Experts Have Virtually No Faith in Vikings to Topple Cardinals
Dustin Baker
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A spot on the internet called NFLPickWatch.com details each expert pick per week for all NFL games. The site is a conglomeration of pundits’ predictions, tallying each man or woman’s accuracy throughout the season.
Those experts have another full week’s slate of games to prognosticate for Week 2 with eyes on teams like the Green Bay Packers to rebound or the Houston Texans to build on a surprisingly strong Week 1 performance.
For the Minnesota Vikings, the collective body of sports personalities is absolutely unconvinced that the purple and gold will find a way to outduel the Arizona Cardinals.
In fact, the masses’ overwhelming selection of the Cardinals to beat the Vikings is one of the most lopsided predictions of the week. Forecasters believe the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, and Cleveland Browns will more assuredly defeat their opponents than Arizona will against Minnesota.
After that, it’s the Vikings who are the least likely to win via the groupthink predictions. 96% of all experts polled – there is a bunch of them on this site – have faith in Arizona instead of the Vikings.
The betting line opened up Sunday night with the Vikings as 4.5-point underdogs. For a reason not yet known – and may never be learned – the line shrunk by a point, situating Arizona as 3.5-point favorites as of Friday afternoon. Usually, that kind of betting-line movement indicates Las Vegas knows something that Joe Everyman does not. It’s a mystery now, though.
Arizona has not topped the Vikings in a game since 2015, a Thursday night affair high on drama in then-quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s second season. At the time, that primetime game was for control of the 2nd seed in the NFC playoffs, back when that seed had a first-round bye and homefield advantage. The NFL has since changed the rule so that only the #1 seed gets a bye.
Indeed, in 2018, Minnesota beat Arizona in Minneapolis on the shoulders of Latavius Murray, who rushed for 155 yards. Cardinals defender Budda Baker scored his first and only career touchdown that day, too. Two years earler, the Vikings grounded the Caridinals in the same stadium. It was the game in which Minnesota scored on a 100-yard interception return for a touchdown (Xavier Rhodes) and a 104-yard kick return by Cordarrelle Patterson.
The Vikings lead the all-time series against the Cardinals by a win-loss record of 17-11.
The nugget to follow this weekend is the status of middle linebacker Eric Kendricks. On a day that EDGE rusher Everson Griffen was concussed in a car accident while swerving away from an oncoming dear – you cannot make this stuff up – Kendricks snuck onto the injury report with a quad tweak. With a smile, head coach Mike Zimmer even called it a “tweak” on Friday, a coy word from him because that’s the term he used in 2020 to describe Danielle Hunter’s season-ending neck injury.
Kendricks needs to be on the field for the Vikings to win. Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray is too dynamic to throw a bunch of LB3s in his face and expect success.
But if you listen to NFL punditry, it doesn’t matter if it’s Kendrick or Lawrence Taylor. 96% of them believe Sunday’s game is Arizona’s to lose.
Notable folks picking the Vikings to win? Will Brinson, Jason La Canfora, Daniel Jeremiah, Chris Fowler, and Connor Orr. Orr accurately predicted the Vikings upset over the New Orleans Saints in the 2019 playoffs.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs every Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sally from Minneapolis. His Viking fandom dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doors (the band).
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