This is a key battle to start the season in the NFC North. The Bears’ defense has performed as expected, but the offense has been a huge surprise for them. The Bears prefer to run the ball, but they haven’t had much success at it this year only averaging 98.0 yards per game and only 2.8 yards per carry. The Vikings defense is vulnerable to the running game, so the Bears will give them a heavy dose of Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson. As soon as they establish their running game, look for Rex Grossman to run alot of play-action and try to take shots down the field to Mushin Muhammad and Bernard Berrian. The Vikings will also have to be careful, because Grossman has been making good use of TE Desmond Clark, who has caught 10 passes for 162 yards this season.
The Vikings run a balanced offense with RB Chester Taylor being the key player. Taylor has 259 combined rushing and receiving yards so far this season. The Vikings must establish a running game to slow the Bears pass rush which has 9 sacks in two games. Look for Brad Johnson to use TE Jermaine Wiggins alot on short passes to help move the sticks against the Bears aggressive defense.
This should be a slobber knocker of a football game. I can’t pick a winner in this game, because the MetroDome is the great equalizer.