CBS Sports Can’t Make Up Its Mind About the Vikings’ Trip
The Minnesota Vikings announced the 2025 schedule on Wednesday, starting the season in Week 1 with a road divisional clash at Soldier Field, meeting Caleb Williams for the third time in his career.
More noteworthy was the international schedule, as the organization will not only play one but two games overseas.
CBS Sports Can’t Make Up Its Mind About the Vikings’ Trip
The reactions have been mixed, and it might boil down to a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty approach.
CBS Sports has published a pair of articles about the schedule release on Thursday, and their analysis is also torn. Tyler Sullivan dropped his winners and losers from the schedule release, and he tabbed the purple franchise as a loser because of the trip to Europe.
He wrote, “This coming season, the Vikings will play back-to-back international games in two different countries. First, they’ll be in Dublin, Ireland, for a matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 4. Then, they’ll hop over to London to square off against the Cleveland Browns. This makes Minnesota the first team ever to play two international games in two different countries in consecutive weeks. While Minnesota could conceivably be favored in both of those contests, it’s an added early-season wrinkle for head coach Kevin O’Connell to navigate as he also tries to usher in his young signal-caller.”
It surely could be a little disruptive. It’s the main point of emphasis of the glass-half-empty folks. The Vikings will spend a couple of weeks without access to their beautiful facility in Eagan, MN, and they can’t follow the usual routine.
Through his tenure in Minnesota, Kevin O’Connell has handled international trips with relative ease, winning both games overseas. Minnesota lost the game immediately afterwards last season, the first loss against Detroit, but it was a nail-biter. In 2022, they won the next contest.
It remains to be seen how the club will deal with the back-to-back week stint, as well as after returning home to the Twin Cities. The Vikings will have their bye week in Week 6, right after the journey.
Fellow CBS Sports employee Jeff Kerr, meanwhile, thinks the Vikings are lucky to have that schedule.
He called it “genius” and opined, “This appeared to be a significantly unfair advantage for the Vikings, but it’s actually a stroke of genius. Minnesota has to play nine road games in 2025 and both International Series games are actually road games. The Vikings don’t even have to give up a home game while playing overseas.”
The fact that Minnesota will play eight home games, seven on the road, and two at neutral sites surely is an advantage over the division rivals, who all play nine true road games.
Kerr continued, “Minnesota is playing back-to-back International Series games, followed by a bye week after being overseas. The Vikings can plan a two-week trip for Ireland and England, so they don’t have to worry about traveling back and forth while getting acclimated to that time zone.”
Those two voices pretty much sum up the discussion.
It is an advantage because of the fewer road games and the fact that they will be acclimated to the time zone, while the Browns could struggle. However, staying overseas for two weeks could also be a downside.
Ultimately, it comes down to winning games, and the Vikings have been good at that over the last three seasons. We’ll see how the early-season trip impacts that.
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