Vikings Head Into Week 1 Showdown With Packers as Slight Home Underdogs
Heading into the Vikings' highly-anticipated regular season opener against the Packers on Sunday, Minnesota is a slight home underdog.
The Packers are favored by 1.5 points on SI Sportsbook. The over/under of 48 points is the sixth-highest total out of 16 Week 1 games. The Vikings are +100 on the moneyline.
It's not a surprise to see Green Bay as slight favorites heading into this game. The Packers have won 13 regular season games in all three seasons since hiring Matt LaFleur prior to the 2019 campaign. Despite losing Davante Adams, the Packers still have one of the game's elite quarterbacks in two-time defending NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers. They also have two standout running backs and a defense that could be among the league's best.
The Vikings have plenty of talent as well and should get a major boost from a raucous home crowd, but they also have a lot to prove. They're coming off two straight losing seasons and made major changes this offseason, firing GM Rick Spielman and head coach Mike Zimmer and replacing them with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell.
This will be O'Connell's debut as an NFL head coach. He'll be calling plays for Kirk Cousins and the Vikings' offense, in addition to managing the game with timeouts, challenges, and other elements of coaching.
"We’ve got to be prepared and ready to roll with a really good team coming in like the Green Bay Packers," O'Connell said on Monday. "I know that. I know with any rivalry game it comes down, a lot of times, to the little things, the execution, the detail and sometimes the emotion of it, you don’t want to let it get the best of you or your team."
This game will also mean a little more for Za'Darius Smith and Chandon Sullivan, two new Vikings defensive starters who will be going against their former team.
Since opening U.S. Bank Stadium in 2016, the Vikings have gone 4-2 against the Packers at home, losing in 2019 and 2020 but winning on a walkoff Greg Joseph field goal last season.
Kickoff is at 3:25 p.m. central time on Sunday from Minneapolis.
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