Opening With A Bang

Vikings 28
Falcons 12

If you believe in the first play of a season setting the tone, then the Vikings could not have.done it better today.

First play of the whole game, Anthony Barr bursts around the left side of the line and puts Matt Ryan on his ass. And this after Barr got the distinction of being the last player brought out in intros.

And this was just the beginning of a dizzying, dazzling opening burst.

After the sack, the Vikings force a 3 and out and a punt. And then they block the punt!
And then Kirk hits Thielen, who sprints into the endzone for the touchdown!
And then Anthony Harris picks off Ryan on the next series!
And then Dalvin motors in for a touchdown and a 14-0 lead!

It was an incredible quarter to start a season with. The game never got that dazzling again, but it also.never for close.

The Vikings added a Kirk sneak TD in the 2nd. Then Dalvin got in the endzone again in the 3rd. 28-0.

Only a couple times did Atlanta even mount a drive in anything but garbage time. They came close to cutting it to 21-7, but Ryan, on a play where I thought he was throwing the ball away, was picked in the endzone by Harris again. After that play is when the Vikings drive down and made it 28-0.

This was just vintage Zimmer defense. They flew around the field. The pass rush got in Matt Ryan's head, and did so quickly. Ryan is a very good QB. And the Zim Reapers rattled the hell out of him. Even the throws he was able to make clean in the first half were off. It was a dominant performance.

Most satisfying was seeing standout games from Griffen and Rhodes, the 2 starters on this unit who get the most hate lately.

Atlanta got a.couple.garbage time TDs to make the score a little more respectable, but this game was never in doubt.

The Vikings did a much better job today of putting an opponent away than they did last year. Last year they had big.2nd half leads but let teams hang around. Today they never took the boot off the Falcons throat. They ran very well, and very consistently. They made Atlanta eat up tons of time on their desperation drives.

Kirk Cousins only had to throw TEN passes all day. That's unheard of. But there was really no need to throw. The first 2 TD drives were on short fields. The last TD drive had 2 big penalties take up a lot of the yards. He had a few big pressures, and did have a fumble on a snap(damn butt sweat), so it wasn't a flawless day, but the run game was great.

And on a day when Kaare Vedvik missed 2 kicks and cost the Jets a game, how nice to have our kicking game ace it. Bailey made all his PATs. Colquitt boomed a couple of beauties.

Zimmer will definitely have a lot to say about the penalties. We had a LOT of penalties today, including like 4 different offsides. That needs to get cleaned up quick.

But that was the only real issue to come out of one of the best week 1 performances by this team probably ever. Now, they had a pretty good week 1 last year too(though not THIS good) and then things got wonky. They could easily lose next week at Lambeau. But in week 1 they had easily the best performance of any north team. It's hard to not get overly excited.