Having secured the #3 seed at 13-4, the Vikings face an equally as lucky Giants team in the first playoff game in the Kevin O'Connell era. Can they set out on the right foot with a win, or end the season in massive disappointment?



Line: Vikings -3 (55% of bets on Giants)
SuperSim Calculated Line: Vikings -5.5 O/U 51.5

Injury Report

Vikings
CB Dantzler - Questionable
RB Nwangwu - Questionable
SS Smith - Questionable

Giants
none


* My Thoughts *

I haven't changed my thoughts a whole lot from Christmas Eve when the Vikings prevailed, minus the fact that we were coming off an emotional win against the Colts that I thought would cause us to lose. Now at mostly full strength, the Vikings are in better shape, but so are the Giants. CB Adoree' Jackson and SS Xavier McKinney are back and should be an improvement to an otherwise poor secondary. They may improve the ability to cover Jefferson, but they still have no options for Hock as their LBs have been horrific coverage.

Just in general, I haven't ever seen a team with more Abysmal ratings, that being a PFF grade in the bottom 10% of their position. Defensively this unit has been carried by the forces of Thibodeaux, Williams, and Lawrence. It will be interesting to see how the Giants attack the Vikings on offense, as they focused on the passing game that mostly worked, minus a bad pick thrown by Jones in the 4th quarter. They could opt to hand the ball to Barkley more, as the Vikings have proven to be weak against the run the past few weeks. If Barkley can run like Aaron Jones did a few weeks back, we could see him reach 30+ points.

Prediction: Vikings 30, Giants 28

Yup, I expect another one possession score. What can I say? We're facing a bad defense that the offense should be able to score on consistently, while our own defense does not have the ability to stop offenses until the final 5 minutes... well, the Giants were an exception the last time. But for as much as the Vikings have been fraudulent, the Giants match them.

Any thoughts?