A Marauding In Minneapolis: Why the Green Bay Packers beat the Minnesota Vikings

Scoring Off Those Turnovers

Forcing turnovers is pretty good on its own, saving potential points while often providing a team with a solid field position advantage in the process.

Those turnovers don’t really reach their full game-changing impact if a team is unable to convert them into points, however. It does take away a possession from the opposing offense of course, but when they get the ball back (assuming this isn’t a situation with little-to-no time remaining) that team is still facing the same level of deficit as before; should they score then, that turnover’s impact amounts to little more than a delay.

No worries about that here, as the Packers turned both of their forced fumbles into points.

That first turnover saw Green Bay get the ball back with a 14-6 lead; they swiftly drove from the Minnesota 42 into the end zone in three plays to push the lead to 21-6.

The second saw Green Bay have a 21-13 lead. This one had less time to work with (just 0:54 left before the half), but again with great starting field position (their own 46 yard line) the offense marched down the field to build upon their lead with another touchdown; the lead now sat at 28-13, with only some spare seconds left before the half.

With the scores off these turnovers, not only were Minnesota’s efforts to bring the game closer shut down, but the game was put even further out of their reach in each instance. For an offense which has struggled to even reach 20 points in most games (the Vikings have a 19.3 ppg average after this contest, and that includes scores which came from their defense and special teams groups), essentially gifting 14 to the opposition put them into the sort of hole they were unable to overcome.