Minnesota Vikings Power Rankings Roundup: Week 1

Hey, kids! You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been around much over the course of the past week or so. I’ve actually gotten the opportunity to get away for a little bit, which has been pretty awesome, but now hopefully I can get back into the groove. Everyone else has been doing an outstanding job in my absence, which has also been pretty awesome.

As we’ve done over the past couple of seasons, we’re going to do a bit of a “roundup” of the Power Rankings across the internet that we get every week. Generally, I’d do this a bit earlier in the week, and hopefully will from here on forward. As you’d imagine, the Minnesota Vikings are pretty highly ranked in these things. . .well, for the most part, anyway. We do have a couple of outliers from folks that just don’t quite believe yet, but they’ll be converted soon enough.

Once we get deep enough into the season to see a trend start forming. . .next week, hopefully, since we’re including the preseason rankings in this for comparison. . .we’ll have a graph so we can see where the purple are rising and falling. For now, though, let’s move on to what we have for our favorite football team, shall we?

Associated Press: #3 (Last week: #3)

No Vikings-centric commentary from the AP this week.

SB Nation: #1 (Last week: #2)

No Vikings-centric commentary from SB Nation this week.

MMQB, Sports Illustrated: #4 (Last week: #3)

No Vikings-centric commentary from MMQB this week.

Elliot Harrison, NFL.com: #3 (Last week: #4)

Impressive Vikings debut for Kirk Cousins, even if everything didn’t go perfectly for the home-town purple. What had to look picture-perfect for the SKOL faithful: the young buck taking Jimmy G to the house. If Mike Hughes turns out to be a player, look out. Pair him with Xavier Rhodes, Harrison Smith, Andrew Sendejo and George Iloka, and well, holy crap ... what a group that is.

ESPN: #3 (Last week: #4)

The Vikings gave Kirk Cousins the keys to the franchise (and $84 million guaranteed) in the offseason and saw some initial return on investment in a win against the 49ers. Cousins passed for two TDs and got a healthy Dalvin Cook heavily involved in the passing game with a career-high seven targets.

Bleacher Report: #1 (Last week: #1)

Taking care of business was the Minnesota Vikings’ mantra in Week 1, as the No. 1 team in the Bleacher Report Power Rankings entering the season downed the San Francisco 49ers in workmanlike fashion.

It wasn’t a flawless effort, but it was a solid one. Kirk Cousins passed for 244 yards and two scores in his Vikings debut. Second-year tailback Dalvin Cook amassed 95 total yards. Top receivers Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen produced a combined stat line of 9/145/1.

One of the NFL’s best defenses got in on the act too. The 49ers gained nearly as many yards as Minnesota, but the Vikings forced four turnovers, sacked Jimmy Garoppolo three times and took an interception back for a touchdown.

The Niners were able to get within one score late, but this was a game that didn’t feel as close as the final score. The Vikings were in control on both sides of the ball for most of the afternoon.

Minnesota looked the part of the Super Bowl favorite many have labeled them this year.

Pete Prisco, CBS Sports: #6 (Last week: #5)

The Kirk Cousins era got off to a good start, but now comes a tough road game against the Packers.

Frank Schwab, Yahoo! Sports: #1 (Last week: #1)

The offensive line, which is the Vikings’ only glaring weakness, wasn’t great in Week 1, allowing three sacks and not opening up much for the run game. But it was good enough. Especially if the defense keeps showing up like it did on Sunday.

Walter Cherepinsky, Walter Football: #9 (Last week: #12)

Overrated NFL Team: See why the Vikings are an overrated NFL team in our new Overrated-Underrated page.

(You can read it if you want to, I guess.)

Mike Florio, Pro Football Talk: #8 (Last week: #9)

The Vikings still need to figure out how to deliver a knockout blow.

Vinnie Iyer, Sporting News: #1 (Last week: #2)

Kirk Cousins’ debut was a success, as he allowed to the team to better facilitate its running game and defense. Sheldon Richardson also made a big impact, making the NFC runners-up the new NFC favorites.

Nate Davis, USA Today: #4 (Last week: #7)

Defense appeared as rugged as ever. But watch that suspect O-line, which allowed three sacks and was part of run game averaging 3.6 ypc.

So, the Minnesota Vikings are, in fact, a top ten team across the NFL landscape. . .albeit just barely in a couple of cases. I’m not exactly sure what would make a few of these sites appear to be so far down on the Vikings or label them as “overrated,” but that’s their opinion, I suppose.

I know that Power Rankings aren’t gospel or anything even remotely approaching it. Still, it does give us something to look at and see what people around the internet outside of our slightly biased bubble think of our favorite football team. So, at this point, that’s what we’ve got.

We’ll have another Power Rankings Roundup next week, hopefully earlier than this week’s edition came about.