4 reasons why the Vikings will beat the Cowboys in Week 10

Dallas’ kicking situation is worse than Minnesota’s

When it comes to kicking, the Vikings haven’t exactly had the best of luck during the last few seasons. Is some of it self-inflicted? Probably, but the purple and gold jersey seems to just destroy any hope having a good kicking game in the recent past no matter what decisions the team makes.

This is why the performance of Dan Bailey this year has been a bit of a pleasant surprise. Bailey has missed just two of his 15 field goal attempts this season and he’s already been named the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week not once, but twice.

On Sunday, he’ll be going back to a stadium where he was the home team’s kicker for the first seven years of his NFL career. During the five seasons that Bailey kicked inside AT&T Stadium as a member of the Cowboys, he made 88.2 percent of his field goal attempts inside the massive facility.

On the other sideline this week for Dallas will be a guy in Brett Maher who has missed four field goal tries in his last four games. Maher has missed a total of five kicks this season and three of these have come inside the Cowboys’ home stadium.

In what may be the shock of the week, if Sunday’s game comes down to the performance of the kickers, Minnesota actually appears to have the advantage.