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Well, here we are again. The Minnesota Vikings travel to Lambeau Field to take on the Packers in their second match of the regular season. The first game back in late November turned into a Packer blowout (30-13), but this one is for all the NFC North “marbles.” At least that’s what Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers thinks.
“This was a playoff-style game for us and we obviously played terrible,” Rodgers said of the 38-8 beat down by the Arizona Cardinals. “But we’ve won a lot of games here. When you play long enough, you’re going to be on the wrong side of this sometimes. But I have confidence in those guys and myself that when it matters for all of the marbles we’re going to show up.”
The Packers were still smarting in their postgame pressers following what many have called an embarrassment for the Green and Gold. In fact, Packers coach Mike McCarthy wanted to move on from loss as quickly as possible, and despite the Packers’ poor showing, he is predicting a win over the Vikings on Sunday night.
“They’re very good, and we played poor,” McCarthy said after the game. “It starts with me. When a team plays poorly, the head coach is poor. But with that, it’s a 15-game season up to this point. We have the opportunity to play a division opponent in Minnesota, and we’ll go out and win the game.”
It’s hard not to take McCarthy and Rodgers at their word. The last time the Vikings and Packers met, it was on Minnesota’s home turf, but the Packers made it look like their own. They came into the game having lost three in a row—including a home loss to the Detroit Lions–and the Vikings were riding a five-game win streak and in first place in the division. Yet Rodgers dismantled the tough Vikings defense with his escapability and surgical strikes, including an incredible throw on the run into the corner of the endzone for a score.
How can Vikings fans believe that he won’t do it again?
The Packers are currently limping home after their worst loss in the Aaron Rodgers Era in Green Bay, while the Vikings are coming off clinching a playoff spot thanks to the demolition of the New York Giants. The stage is set in a similar manner as the last meeting—plus, the Vikings have won just once in Lambeau since 2009. Of course, that game was back when Brett Favre was playing… for the Vikings.
The Vikings have no reason to overlook the competition this time around.
“The last time we played them they lost three in a row. I’m sure they’ll play good, there’s no doubt about that,” Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer said. “I just happened to be watching [the Packers-Cardinals] game upstairs and [Aaron Rodgers] still looks like a surgeon to me when he throws the ball. He’s accurate and scrambles around. [The Cardinals game] just kind of got out of hand. The score really, to me, was not indicative of how they were playing. I have a lot of respect for him.”
There are, however, some differences this time around for this pivotal meeting between two longtime rivals. Before the last matchup, Zimmer passed out “Beat Green Bay” T-shirts he had printed to get his players focused on the task at hand. Some of the players were surprised by this un-Zimmer-like departure from game-week preparation, and the Vikings subsequently came into the Packers game a little tight and did not play at all like they had in their previous five games. While the blame wasn’t or shouldn’t be put on the T-shirts, Zimmer won’t be heading to the local shirt shack for more sartorial motivation this week.
“I’m going to talk to them about the things we didn’t do well in the last ball game and the things we have to improve on in order to win,” Zimmer said. “I don’t know that this is a big motivational kind of week. It’s more about preparation and doing things right and performing under pressure.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the St. Croix River that divides Minnesota and Wisconsin, there are cracks widening in the Packer ship. There was some consternation in early December about the play-calling on offense, and McCarthy took over that duty back from the offensive coordinator.
It worked just well enough for a couple weeks as the Packers beat up on the Dallas Cowboys and left Oakland with a victory the following Sunday, but putting up just eight points in the desert may put questioning the play-calling back in play.
“This is a league you can build off of stacked successes,” McCarthy said after the Cardinals game. “We have some things we haven’t done very well at pretty much the whole year. These reoccurring things need to be corrected. That was clearly evident [Sunday].”
But it is important for the Vikings players not to “take the cheese,” as Zimmer calls all the plaudits when you win—or the negative press when your next opponent got beat up last week. History tells us that this rivalry can turn on a dime, and the winner is the team that comes to the game ready to play and executes all afternoon.
For the young Vikings squad—eight rookies started in Arizona on Dec. 10—going to Lambeau will be a big spot for them. They spit the bit when facing Rodgers and the Packers in Minnesota, and it won’t be any easier in Green Bay on Sunday night. The Viking-baiting (hating) crowd will be in full throat.
Emotion, pressure, game planning and execution will be key in this game (as in any other), but we can’t discount the health of the teams coming in, and the Vikings appear to be doing a little better than the Packers. The Vikings, who played Arizona right to the final seconds and then man-handled Chicago without three of their top players (safety Harrison Smith, linebacker Anthony Barr and nose tackle Linval Joseph) on defense, got them back for the Giants game last weekend—and it clearly made a difference.
The Packers, meanwhile, have an offensive line that is considerably banged up. Their makeshift line gave up nine sacks in the Cardinals game, and getting to Rodgers is definitely the way to upend the Packers passing attack. In addition, the Vikings will have to shut down the running game of Eddie Lacy, who has typically been troublesome for the Vikings to get to the ground.
But more than anything, this game will come down to mental preparation and readiness for the Vikings. If they ride the momentum of their last two games, put out of their head the result of the first Packer game, and take heed what their coach says (rather than what he puts on a shirt), they should be fine.
“We’ve learned the kind of mentality that we have to have these last four weeks. After we got beat by Seattle and the Green Bay game, the mentality of our team has changed a little bit for the better in my opinion,” Zimmer said. “I keep talking to them about it, that this is the type of mentality we have to have moving forward.”
Says here the Vikings will listen to their coach and return home with all their marbles intact.
Minnesota 20, Green Bay 17
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