{"id":182066,"date":"2025-10-01T08:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/182066\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:10:08","slug":"nfl-london-minnesota-vikings-to-make-history-as-they-kick-off-2025-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/182066\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL London: Minnesota Vikings to make history as they kick off 2025 series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Vikings did well to threaten a late fightback against the Steelers given their offensive line has been decimated by injuries, leaving back-up quarterback Carson Wentz exposed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wentz will make his third start in place of injured starter JJ McCarthy and will face one of the NFL&#8217;s most fearsome defensive players in Myles Garrett, who already has four sacks this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Minnesota reached last season&#8217;s play-offs but come in with a 2-2 record, while Cleveland are 1-3 after Sunday&#8217;s 34-10 defeat at Detroit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That put veteran Joe Flacco under more scrutiny after the veteran won a four-way quarterback competition to be the Browns&#8217; starter this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kenny Pickett was then traded, with Dillon Gabriel named back-up and fellow rookie Shedeur Sanders third on the depth chart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Browns selected Gabriel in the third round of this year&#8217;s draft while Sanders &#8211; the initial favourite to be the first overall pick &#8211; made a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/american-football\/articles\/c4g79q25yg5o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dramatic slide to the fifth round.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With Cleveland facing a tough start to the season, there was speculation coach Kevin Stefanski would look to make an early change and Sanders last week told ESPN: &#8220;If you see the quarterback right now, I know I&#8217;m capable of doing better than that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That was just a few days after his father Deion &#8211; a two-time Super Bowl winner and his college coach at Colorado &#8211; told the Kelce brothers&#8217; New Heights podcast that Shedeur would start at some point this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After Sunday&#8217;s defeat, Stefanski said: &#8220;There are so many things that we need to do better, quarterback included, but this is not about one person.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gabriel has come in for a handful of snaps so far and while it may be too soon for Sanders to start in London, Cleveland&#8217;s quarterback situation is sure to be a big talking point this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vikings did well to threaten a late fightback against the Steelers given their offensive line has been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-182066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}