Week 5 Roundtable: Minnesota Vikings vs. Cleveland Browns (Must-Win in England?)

Hello everyone and welcome to the Week 5 Minnesota Vikings roundtable here at Daily Norseman. The Vikes are coming off a concerning loss to the Steelers, and now will turn their efforts toward the Cleveland Browns in the second of back-to-back international affairs for the local boys.

Who’s ready for some morning football?

Let’s talk to it.

Question 1: There’s still a game to go, of course, but what’s your take on back-to-back international games?

Brandon Warne: To be frank: meh. As a football consumer, all it really does for me is make sure there are games going on for like 15 straight hours. In my 20s, that would have been HUGE. In my late 30s, I don’t know. It’s fine. I have no complaints. Hopefully a second week overseas to acclimate helps the Vikings play better, because last week was painful.

Christopher Gates: From a fan’s perspective, I don’t really dig it that much. Having football games that kick off at 8:30 in the morning is still weird and will be for as long as we’re doing this. I can see where it might benefit the team, however. While the Browns had to make the long flight across the ocean this week, the Vikings just had to jump a 90-minute flight from Dublin to London, which I’m sure would be beneficial to them. Hopefully, it results in a win for the Vikings, or this logic is going to look really stupid.Home

Warren Ludford: I don’t mind the back-to-back international games because they’re both road games. If they were home games that would be different. But as road games their essentially neutral venues where crowd noise isn’t a factor like it would be in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Also, already being in the time zone and not having to travel as far for the second game compared to the Browns is probably at bit of an advantage.

Sam Buegler: Right now, I don’t mind it. I want to see how the teams look on Sunday to really get a feel for it, but I am hoping that being overseas for multiple weeks will allow the Vikes to be more rested and ready. For me personally, I wasn’t able to watch the first game, but am looking forward to the second!

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Question 2: On a scale of 1-100, how much of a must-win game is this?

BW: I’m very hesitant to use the “must-win” adage when I talk about sports, but this one has to be pretty close. I’m more concerned with keeping up with the rest of the division and an NFC at large that might be a bit deeper than we all expected. If you don’t win a game like this against a rookie quarterback — even with the injuries to the offensive line — it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence against a schedule that’s about to get tougher. But at the end of the day, it’s the NFL and it’s “any given Sunday” so the Vikings could...