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The Green Bay Packers are in perfect position to claim yet another NFC North crown.
Yes, I’m talking about the same Green Bay Packers that just suffered a heart-breaking loss to the Carolina Panthers on the heels of a nationally televised 51-29 beat down at the hands of the New Orleans Saints.
Sure it would be nice if the Packers weren’t sitting in third place, two games behind Minnesota.
Sure it would be nice if the Packers weren’t so banged up at safety that they were pleading with Chuck Cecil to come out of retirement.
Sure it would be nice if the Packers’ punting game were more reliable than a Fiat in Wisconsin this time of year.
But the NFC North isn’t nice. And this year, it doesn’t take a nice — or even terribly accomplished — team to claim the title.
If you look at the three teams in the division (yes, I said three. There is no way that mess in Detroit can be considered an actual NFL team), it’s far easier to imagine a scenario where the Packers take the crown than any other team.
We won’t even get into the Perry Mason-type lawyering that would be required for the Vikings to keep the heart — or at least the midsection — of their defense off the “Suspended gone fishing” list.
Without Kevin and Pat Williams, who are large enough to actually live up to the Purple People Eaters nickname, the Vikings are more apt to be spending January working on golf plans than game plans.
It should be a two-team race between the Packers and the Bears and with a Dec. 22 meeting at Soldier Field looming, you have to like the Packers’ chances.
The Bears do have a one-game lead over the Packers and three of their remaining four games at home. Not a bad position to be in considering what’s going on in Minnesota.
But the Bears on offense are about as exciting as a Lawrence Welk marathon, and the last time the Bears’ defense scared anyone Denny Green was reminding us that the Bears were who he thought they were.
As crazy as it sounds, the NFC North title is truly there for the Packers to take. Especially when you factor in the tie-breaker significance of head-to-head matchups.
It was the Packers who hammered the Bears 37-3 in Week 11.
It was the Packers who ran for 200 yards against the Bears. To reiterate, that is 200 yards rushing from a team whose coach seemingly would rather remove his own spleen with a soup spoon than establish a running game.
Pair that kind of success on the ground with far and away the division’s best quarterback (Aaron Rodgers) and receiving corps (Greg Jennings, Donald Driver, Donald Lee, ect.) and and you have a recipe for another mauling of the Bears and potentially a division title.
If we are to assume that in addition to losing to the Packers, the Bears won’t be able to sweep Jacksonville, New Orleans and Houston; the door is wide open for Green Bay.
The Packers in turn would need to at least split their games with Houston and Jacksonville before pummeling Chicago.
Which would bring us to the season finale against a Detroit team that seems to have quit playing somewhere around the time the leaves started changing colors.
I’d say the Packers have ’em right where they want ’em.
