We are just an hour away from kickoff at U.S. Bank Stadium between the Detroit Lions and your Minnesota Vikings in a do-or-die contest for Minnesota’s NFC North division title chances. If the Vikings win out, they win the division, but that has to start today. Here’s everything you need to know about this one.
This is a pretty easy one. The Lions come into this game with one of the top rushing offenses in the NFL behind David Montgomery and rookie Jahmyr Gibbs, while the Vikings have had one of the best run defenses in the NFL all season. If the Vikings can slow the run game down, they’ll have an
opportunity to get after Jared Goff on passing downs and try to force some turnovers. If they can’t stop the run, it’s going to be a long day.
Same as it ever was. The Vikings moved the ball up and down the field last week in Cincinnati, but two huge turnovers in scoring position cost them the game. Simply put, you can’t afford to do that in this one against a team like Detroit. The Vikings absolutely must hold on to the football better than they have been to have a chance here.
This is the annual(?) Winter Whiteout game at U.S. Bank Stadium, and the crowd is going to be fired up for this one. If the Vikings can get off to a fast start and get the crowd into a bit of a frenzy, it will help them a lot. The Vikings haven’t lost to Detroit at home since 2017, and if they want to continue to have a shot to win the division they can’t lose this one.
As always, we’ll have a new Open Thread starting at the beginning of each quarter, so keep an eye out for those and keep the discussion rolling along accordingly.
Here’s hoping that in about three hours or so, we can talk about the Vikings getting back on the winning track and keeping their divisional title hopes alive.
We’re at about ninety minutes before kickoff at U.S. Bank Stadium, and the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings have released their inactive lists for today’s contest. Let’s take a look at who will be sitting out of this one.
No significant surprises on the injury report for the Lions, as they had already declared several players out for today’s game. Barnes is a starter at linebacker but the rest of the inactives for Detroit are backups.
O’Neill will miss his second consecutive game, with David Quessenberry stepping in to start once again. Murphy is going to be a significant loss in this one and hopefully the Vikings can do something to mitigate it.
Those are your inactive lists for today’s game, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll have the first Open Thread of the day up and running for you at the start of the 11:00 AM Central time hour.
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