Tennessee Titans at Minnesota Vikings: Key information and first quarter discussion

We are an hour from kickoff at U.S. Bank Stadium, as the Minnesota Vikings attempt to avoid starting 0-3 for the first time since 2013. In order to do that, they’ll have to take down a team that went to the AFC Championship Game last season in the Tennessee Titans, who enter this one with a 2-0 mark.

Here is everything you need to know about today’s game:

Date and Time: Sunday, 27 September, 2020, noon Central time

Location: U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Television Coverage: WCCO-4 in the Twin Cities, CBS affiliates around the country, DirecTV Channel 705

Radio Coverage: Vikings Radio Network, Sirius Channel 83, XM Channel 225, SiriusXM App Channel 820

Line: Vikings +2.5, Over/Under 47.5

Chris’ Prediction: Titans 30, Vikings 16

Three Keys:

1) Get off the damn field - We mentioned it last week, but the Vikings are seeing a disturbing trend of getting walloped in terms of time of possession. When your opponent holds on to the football for 40 minutes/game, you’re probably going to lose. This defense has to get some stops on third down so that they can get the ball back to the offense.

2) Stay on the damn field - Conversely, when the offense does get its hands on the ball, it needs to start sustaining drives. Whether it’s on the ground with Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison or through the air, the Vikings need to give their defense the opportunity to breathe when they do get a chance to sit on the sidelines.

(Yeah, those first two are direct copy-and-paste from last week, because the Vikings didn’t do those things last week and they damn sure need to do them this week.)

3) Play with some fire already - Whenever things go south for this team, they seem to get deflated almost immediately, and things snowball out of control from there. That’s on Mike Zimmer and his coaching staff, and with his team looking down the barrel of an 0-3 start, they need to get it together if they want to salvage anything from this season.

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We’ll just keep sticking with the quarterly Open Threads here, folks. Hopefully there will be enough excitement to justify them. So, keep your eyes open for those when they come out.

With that, let’s hope that this team can get themselves together. It would stink for the season to be over after just three weeks, but that’s exactly what the Vikings are looking at if they can’t get the W today.

SKOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL VIKINGS!!!!