Green Bay Packers: 4 Matchups to watch against the Vikings

Football is a game of matchups and there are four critical ones that the Green Bay Packers have to win if they want to come out on top in week one.

After a 13-3 campaign last season and an appearance in the NFC Championship game, the Green Bay Packers are looking to start off strong again this year with a division win. The Vikings also had a good season last year, going 10-6 and making it to the divisional round before suffering the same fate as Green Bay, falling to the San Francisco 49ers.

Week one isn’t the entire season, and the opportunity to bounce back next week is always there, but setting the tone for the season with a big win against a division opponent would lighten the burden a bit.

Mike Zimmer is an exceptional defensive mind and has faced Aaron Rodgers many times as the Vikings’ head coach. He knows what Rodgers’ tendencies as a quarterback are and a few tricks to get him to make the rare mistake. However, he has not coached against Matt LaFleur much and that bodes well for the Packers as there will be a level of unpredictability to their scheme. The key will be exploiting the good matchups that they do have against what is a mostly very good defensive unit.

Defensively, last season the Vikings scored just 10 and 16 points in their two games against the Packers. Mike Pettine drew up a great defensive game plan that shut down the Vikings passing attack that resulted in three interceptions in those two games thrown by Kirk Cousins. However, Dalvin Cook ran all over them in week two and was not available in the later game which could be seen as a reason that they only scored 10 points in their second meeting.