The Minnesota Vikings beat the Indianapolis Colts 16-10 on Sunday to stay the NFL's only unbeaten team at 6-0, after Kansas City and San Francisco both lost their first games of the season.
The Minnesota Vikings beat the Indianapolis Colts 16-10 on Sunday to remain the NFL's only unbeaten team, improving to 6-0 after Week 7. The win, at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, also gave Minnesota a two-game advantage in the loss column over Detroit in the NFC North, one of the league's most competitive divisions.
Minnesota's position at the top of the league clarified on a Sunday when the last two unbeaten teams besides the Vikings both lost. Kansas City fell 20-3 at Seattle, and San Francisco lost 29-20 at Atlanta, leaving the Vikings alone without a defeat. The other Sunday results included Tampa Bay's 43-13 win over Carolina, Cincinnati's 35-13 win over Baltimore and the New York Giants' 27-21 overtime win at Houston.
The Vikings' defence and a controlled offence did the work against Indianapolis, holding the Colts to ten points in a game where neither side ran away. The win extends a start that has already survived the league's early-season attrition: Minnesota is the only team still unbeaten after seven weeks, while the chasing pack in its own division, led by Detroit, has already taken losses.
The score and the unbeaten status are confirmed by two independent score sources, which agree on the 16-10 result. The divisional picture follows from the same Week 7 scoreboard, which lists Detroit's loss to Minnesota's rivals and the defeats of the other previously unbeaten teams.
The schedule now turns to Monday night, when Dallas visits Philadelphia, a game that will decide which of those two teams stays best placed to challenge the Giants in the NFC East. For Minnesota, the next test is holding the unbeaten run through the middle of the season, when the fixture list, rather than a single result, usually decides whether a fast start becomes a playoff run.