Regular Season Outlook Continued

Guess who's back... back again...

Alright folks I'm here to finish my regular season outlook for the Vikings and, with a little research, hopefully find some optimism in a year where a lot of talking heads and fans conditioned by our oft-underachieving squad are struggling to find any.
Last night I left off after our home match up against the Cardinals, which the Vikings have won the past 6 games at home against. Even the biggest pessimists should have us taking that game against an Arizona team with very few weapons outside of Larry Fitzgerald and a mostly unproven Kevin Kolb.
Our next game will be against the Bears, to whom we lost both games last year. I hate the Bears with a passion, even more so than the Packers. This may be a cardinal sin to some of you out there, but my reasoning is that the Bears never seem to be as good as they play against us or their record ends up being. They're just overachieving assholes. Last year, they won all 6 games that were decided by 5 points or less (albeit two of wins vs. the Lions were disputable to say the least and one should have DEFINITELY been a loss, but I digress...). As a big fan of the Miami Hurricanes, I can't hate on Devin Hester too much because he is a beast. He always seems to make huge plays in critical times against us. But Cutlerfucker has completed far too many passes off of his back foot falling onto his own ass for me to feel like they aren't lucky. They have added some decent but potentially over the hill talent in the off-season, have an aging but still elite defense as long as they are healthy. With the game at Soldier Field where we have struggled historically (other than the day AP decided to run for two bills and three touchdowns), I gotta hand this one to the Bears.
Next up are the defending champion Green Bay Packers and the most anticipated home game on our schedule. The Pack didn't lose much in the off-season outside of starting guard Darren Colledge, and unless there are some injuries, they should be very strong. Jermichael Finley, by all accounts, looked like a beast last year before getting knocked out for the season and he adds just another target for MVP candidate Aaron Rodgers. We usually play them pretty tough, but our secondary may be the weakest point of our team. That is not a good thing against a team that goes 4-wide more than Brad Childress liked to throw 1 yard passes to Nafahu Tahi. Advantage: Packers.
Carolina and number one pick Cam Newton will be rolling into town next to put us at the halfway point in the season, and barring a beast mode performance by Cam himself, I don't see us losing to what was the worst team in the league last year at home. We're also going into a bye week after this game and since the Denny Green era the Vikes have been very good on both ends of a bye week. With a realistic outlook, this probably puts us at 4-4 at midway through the year. It's also more likely we are sitting at 2-6 than we are 6-2, sadly.
After our bye week, we get our only Monday Night Football appearance of the season at the Packers. It's pretty tough to bet against the Super Bowl Champs still, and unless Ndamukong Suh decides to use Rodgers' head as a basketball again this year, it's not looking too promising.
Oakland at home should bring us a win as west-coast teams have struggled historically going on the road into other time zones and their main strength is their running game. They have a strong run defense with a few big men up front in Tommy Kelly and Richard Seymour, but their secondary was significantly downgraded with the loss of Nnamdi Asomugha. I think our run D can contain Run-DMC, and I also believe the currently underrated Donovan McNabb should have a good day against this below average pass D. Vikings win this one.
I'm predicting a loss at Atlanta with new OC and former Falcons QB coach Bill Musgrave's first game against his old team. With the addition of Julio Jones which the likes of Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez have been raving about, their 5th ranked scoring offense in 2010 should only prove to be that much tougher. Our linebackers can stay with Tony, but I think we have trouble with their power run game and two big, fast wideouts on the outside.

This here's the point where I think I'll break this post off and start a new one in the interest of readability. See ya again soon.