The Vikings (1-1) head into Week 3 following the team's first victory of the season over the Detroit Lions. Minnesota carries the momentum at home over to the matchup on Sunday against the San Diego Chargers. This weekend will be the first time these two teams have squared up since 2011. We scoped the web to see what experts and analysts are predicting for the outcome of the Vikings' upcoming matchup against the AFC West opponent on Sunday.
The Chargers are playing consecutive road games outside the division, which is a big challenge. Minnesota seemed to come alive -- particularly Adrian Peterson -- last week, and that will carry over here. The Vikings defense will get after Philip Rivers in a big way.
Vikings 23, Chargers 17--Pete Prisco, CBS Sports
Peterson has a chance for another big day here, against a defense that allowed 4.5 yards per carry last season. The Chargers' offense will present some challenges, especially with *Melvin Gordon looking for his own big day against a run defense that struggled last year, but high school teammate Trae Waynes hangs onto bragging rights.*
Vikings 27, Chargers 23--Ben Goessling, ESPN
The Vikings are going places this year. Week 1's disaster versus the 49ers is out of their system, Adrian Peterson is back and the defense is downright awesome. If there's anyone Norv Turner knows, it's Philip Rivers. That intel should help on Sunday.
Vikings 28, Chargers 17--Peter Schrager, FOX Sports
FiveThirtyEight's 2015 NFL forecast uses an Elo-based model to calculate each team's chances of advancing to the playoffs and winning Super Bowl 50. Playoff probabilities are based on 20,000 simulations of the season and will update after each game.
Pre-game win probabilities: Vikings 53%, Fivethirtyeight.com
Each Tuesday, WhatIfSports.com's *NFL simulation engine generates predictions and box scores for every NFL game for the coming week. The highly sophisticated algorithms simulate every play of every game to produce each team's likelihood to win. Each matchup is simulated 501 times.*
*The Chargers will travel to Minnesota to take on Adrian Peterson and the Vikings, who are slightly favored in this one. We predict the Chargers to have the edge 57.6 percent of the time. *
Average Score:Chargers 25, Vikings 22--WhatIfSports.com
3 of 5 experts pick the Vikings, NFL.com
4 of 8 experts pick the Vikings, CBS Sports
4 of 8 experts pick the Vikings, FOX Sports
6 of 8 experts pick the Vikings, Bleacher Report
8 of 8 experts pick the Vikings, SB Nation
