The Vikings/Bears game is either going to be 55-52 or 13-10 and there’s no in between.

— Jason Harmon (@JasonHarmonNFL) September 14, 2026

The Vikings are gonna need to clean up their coverage issues pretty quickly as they prepare to face a very dangerous Bears offense.

Early Week 2 preview: https://t.co/FOsiHI44sz

— Will Ragatz (@WillRagatz) September 14, 2026

Vikings’ next task? Slowing a Bears offense that dropped 59 points in Week 1

The Vikings are 1-0 after rallying to beat the Packers on Sunday in stunning fashion. That’s the good news. A win is a win in the NFL, especially against a division rival.

The bad news — or at least reason not to get carried away with one win — is that there are still a lot of questions to be asked about this Vikings team coming out of the first game of the season.

With Kyler Murray getting concussed in the opener, it’s currently unclear who will be playing quarterback next week. Minnesota’s new run game wasn’t very effective against the Packers, there are real concerns with a couple interior offensive linemen, and the secondary allowed Green Bay receivers to run wide open on far too many occasions.

“Lot to correct, watching the tape today,” Kevin O’Connell said on Monday. “Some good things, good enough to win a football game, but long from where we wanna be as a team.”

Early Week 2 preview

The Vikings are going to be tested in extreme fashion this upcoming Sunday. Next up on their schedule is a trip to Chicago’s Soldier Field to take on the Bears, who just dropped nearly 60 points in a 59-37 win over the Panthers to begin their season.

Bears head coach Ben Johnson has not been shy about his desire to set NFL scoring records this year. His team is off to a pretty good start in that pursuit. Sunday marked just the tenth time this century that a team has scored at least 59 points in a game. The Bears racked up 552 yards of offense (291 rushing, 261 passing), averaging 7.9 yards per play. The Panthers had no answer for Caleb Williams and D’Andre Swift.

The Bears will almost certainly get more resistance from the Vikings (No. 2 in defensive EPA per play from 2024-25) than they did from the Panthers (No. 28). But Minnesota has a lot to clean up on the back end after allowing Jordan Love to complete passes of 81, 43, 42, 32, and 30 yards on Sunday.

The matchup between Johnson’s explosive offense and Brian Flores’ unique defense is going to be must-see television. Love, who the Vikings just faced, is one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL against the blitz, but Flores brought at least five pass rushers on almost every dropback anyways. Williams is another guy who has been great against blitzes; he can either get the ball out quickly or extend plays with his athleticism.

There was a lot to like about what the Vikings got from front-seven players like Dallas Turner, Andrew Van Ginkel, Blake Cashman, Jalen Redmond, and Levi Drake Rodriguez against the Packers. There’s also a lot that has to be fixed — and quickly — involving Josh Metellus, Theo Jackson, Byron Murphy Jr., and others from a coverage standpoint.

Since Flores arrived in Minnesota, he has struggled against Johnson perhaps more than any other offensive coach. In the 2023 and ’24 seasons, when Johnson was still the Lions’ offensive coordinator, Detroit went 4-0 against the Vikings. They put up at least 30 points and 380 yards in each of those games. Johnson’s Bears averaged only 21.5 points in a series split with the Vikings last year, but they did cross the 300-yard mark both times.

In those Vikings-Lions matchups, it often seemed to easy for Jared Goff to find Amon-Ra St. Brown or another receiver open in a void of space, especially over the middle of the field. That’s how it felt for much of Sunday’s game, too. If Flores is going to continue to blitz like a madman — and there’s no reason to think otherwise — the Vikings need to have better answers and execution in the secondary to avoid giving up so many chunk gains through the air.

The Bears are going to be a fascinating team this year because for as great as their offense looks, their defense might be equally bad. They let Bryce Young and the Panthers rack up 478 total yards and 7.7 yards per play. It was a 31-31 game in the third quarter before Chicago pulled away.

So the Vikings should be able to put up points on the Bears this weekend, even if Carson Wentz starts at quarterback. But it might be a lot to ask of Wentz to win a shootout against Williams and company. It feels like the onus is going to be on the Vikings’ defense to get enough stops or takeaways that the offense doesn’t have to be perfect.

This should be another fun one between division rivals. Sole possession of first place in the North will be on the line if the Lions lose in Buffalo on Thursday night.

For as much of a house of horrors as Soldier Field had been for the Vikings in the 2000s/2010s, it’s crazy they’re looking for their seventh straight win there. https://t.co/PyvfJL69ga

— Ben Goessling (@BenGoessling) September 15, 2026

The #Vikings are ranked at 9 in @NFLonFOX recent rankings after week 1. pic.twitter.com/muVyXgjzvb

— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) September 14, 2026