The Vikings are coming off of a week 14 defeat that they would like to forget against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Luckily for them, they are still very much alive in the NFC Playoff Picture and a win against the Chicago Bears will help their cause tremendously.
The last time that these two teams faced off, the Vikings came away with a 19-13 victory at Soldier Field. Another win this Sunday will give them the tiebreaker and will possibly knock the Bears out of playoff contention. In their last showdown together, the Vikings defense only gave up seven points on two field goals and an extra point. The other six points were given up via a touchdown by Cordarrelle Patterson after he returned the second half kickoff 104 yards to the house. That was a game that could have ultimately went the Bears way due to the Vikings Special Team play this season.
The Bears are coming off of a game in which they exploded offensively in route to defeated the Houston Texans 36-7. Mitchell Trubisky easily had the best game of his season last week, throwing for 267 yards, three touchdowns and completing 72.7% of his passes. The 26-year-old quarterback still gives the Bears a chance to reach the playoffs. On the ground, they were even better, led by David Montgomery who rushed for 113 yards and a touchdown run that was 80 yards alone.
The Vikings, on the other hand, are coming off of a game that they should’ve won. They only turned the ball over once, which resulted in no points, and saw an extremely clean passing and rushing attack. However, their issue once again has been the Special Teams, this week, the culprit was Dan Bailey. Bailey is in the middle of the worse stretch of his career. He has missed four straight field goals, three last week and three straight extra points, one last week. With this poor play, Mike Zimmer will likely be going for it on fourth down a lot more and going for two-point conversions on every touchdown. This could either help the Vikings or be detrimental.
Like every game has been since the Vikings 1-5 skid to open the season, this is another must win game. There is no room for error as they are fighting against the Chicago Bears and the Arizona Cardinals for the final playoff spot in the NFC.
The Vikings are set to kickoff at 12:00 pm CST/1:00 pm EST with the game being televised nationally on Fox. Chris Myers, Greg Jennings & Brock Huard will be on the call. Paul Allen and Pete Bercich will be providing the sights and sounds and KFAN 100.3-FM/KTLK 1130-AM in Minneapolis/St. Paul.
