Pack and Vikes on Track – Off-season ideas for Bears and Lions
With three weeks left in the season, things are pretty much ironed out for Minnesota and Green Bay heading into the playoffs. Unless a sudden string of upsets hit Green Bay and the Purple, both teams have good ideas what seed they will have for the playoffs.
With just one or two more wins, Minnesota seals up the #2 seed. If you’re fatalistic in your thoughts, Philly could sweep their final three games and surpass the Vikes if Minnesota drops two. Seeing the schedules for both teams, it seems a bit unlikely. Minnesota has a good shot of finishing 13 – 3 and Philly looks like an 11-5 team at this point.
Green Bay is storming lately and looking good after a somewhat ugly win at Chicago. They have all but sealed up a wild-card spot and with Pittsburgh looking like chopped liver, Green Bay could also finish with a very respectable 11-5 record. Unless something strange happens, that should seal up the number five seed. This will put Green Bay in position to play the worst of the four division leaders. After Monday nights pathetic effort by the Cardinals, it looks like Green Bay will have a good shot of playing the defending Super Bowl losers.
With things shaping up like that, a Green Bay – Minnesota Northern Division Collision would seem unlikely prior to the NFC Championship and that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves. The other option would be for the #6 seed and #5 seed (team to be determined and Packers as the #5) to both pull upsets. In that case, the #6 would fly down to N’Orleans and Pack would meet Vikes for the third matchup of the year.
In non-playoff news, Bears are starting to look forward to an interesting off-season as patience has worn thin among Bears fans for Lovie Smith. Could be an interesting off-season for the dark blue.
The Lions on the other hand will likely be less eventful as they extend into year two of the new regime. What’s disappointing there is you have to wonder if much progress was made. Earlier in the season, they looked like a better team than the last few years, but now with three games left, that improvement is measured with a micrometer if at all.
