Vikings Hang on to Beat Packers 28-22

Dalvin Cook is really good at football. He single handedly won this football game for the Vikings. With 226 all purpose yards and 4 touchdowns, the Packers had no answers for the Vikings running back. He was basically the entire offense. Take a look at his offensive involvement.

- 32 touches on 48 plays, 67% of plays

- 63 yards of Cousins 160 passing yards, about 40% of passing yards

- 226 yards out of 333 yards for the team, about 68% of the teams yards

- Had 10 more receiving yards than Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen combined

- Literally all of the points

The moral of the story, Dalvin Cook ran all over the Packers.

I think one of the big reasons that the Vikings controlled the pace of the game, and came out with a win, was that we didn't allow Cousins to have a chance to blow it. He only threw the ball 14 times, compared to the 34 runs that were called. His last throw came at the 11:38 mark in the 4th quarter. He finished the game with 160 yards and 1 touchdown, but if you take away Cook's huge touchdown, he had 110 yards an no touchdowns. The bright side was that he didn't have to play any better than that, but still I feel concerned when our two best receivers struggle to break 50 yards combined.

The defense played surprisingly well in spurts. They forced the Packers to fourth downs on multiple occasions, but just couldn't get off the field as the Packers dominated the time of possession early on. Cam Dantzler went down with scary injury early in the game which left the team even more short handed at the corner position. When he got hurt I was scared that Aaron Rodgers was going to torch the rest of the secondary, but he missed some wide open throws to help us out a little bit. Jeff Gladney and Harrison Hand played well enough to hold the Packers in check, and they were greatly helped by the star safeties Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris who knocked away some huge passes (they called it Harris's coverage no pass interference so we're going to stick with what the refs said and not question it).

Other rookies that stepped up today included Troy Dye, who filled in for Todd Davis on the COVID list, and of course D.J. Wonnum who had the game clinching strip sack.

The Vikings continue to provide hope to the fans until they eventually struggle and take that hope away. But at this point I'm on the boat with the Vikings ending the season 11-5. Of course in won't happen because Kirk Cousins is still the quarter back and can't play consistent by any measure. Still, I think we could see the Vikings at 7-5. The Vikings next 5 opponents are the Lions, Bears, Cowboys, Panthers, and Jaguars who have a combined record of 14-22. Granted the Vikings are not a great team, but I could see a world where the Vikings win all of those games. A 7-5 record would put the Vikings in a spot to make a playoff push, so who knows, maybe the season isn't over.

It's hard to look at a 2-5 record and have hope, but if they rattle off a little win streak maybe we could keep the season alive. If they drop some of the next games I think the optimism may die with that and we should look forward to the draft and the offseason. Still, it's interesting to see what moves the Vikings decide to make ahead of Tuesday's trade deadline, which I'm sure I'll have some strong opinions about.

As always, with cautious optimism, skol Vikings.