Scouting Report for MIN-GB? Survive the Cold.
Dustin Baker
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When NFL fans think about Lambeau Field, they reference the cold and the Green Bay Packers relative dominance at the facility.
Another chapter of cold and perhaps dominance is on the docket this weekend.
The Packers host the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday Night Football, the final SNF game until September 2022. Green Bay is favored to down Minnesota by 6.5 points, but the Vikings have upended the Packers twice in a row.
On paper, the Packers are emphatically the better squad, notching a 12-3 record through 16 weeks, whereas the Vikings have floundered to a disappointing 7-8 mark. Unless Minnesota wins its next two games and receives help with Eagles and Saints losses, Mike Zimmer’s team will miss the playoffs for the fifth time in his eight-season coaching tenure.
However, take the depth charts, injury reports, COVID reserves, matchups, and toss them out the window. This game will be cold – one of the coldest in the NFL in the last decade (at a minimum).
The high-temperature forecast for Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Sunday is 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldness of the wind chill is unclear as of the middle of the week. If the temperate is below the 12-degree number at kickoff – it probably will be – the game is instantly one of the most frigid in recent memory:
Vikings-Packers this weekend won’t quite be the Ice Bowl from 1967 – that game had a -9 Fahrenheit thermometer temperate with a -59 wind chill – but it will be cold by conventional standards.
Traditionally in cold games, teams run the ball, play defense, and get the hell out of dodge. And that typically sounds like a dream from a Zimmer-led team – but not this season. The Vikings have not consistently stopped the run at all, so the prognosis of stopping Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon – while “keeping an eye” on Aaron Rodgers – is daunting. Because the showdown is a rivalry, indeed, anything can happen. But the Packers are playing for homefield advantage in the postseason while the Vikings are trying to maybe get in the playoffs as a measly seventh seed.
It will be cold, rest assured. Minnesota must play defense – including the final two minutes of halves – and control the time of possession. That’s how Zimmer usually wins games, and that’s how teams win games in cold-cold weather.
When Sunday Night Football begins, the temperature should be in the single digits, making the event one of the coldest games in the history of Lambeau Field based on thermometer temperature – and one of the chilliest leaguewide in years.
And if you’re wondering why this feels strange, as in “Wow, a cold game at Lambeau Field, breaking news,” it’s because the Vikings have only played at Green Bay in January three times in franchise history. Plus, the game is at night, meaning the cold day will be even colder.
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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