Vikings Beat Up the Browns and Look Good Doing It
Vikings Territory Breakdown Podcast
After a week of practices together (in which the home team Cleveland Browns had their way with the visiting Minnesota Vikings), the Vikes and Brownies met in a preseason game over the weekend. And Minnesota turned the tables on their hosts, beating Cleveland 27-12. Despite only one starter on the field (Vikings right Guard Ed Ingram), there were some bright spots worth mentioning (something that isn’t worth mentioning is that Vikes head coach Kevin O’Connell now has a two-game winning streak in preseason games).
Backup quarterback Nick Mullens looked very good in the start, hitting 11 of 221 passes for 135 yards and touchdown (his best stat of the night was zero turnovers). He was relieved by backup Jaren Hall, who showed much better than he dead in the Vikings 2024 preseason opener against the Las Vegas Raiders, going 4 of 5 for 87 yards and two touchdown passes, including one scrambling toss to Jeshaun Jones for a 71-yard score. It all came against backups, vanilla defenses and in the preseason, but it left observers with a better feeling about the position than last week’s news of J.J. McCarthy’s season-ending knee surgery did.
On the defensive side of the ball, safety Lewis Cine balled out with 11 tackles (five solo), a pick, a sack, a TFL and two quarterback hits. His hit on the Browns’ QB outside the pocket was a welcome sign and appeared to be the kind of play that made Kwesi Adolfo-Mensah make him his first draft pick as an NFL general manager. It brings up the question of whether or not it is too little, too late for the former first-round pick to make the team, but at least it is a legitimate question, now. And the fellas at Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast (Joe Oberle, senior writer at vikingsterritory.com and purplePTSD.com and Mark Craig, NFL and Vikings writer for the Star Tribune and startribune.com) are here to answer that question and many others. Tune in and check it out.