It’s been a long, long wait for National Football League fans, but the wait finally comes to an end on Sunday afternoon when Week 1 of the 2021 season gets into full swing. For the Minnesota Vikings, they’ll be taking to the road for a battle against Mike Zimmer’s former team, the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Bengals had one of the worst records in football last year, but this year welcome back quarterback Joe Burrow, who had his rookie season cut short by a knee injury in 2020. He’ll be throwing to one of his former teammates in wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, who the Bengals took with the fifth overall pick in this past April’s NFL Draft. They’ve also made several moves to shore up a defense that was among the NFL’s worst in 2020.
Speaking of teams that made a lot of moves this offseason, we know what the Vikings did on defense. After fielding the worst defense of the Mike Zimmer era, the Vikings brought in a bunch of new faces like Patrick Peterson, Dalvin Tomlinson, and Xavier Woods. They’ll also be welcoming back a player that suffered a season-ending injury in 2020 as defensive end Danielle Hunter will be making his return to the field after missing all of last season.
This game will be broadcast on FOX affiliates around the country, with kickoff coming at the best time for NFL action, that being noon Central time. There will also be not one, but two live postgame shows when it’s over, as the folks from Climbing the Pocket will have a live Vikings’ postgame show, and there will also be Vikings Rewind with Drew and Ted for your viewing pleasure.
Get excited, folks. . .the NFL is officially back!