Opponent first look: Vikings at Packers

After dominating defensive efforts in Week 1, the Green Bay Packers will host the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday at Lambeau Field.

For Packers coach Matt LaFleur’s offense, this will be a second consecutive massive challenge. Last week’s opponent, Chicago, led the NFL in scoring defense in 2018. This week’s opponent, Minnesota, led the NFL in scoring defense in 2017 and was ninth in scoring, fourth in total defense and first on third down last year.

Mike Zimmer’s Vikings defense dominated Atlanta on Sunday, with three takeaways highlighting a 28-12 victory over the high-powered Falcons. The Vikings turned star Falcons receiver Julio Jones into a nonfactor and will test a Packers receiver corps that posted little production in a 10-3 win at Chicago.

“That was an impressive performance by them to beat – I know what Atlanta's all about and how good they are – and they handled them pretty good,” LaFleur said. “We’re going to have a really tough challenge coming in here.”

The Vikings led 21-0 at halftime and cruised to an easy win.

“It’s overreaction Monday,” Zimmer said. “Everybody is going to tell you how great you are today and we have to get back to work. There’s still a lot of things we need to clean up. The penalties, I thought we got sloppy in the second half in coverage. We got a little bit tired there so we got sloppy in that. Had way too many little dumb penalties, really they were dumb penalties, so there’s a lot of things we can clean up.”

Under Zimmer the Vikings are 2-2-1 at Green Bay. In the five road games at Green Bay before Zimmer took the helm, the Vikings were 0-4-1, including playoffs.