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NFL Wild Card Betting – Vikes Host Hot ‘Hawks

Zack Garrison

by Zack Garrison in NFL Football

Updated Jan 17, 2018 · 9:39 AM PST

Seattle Seahawks (-5, 39 o/u) at Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings (11-5, 6-2 Home) are the biggest underdog on Wild Card weekend. The team earned a home playoff game thanks to a Week 17 win over Green Bay, but now have to face the scoring Seattle Seahawks (10-6, 5-3 Away) this Sunday at the TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis (1:05 PM Eastern).

The Vikings finished the season on a three-game win streak, including dominant victories over the Bears and Giants.  Their 20-13 win at Lambeau Field last weekend gave them the NFC North title, but it also set up Sunday’s date with the Seahawks, a team that marched into TCF Bank Stadium and stomped on the Vikes, 38-7, last month.

Seattle QB Russell Wilson threw for 274 yards and three touchdowns, two of them to wide receiver Doug Baldwin.

“They beat us pretty badly last time we played them,” Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer admitted to the Associated Press. “It wasn’t close, they got after us in every phase.”

The Vikings defense gets something of a pass for that game. The team didn’t have DT Linval Joseph from the outset and lost LB Anthony Barr and S Harrison Barnes in the first quarter. Without three of their best players, the Vikes were torched for nearly 450 yards. (Joseph returned to practice on Wednesday but remains questionable. Barr and Smith are both probable and should be in uniform come game time.)

The Minnesota offense has more to be concerned about. The Vikes are a run-first team but couldn’t muster anything on the ground against the league’s best rush defense the first time around. NFL rushing leader Adrian Peterson had just 18 yards on eight carries. Whether he’ll be able to do any better this Sunday is a big question mark. AP is suffering from a lower back injury and has been held under 70 yards in four of his last five games.

He’ll also be facing a Seattle team that’s playing its best football of the year at just the right time. Seattle won eight of ten to close the year and dominated the NFC’s no. 2 seed, the Arizona Cardinals (36-6), last week.

The Seahawks will have RB Marshawn Lynch back after “Beast Mode” missed the last six games with an abdominal injury. Rookie Thomas Rawls kept the Seattle ground game humming in Lynch’s absence, but Rawls has since been lost for the year, making Lynch’s return all the more timely.

But the Seattle offense is no longer as ground-dependent as it once was.  Wilson posted the best passing numbers of his four-year career this season, reaching the 4,000-yard plateau and tossing 22 touchdowns and zero interceptions in his team’s last six wins.

The Seahawks are trying to become the first NFC team to reach three straight Super Bowls. they’ll have a much tougher road this year; they had the benefit of home-field advantage the past two seasons, but will need to win three road games this time around. The team went 5-3 on the road straight up and 4-3-1 ATS.

The Vikings, meanwhile, were a boon for bettors all season, both home and away. They went 13-3 ATS, overall, including 6-2 at home.

With the Vikes healthy on D again, take Seattle to win, but grab the home team and the points in the spread.

Pick: Vikings (+5). 

(Photo credit: Philip Robertson from New York, NY, USA (Loudest crowd roar at a sports stadium Seahawks-10) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo may appear cropped.)

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