The Green Bay Packers will host the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football tomorrow night at Lambeau Field, and as much as you would like to call it just another game, this game carries a lot of baggage with it.
The Packers and Vikings are expected by most analysts to contend for the NFC North crown this year. The winner of this game will start off the year with the upper hand on the rest of the season. Certainly there are 15 more football games to be played, but this single game could prove to be of extreme importance when week 17 rolls around.
The Vikings will look to take advantage of a quarterback making his first start and a running back who has seen no live football action in nearly eight months. While Aaron Rodgers has three pre-seasons and a total of one game of football (two quarters in 2006 against the New England Patriots and the same amount of time in 2007 against the Dallas Cowboys), starting a game on national television in prime-time carries a bit more pressure. The Packers are expecting to see the Aaron Rodgers that threw for 117 yards and a touchdown in a little over one quarter of work against the Cincinnati Bengals. Incidentally, that game was also on Monday night.
Behind Rodgers, Ryan Grant will line up at running back for his first season-opening start. Grant accumulated 939 yards and eight touchdowns over the last 10 regular season games for the Packers last year, including seven of those scores in his last six games. Due to contractual and hamstring issues in the pre-season, Grant was unable to take any pre-season carries and may take some time to adjust to real opponents coming at him. Still, the Packers are hoping he can pick up where he left off and hit the grounding running, so to speak.
It will not be easy for Grant to run between the tackles as the Vikings possess one of the best defenses overall and one of the most intimidating defensive lines in football. Pat and Kevin Williams—all 628 pounds of them—will clog up the middle of the line while Ray Edwards and newly acquired Jared Allen play the outside of the line. The Vikings paid a huge price to get Allen and then paid a huge price to keep him, signing him to a six-year deal that may be worth up to $74 million if Allen hits certain incentives. Allen, who had 43 sacks in four seasons with the Chiefs, is expected to be the answer to a team that was among the best in run defense last year but fell on the low end of the list in terms of passing defense. He will be expected to put a lot of pressure on the quarterback, especially on passing downs. Packers left tackle Chad Clifton will face the task of blocking Allen and protecting Rodger’s blind side.
On the other side of the ball, Minnesota possesses one of the most exciting young players of the NFL in Adrian Peterson. In 14 games last year, Peterson ran for 1,341 yards on 238 attempts, an astonishing 5.6 yards-per-carry average. The Packers knocked him out of the game last year after only 45 yards on 11 carries, and Green Bay went on to win the game 34-0. In all likelihood, the Packers will have to face Peterson for a full 60 minutes on Monday night. . The Vikings will start unproven quarterback Tarvaris Jackson, who made the first start of his career at Lambeau in 2006 and is starting just his second full NFL season. In 2007, Jackson threw nine touchdowns against 12 interceptions in 12 starts. Expect the Packers to load the box early, forcing Minnesota to throw the ball. Like Grant, Jackson also missed significant time in the preseason due to injury and may take some time to adjust to the speed of the NFL.
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