Vikings and Bears trade explosive kick returns in renewal of rivalry

They're not gonna get him: Cordarrelle Patterson takes it to the house. (Kiichiro Sato/AP) The Chicago Bears have been known for great special teams over the
Vikings and Bears trade explosive kick returns in renewal of rivalry
Vikings and Bears trade explosive kick returns in renewal of rivalry /

They're not gonna get him: Cordarrelle Patterson takes it to the house. (Kiichiro Sato/AP)

They're not gonna get him, Cordarrelle Patterson takes it to the house.

The Chicago Bears have been known for great special teams over the last decade, but they were in for a nasty shock on the first play of their home game against the Minnesota Vikings Sunday. Minnesota rookie receiver Cordarrelle Patterson, one of the Vikings' three first-round picks in 2013, took the opening kickoff 105 yards back for a touchdown. The Vikings wanted Patterson to take on a Percy Harvin-esque role in their offense, as Harvin was traded to the Seahawks in the offseason (he's currently recovering from a hip injury). Patterson is a raw route-runner, but he's got the kind of speed and explosiveness to make a big difference in space on the field, a fact the Bears were schooled on quickly.

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Not to be outdone, Chicago's Devin Hester, one of the best return men in the history of the league, returned the subsequent Vikings' kickoff from deep in his own end zone and trucked 76 yards to the Vikings' 32-yard line. The Bears scored five plays later on a one-yard touchdown pass from Jay Cutler to Martellus Bennett.

There had been some concern about how to best get Patterson on the field and productive in Minnesota's offense, and he had just one target and one catch in the Vikings' 34-24 loss to the Detroit Lions last Sunday. However, he returned two kicks for 54 yards in that contest, giving his new team a taste of the kind of special teams force he can be.

"We’re going to try to get him [Patterson] a few more snaps, but we have to get a few more first downs so we can stay on the field a little bit longer with our offense," Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier said this week. "But we want to get him more snaps for sure."

This is certainly one way to do it.

[si-nfl-player id="7ec0193fcfe44f2e87691492c599240b"]


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Doug Farrar
DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009,  Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine.  He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.