Anthony Barr went through an on-field warm up starting around 10 CT and was doing several lateral movement exercises seemingly to test how his injured groin felt. Appears it's still not where it needs to be in order to play, as he's one of seven inactives today. Full inactive list: Barr, Mackensie Alexander, Brett Jones, Dru Samia, Oli Udoh, Jalyn Holmes, Armon Watts.
They're paying him like a franchise quarterback, but the Vikings might have to recognize that Kirk Cousins isn't the QB they thought they were getting.
Carlson's Vikings tenure lasted all of two games, but it might have been the best thing to ever happen to his career.
The three running backs are among the players in question for Week 3. Get the latest updates on their prognoses from our NFL Nation reporters.
Cousins says he's "not going to be playing quarterback here if I go out and play the way I did this past Sunday for much longer."
The oft-injured Cook is the center of the offense and leads the NFL in rushing. Whether he can maintain that workload is the Vikings' great unknown.
While we track teams moving up (Cowboys, Ravens) and down (Saints, Steelers) in our rankings, we also identify each team's early-season surprise.
(Sara Ziegler, sports editor): Aside from a Jets-Browns matchup that I know we're all excited about, Week 2 is in the books.
The Vikings had fewer than three wide receivers on the field for 46 of their 60 offensive plays against the Packers, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Minnesota trailed most of the game.
Minnesota fell behind 21-0 in the first half and three Kirk Cousins turnovers prevented the Vikings from pulling off a win at Lambeau Field.
Kirk Cousins has a QBR or 15.7 — second-worst among qualified quarterbacks ahead of only Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Kirk Cousins shouldered the blame after the Vikings' 21-16 loss to the Packers, saying his late interception was "unacceptable."
Here's the full explanation from Senior VP of Officiating Al Riveron about the OPI call that nullified Stefon Diggs' TD before halftime: "The ruling on the field is a score. Every time, by rule, there's a score or turnover, here in New York we automatically take a look at all aspects of the play, which this year includes obvious visual evidence that No. 33 (Dalvin Cook) hinders the opponent while the ball is still in the air. Therefore, we negate the score and call offensive pass interference here from New York and penalize them 10 yards."
Kevin Stefanski called 6 runs on late drive that ended in an interception. With the fact that the Vikings had Green Bay on its heels, was there consideration to keep running near the goal line? "Certainly you say that on the sideline afterwards," QB Kirk Cousins said. "Everybody said ‘aw, we should've run it.' But I shouldn't have put our coordinator in that position. I should throw the ball away and move to the next down. And you're right. We had run the ball well and I guess that's a huge positive when I look at the first two weeks of the season, a huge improvement from last year is we're running the football well. You run in this league - when you do that you can win games week in and week out."
Aaron Rodgers threw two early touchdowns and the Green Bay Packers held on for a 21-16 win over the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.
Dalvin Cook is over 20 PPR fantasy points for the day within the first two minutes of the second half, giving him back-to-back games with at least that many. It's the first time in his career he has reached that threshold in consecutive games.
Cook had the longest run of his career, reaching more than 20 miles an hour.
In previous meetings, Vikings have played Devante Adams in man with Xavier Rhodes shadowing him) except when he goes into the slot. The combo coverage that showed up last year is where one side of the defense plays quarters and the other is in man cover 2. That's gonna be an interesting matchup to see how they defend Adams when Jayron Kearse is used in nickel defense, but as Mike Zimmer alluded earlier this week, utilizing bracket coverage/pattern matching will allow Kearse to not be on Adams or anyone else that ends up in the slot (Packers put Geronimo Allison and Jimmy Graham in there quite a bit last week) alone. As it pertains to Rhodes, last year he really struggled containing Adams, a trend he hopes to buck today. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Rhodes was the closest defender to Adams on 16 targets last season, which Adams turned into 12 receptions, 124 yards and two touchdowns.
Vikings inactives: Pat Elflein (knee), Mackensie Alexander (elbow), Ben Gedeon (groin), Mike Hughes, Jalyn Holmes, Oli Udoh, Armon Watts.
Vikings seem to like what they're seeing from Hercules Mata'afa as he's active over Jalyn Holmes for a second week in a row. Mike Zimmer said during the preseason that they wanted Mata'afa in the game when they're in nickel, which is where we've seen him so far most of the early part of 2019. Zimmer's evaluation on Mata'afa from last week: "“He had three really good rushes and there's one thing he's got to work on a little bit more as far as finishing as far as to get the sacks."
The Vikings harassed Matt Ryan and sacked him four times in the season opener. However, the Packers will be a different kind of trouble.
| RD(PK) | PLAYER | POS | SCHOOL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1(18) | Garrett Bradbury | C | North Carolina State |
| 2(18) | Irv Smith Jr. | TE | Alabama |
| 3(38) | Alexander Mattison | RB | Boise State |
| 4(12) | Dru Samia | OG | Oklahoma |
| 5(24) | Cameron Smith | ILB | USC |
| 6(17) | Armon Watts | DT | Arkansas |
| 6(18) | Marcus Epps | S | Wyoming |
| 6(20) | Olisaemeka Udoh | OT | Elon |
| 7(3) | Kris Boyd | CB | Texas |
| 7(25) | Dillon Mitchell | WR | Oregon |
| 7(33) | Olabisi Johnson | WR | Colorado State |
| 7(36) | Austin Cutting | LS | Air Force |
