All 49ers

Can the Vikings Beat the 49ers?

They could lose any week if they don't play their best. Including this week against the 2-4 Minnesota Vikings.

Grant Cohn

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A week ago, the 49ers looked unbeatable. Then, they lost to P.J. Walker and the 3-3 Browns. Now, we have to look at the 49ers differently. 

They no longer are head and shoulders better than the rest of the league. They merely are one of the excellent teams. And they could lose any week if they don't play their best. Including this week against the 2-4 Minnesota Vikings.

The 49ers beat themselves in Cleveland -- they did not play well enough to deserve to win. It was fitting that they lost the game on a missed field goal. But the Browns still put up a fight and played phenomenal defense. They deserve some credit for their win.

The Vikings are not nearly as good as the Browns, who have the best defense in the NFL. Minnesota's defense ranks 15th out of 32 teams in yards allowed. While the Browns have excellent corners, the Vikings do not. So even if the Vikings try to copy the Browns defensive blueprint of playing man to man coverage to force Brock Purdy to throw into tighter windows, Minnesota might not have the talent in the secondary to pull off that strategy.

Here's what the Vikings have going for them: Danielle Hunter, a premiere edge rusher who has 8 sacks through 6 games. He's a monster. And if Trent Williams isn't 100 percent healthy, Hunter could wreck the game for the 49ers.

Other than him, the Vikings don't have much going for them. Their best player, wide receiver Justin Jefferson, is injured and out, they can't run the ball and their quarterback is Kirk Cousins. Enough said.

The 49ers would have to beat themselves to lose in Minnesota.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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