The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are set to kick off the regular season against the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday, and it’s sure to be a tough matchup.
The Vikings and Bucs are both coming off of Wild Card exits in 2022, though one looked cleaner than the other. The Vikings went 13-4, while the Bucs won their division at 8-9. Both teams won their season opener last year, so a streak will be broken either way once Sunday’s game has concluded (assuming it isn’t a tie).
We went behind enemy lines and spoke to Vikings Wire Editor Tyler Forness to talk about Minnesota’s defense, incoming rookies and a final score prediction. Check out what he had to say about Tampa Bay and Minnesota’s Week 1 showdown below:
(AP Photo/Jason Behnken)
Forness: The biggest issue with the defense was their defensive coordinator Ed Donatell. He wouldn’t make adjustments to his personnel and would force them to just apply basic Vic Fangio concepts without actually using the things that make his defenses special. Brian Flores won’t be trying to put a square peg into a round hole, but rather try and cater the unit to his players. Expect both an improved and more aggressive unit.
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Forness: They knew going into last season that the roster had real deficiencies that weren’t going to be fixed overnight, so they focused on becoming situational masters. That manifested itself with an 11-0 record and eight fourth-quarter comebacks. That isn’t sustainable, but having an atrocious defense in back-to-back years with the amount of improvements they made likely isn’t either. They will be relatively good situationally and that will help them have another good season. I fully expect them to be over 0.500 in one-score games, but it’s not going to be 11-0 ever again.
(Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)
Forness: Jordan Addison is the one everyone needs to watch out for. Not only is he the Vikings’ first-round pick, but they might have grabbed themselves the next great rookie receiver. He has not only performed well in practice and preseason games, but Addison has been doing some next-level stuff that you only see from veterans. It remains to be seen how much he will play initially due to the presence of K.J. Osborn, but the Vikings had one future Hall of Famer debut in week one at home against the Buccaneers in Randy Moss back in 1998. Could Addison follow in his footsteps? Way too early to tell, but the early returns do point to something special.
(Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
Forness: Unlike most of the league, I refuse to sleep on Baker Mayfield. He has some really impressive weapons and a rocket for an arm. That gunslinger mentality can do some damage even to the best of defenses. The Vikings’ secondary is suspect at the cornerback position and a couple of deep passes to Mike Evans could really shift the tide in the favor of the Buccaneers early on.
(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
The Vikings are 1-0 in season openers under head coach Kevin O’Connell when the walloped the Green Bay Packers 23-7 last season. This year, they could throw the Buccaneers some things they haven’t seen the Vikings do before as the shift to more 12 personnel. The weapons for the Buccaneers are still really good, but the rest of the team has a lot of holes. Expect the Vikings to get the win, this one also by double digits.
Vikings 31, Buccaneers 17
