Week 4 NFL Sunday Schedule: Vikings-Saints meet in first London game of 2022

Who better to bring American Football across the pond for the first time this season than a pair of teams that have a fairly lengthy history of hating one another?

Dating back to the 2009 postseason, the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints have had an odd rivalry, but its origins are no secret. The scandal that would become known as Bountygate, which involved then-Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams paying out bonuses to his players for injuring opponents, came to a head after the Saints’ NFC Championship Game win over Minnesota which involved questionable (at best) hits on Brett Favre.

Favre is in the news for other unrelated reasons at present, but the Vikings-Saints rivalry lives on, with the two teams meeting in the postseason twice since then. The Vikings won both of those contests, one coming via a last-minute touchdown pass that would be called the “Minneapolis Miracle.”

Early on Sunday morning (US time), those two teams will meet in London for the first of a handful of NFL games on the other side of the Atlantic this season. Next week will feature the Green Bay Packers’ first trip over the pond as they play the New York Giants, but today we get our first taste of early-morning football this season.

The Packers, meanwhile, will kick off almost seven hours later, when they host the New England Patriots. Come back and join us for that game thread later on, but keep it here throughout the morning game and all the rest of the games on today’s schedule.