afternoon, followed by the Minnesota Vikings and the Philadelphia Eagles in the evening. (And don’t forget, you can watch both games on the Yahoo Sports app.)

Again, none of these games have happened yet. Sunday is in the future. So why does the NFL think that the Vikings and Patriots have already played their games, won, and are going to the Super Bowl?

That is a very premature contest promo that the NFL posted on Facebook that has the Vikings and Patriots headed to the big game. It wasn’t one of several contest promos that they posted, it was just that one, completely shutting out the Eagles and Jaguars from the Super Bowl. Better luck next year, guys! Maybe then you’ll get a chance to actually play the games before you lose!

[Stream the NFL Playoffs live on the Yahoo Sports mobile app]

It was an obvious mistake and the post was eventually deleted. But that doesn’t explain why Google also thinks that the Vikings and Patriots are going to the Super Bowl.

At the time of publishing, you can still get those results on Google. If you look up “Vikings Super Bowl appearances,” the results will still tell you that the Vikings have appeared in Super Bowl LII. Which, again, they have not, because the Vikings still have to play the Eagles on Sunday to earn that privilege.

Is Google predicting the future? We’ll all have to wait until Sunday to find out. If either the Eagles or the Jaguars win, hopefully Google will consider that an important enough reason to update their search results.

– – – – – –

Liz Roscher is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher