A No Apologies Needed Win For The Vikings

Vikings 24
49ers 16

As openers go, this one had its expected share of rustiness and miscues, even a few things that could be of concern long term.

But they got the win, and as you look around the league today, you take that ugly win and run with it.

This was not a dominant performance by the Vikings. Their offense had moments, but sputtered a lot in the 2nd half and failed to put the game away. The defense was not dominant. They gave up quite a few explosive plays, a couple of which blew momentum, but they got several huge turnovers, and never really broke.

Fans seemed to be pretty grumpy about Kirk Cousins's debut, but I thought for the most part he played fine. He was under pressure all the time, though the line was never 2016 bad. But he hung in there. He scrambled effectively a few times, and the 2 throws he made for scores showed his value. Case Keenum does not make those throws. And for the fans mad he didn't throw for 400 yards and 4 TDs, remember that Brett Favre and Sam Bradford also had pretty average numbers in their debuts.

Great to see Dalvin Cook back. I liked the mix of him and Murray. A shame Cook fumbled, cause that was a hell of a beast run.

D-Flip's OC debut was mixed. I liked the approach in the 1st half, even though the results weren't quite there. Then the 2nd half had no results, and a worse approach. It got way too vanilla. Yeah this team will always ride its defense to a degree, but they needed to stomp the Niners out and they didn't seem to even want to.

16 points against a good QB is something you take 100 times out of 100, but the defense wasn't the lights out unit they can be at their best. The big plays were a problem, and there were a few others Jimmy G just barely missed. They seemed a little passive at times. But when it counted they made big plays of their own. Forcing the fumble inside the 5 was the biggest play of the game. The Hughes pick six was amazing(WhY dIdN't ThEy DrAfT a GuArD?). Rhodes had a big pick, Hunter had 2 sacks, and Hitman had a big sack and a pick to seal it. If this D can up its turnover game this year, a few extra plays given up isn't a killer tradeoff.

And our rookie kicker was a perfect 4 for 4.

So it's a good start, all the more so because of what else happened in the league. Absolutely nothing wrong with an imperfect win over a solid team. Better that then being a Saints fan, who just saw their team get 48 dropped on them by Fitzmagic. Or being a Steelers fan, who saw their team blow a 2 TD lead to the Browns and wind up lucky to eek out a tie.

Never apologize for winning ugly.

On to Green Bay....