After failing to cover in back-to-back games as the favorite, the Bears have reverted back to underdogs for Sunday’s game at Minnesota. How will they respond?
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Smith, who has been dealing with a knee injury, worked again on Thursday, but the Vikings were still missing a couple of key players.
The Bears caught a break Friday when the Vikings ruled out two of their best defenders: free safety Harrison Smith (knee/hamstring) and strong-side linebacker Anthony Barr (hand/groin). The Vikings could also be without starting defensive end Everson Griffen and steady defensive tackle Linval Joseph, both listed as questionable. Newman apparently says the secret to his longevity is drinking red win, and he has other members of the secondary drinking it as well.
Division games are usually a lot closer in terms of the final score and it would not come as a surprise if this became true on Sunday. “We can’t say that we’re going to put two guys on him and make them beat us with somebody else because this is the NFL”. It was the Vikings’ first win in Chicago since 2007. The Vikes are still two games clear of Atlanta/Philly/Giants in those Wild Card standings, there’s no room for them to drop a game here against a team they should beat.
The Bears can get revenge by slowing the Vikings’ push for their first NFC North title since 2009. But only if the Vikings don’t turn into yo-yos before then.
The question now is, are the Vikings a good football team?
“I just told them about it’s always on to the next week and we have to make the corrections that we didn’t do the week before”, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer said on Wednesday at his weekly press conference. He runs hard and he has been doing so for a while for them-and being very successful.
“[Langford] came in and there was no fall off”, Kendricks said. QB Jay Cutler needs to stretch the field to keep the defense honest before working the ball back underneath on higher percentage passes.
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With the pressure dialing up as the regular season nears its conclusion, Munnerlyn sees the Vikings as being where they want to be and it’s a matter of taking care of their business to prepare themselves for the one-and-done pressure of the postseason. We can expect the Vikings tall and physical cornerback Xavier Rhodes to be shadowing Jeffery for much of the afternoon.
