Anthony Barr slept for a mere two hours on Monday night, awakened at 3

EAGAN Super Bowl Alexander Mattison Jersey , Minn. — a.m. by the angst of his decision about which team to pick in free agency.More Vikings coverageDuty might call for Vikings rookie long snapper CuttingRookie minicamp Q&A with Vikings head coach Mike ZimmerVikings sign nine members of 2019 draft classTop Tweets: Minnesota teams have fun with ‘Game of Thrones’Vikings decline fifth-year option for WR Laquon TreadwellHis verbal commitment to join the New York Jets triggered immediate unease about leaving the Minnesota Vikings.“I was up all morning just looking at my ceiling, just looking for a sign, talking to everybody, just trying to figure something out,” Barr said.Fortunately for Barr and his conscience, the Vikings didn’t abandon their desire to retain the four-time Pro Bowl linebacker. They presented a contract offer that was more than sufficient to stay for, even if he’d be turning down a richer deal with the Jets. The league’s two-day negotiating window before contracts can be signed worked out rather well for him.Barr got a five-year deal valued at $67.5 million, with $33 million in guaranteed money. The Vikings held a news conference for him and new defensive tackle Shamar Stephen on Thursday afternoon.“This is where I wanted to be. This is my home. I’m embedded in the community. I do a lot of off-the-field work here. I love my teammates. I love this locker room. The culture we’ve developed over the last five years, it’s been awesome. The bonds I’ve made with my friends, my teammates and my coaches are unbreakable, and it just felt right,” Barr said. “This is where my heart was.”Barr, who will turn 27 next week, was the first draft pick, ninth overall in 2014, the Vikings made under coach Mike Zimmer. Though the hard-nosed boss has occasionally prodded Barr to play with more relentlessness, Zimmer has become a big fan of the 6-foot-5, 255-pound player who has manned the strong side linebacker spot on one of the NFL’s best defenses over the last five seasons.“No team we ever play is going to say, ‘Oh, we’re not going to worry about Anthony Barr,'” Zimmer said.Zimmer played a part in the persuasion process. General manager Rick Spielman held onto some hope.“You might as well keep swinging until you’re knocked out,” Spielman said.Barr figured his first foray into free agency would be fun, but he wound up feeling the opposite.“Monday was one of the worst days of my life, really Discount Alexander Mattison Jersey ,” he said.As soon as he told his agent, Brian Murphy, he would take the offer from the Jets, Barr called his mother, Lori, and fessed up.“I’m like, ‘I think I made a mistake.’ And she was like, ‘Well, you’ve got to fix it,’ and I was like, ‘All right,'” Barr said.Murphy handled the business part, but Barr was left the bigger mess: his emotions.“I was crying, laughing, sweating. The whole day was just crazy,” he said.The enticement of the Jets wasn’t just more money. There was an allure too, Barr said, of being part of a rebuild.“All the respect to the Jets organization, their coaching staff, but it’s just not what I really wanted,” he said. “I think initially I kind of jumped the gun, even though it was like a full day worth of conversation. I think I was trying to convince myself of something.”Now Barr will be back with a coach he said he’d “go to war for” and an organization from the top down of people he can trust.“We do have a really good team,” Barr said. “Money’s great, but you can’t be miserable coming in to work every day.”The Vikings took one of the smallest amounts of salary cap space in the league into 2019, with about $5 million at the start of the week before the roster moves began. The Vikings sought a pay reduction from defensive end Everson Griffen Olisaemeka Udoh Jersey nfl draft , Spielman said, who agreed to a restructured deal that gave the team roughly $4 million in more room. Griffen, who has the same agent as Barr, could have been cut had he resisted the request.“It was down to the wire,” Spielman said. The Minnesota Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams face off tonight and we’ve had a bit of a short turnaround and a lot of bad news come down the pike since the purple were last on the field. . .well, including the last time the purple were on the field. . .but now it’s time to attempt to focus on the business of football.This is a primetime contest, so the coverage is going to be a little bit different. With that, let’s get into all of the details right here.Television InfoThis year, Thursday Night Football is on the FOX Network, which is KSTP-9 in the Twin Cities. For everyone outside of the Twin Cities. . .do you have a TV? Do you have a FOX affiliate? Okay, because that’s what channel the game will be on. It will also be on the NFL Network, if that’s your preference. Kickoff time is scheduled for 7:20 PM Central time, and the play-by-play will be handled by Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. . .if you want it to be.For all of our friends in the United Kingdom, you can find this one on Sky Sports, more specifically on both Sky Sports Action and Sky Sports Main Event. Kickoff time for this one is scheduled for 1:20 AM Friday morning UK time.For our men and women in uniform overseas, the American Forces Network will be showing this one live and. . .well, you might want to make sure you’ve got some coffee available. Coverage on AFN Sports starts at 0100Z on Friday morning. That’s a kickoff time of 0200L for folks in Central Europe, 0430L for everyone in Afghanistan, and 0900L for fans in Japan and Korea.Radio InfoIf you’re not going to be anywhere near a television for this one, you’ll be able to hear the call from Paul Allen and Pete Bercich on the Vikings Radio Network. That link goes to a list of Vikings Radio Network affiliates across the Upper Midwest. See if yours will be carrying the game. There are a couple of other places you can find it online as well, including the TuneIn radio service as well as the KFAN site (if you’re on a desktop or laptop computer only. . .it won’t work on phones or tablets).For those that have satellite radio (which, I’ll admit, has been a life saver for me the last two weeks as I’ve been traveling), you can find the Vikings Radio Network feed on Sirius Channel 81 or XM Channel 226. There will also be a more “neutral” feed from Westwood One on SiriusXM NFL Radio, Channel 88. If you’re using the SiriusXM Online App Replica Olisaemeka Udoh Jersey , the Vikings’ permanent home there is Channel 819.Referee InfoAccording to the folks from Football Zebras, the officiating crew for Thursday night’s contest will be headed up by Brad Allen. Allen last officiated a game involving the Vikings back in December of 2017, as he was the lead official for the Vikings’ 14-9 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Atlanta.Weather InfoIt’s gonna be a warm one on the West Coast tomorrow, according to our friends at WeatherNation. Temperatures at kickoff will be in the mid 80s with very little breeze. The humidity won’t be very high, but the heat will definitely be a factor in this one. Hydrate, everybody.Streaming InfoThis is the first streaming game of the season (out of 11) for the Amazon Prime service, as we told you yesterday. That will give you a few different play-by-play options, should you desire to use them.Otherwise, there are several legal subscription services that are available in order to stream the game legally. Among them are Fubo.tv, USTVNow, and Sling TV. If you’re overseas, your best bet is going to be NFL GamePass.Since it has recently been brought up, I want to make it perfectly clear that streams from Reddit or other places are not. . .I repeat, not. . .legal. If you’d like to argue about that, you can argue it somewhere else, because the moderators won’t listen to that garbage. Until Reddit, or anywhere else, has a deal with the National Football League, those streams are illegal and not welcome to be put up on this site. If you want to use them, go find them on your own and don’t be plastering them in the comments section here unless you’d rather not be in the comments of the Game Thread. . .or any other thread. . .here at DN.That should be all of the information you need in order to keep track of all the action from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum between the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams on Sunday afternoon. We’ll have our Open Thread for the first quarter up about an hour before kickoff or so, and we hope that you’ll join us here for all of the fun!