An Honest Outlook On Minnesota’s Place In the NFC North
Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports
There are only two guarantees for the upcoming year for Minnesota Vikings fans:
1. The new Winter Warrior jerseys are going to look amazing.
2. Green Bay Packers fans are going to be semi to obscenely annoying in 2024.
Outside of that, I can’t, in good faith, guarantee much with regards to the 2024 NFL season. What I can do for you is give you my opinions on the other three teams in the division, as well as an honest outlook on what I believe the Vikings can accomplish in the upcoming season.
It’s only right to begin with the reigning champs of the NFC North, the knee-biting Detroit Lions who finished their 2023 campaign with a 12-5 record. The Lions saw a lot of rare success. They hosted two playoff games for the first time since 1993 and they held a sizable lead in the NFC Championship Game before ultimately losing to the 49ers 34-31 after some questionable coaching decisions.
On paper, the Lions are stacked with talent, especially on the offensive side of the ball. Due to their recent discovery of winning football, both QB Jared Goff and WR Aman-Ra St. Brown signed massive contract extensions this offseason. There’s no reason the Lions should be the favorite again in 2024.
(Stephen A Smith Voice:) HOWEVER, here’s the issue with buying into Detroit just yet: Do you remember the little nugget about not hosting a playoff game since 1993? Yeah, this franchise is whatever you call the opposite of a winning culture. Sure, things can turn around for a franchise, but we’ve only seen a season and a half of quality football from this team. Even the Browns have managed to put together promising rosters and decent results for that amount of time.
There are just so many questions going forward that the Lions haven’t had to answer for a long time. How does this team handle big contracts and big egos? How does the franchise work with less cap space? Does the coaching staff have an answer now that every offensive and defensive coordinator has a full season of tape on them? There are too many unknowns for a team that hasn’t demonstrated the ability to swim with the best consistently.
The next team many think COULD be the favorite to win the division is none other than the Green Bay Packers. Yep, the old rusty, trusty, artery-clogging cheeseheads just won’t go away. Green Bay overachieved during their 2023 campaign, going 9-8 and securing a playoff spot after winning six of their last eight games.
Green Bay’s hopes and prayers seem to hinge on the idea that new starting QB Jordan Love can play like he did in the last 10 games versus the first 9 games of last season. See, unlike Detroit, the Packers have firmly established a winning culture over the past four decades. Believe me, just ask any Packer fan! They’ll happily talk your ear off about it in a non-condescending way.
However, what they haven’t established is an ACTUAL successor to Aaron Rodgers. Whoa, big statement, but hear me out: Sure, Love looked good for those last 10 games (including the playoffs). That’s undeniable, but there have been a lot of quarterbacks who have strung together 10 quality football games, and the vast majority of them are ones which we forgot existed. Until Love can prove he’s capable of withstanding every defensive coordinator’s attention for a full 17-game season, I’m not going to buy it just yet.
Then we have the WILD CARD of the NFC North: None other than the perpetually underachieving Chicago Bears. The Monsters of the MID-way finished their 2023 campaign 7-10, but did manage to win four of their last six games to close out the season.
But no one cares or is even talking about what Chicago did last year. All the talk is about their new quarterback Caleb Williams, who the team selected first overall in the 2024 NFL Draft. Add to that a slew of highly-touted offensive rookies and a veteran WR in Keenan Allen. This team is ripe with young talent, especially on the offensive side of the ball.
Here’s the issue with buying into the Bears hype: Let’s face it, the Bears organization and coaching staff isn’t a good one. This is arguably the same team with seemingly destroyed Justin Fields and now we’re supposed to believe that Caleb Williams is going to be the difference? You can roast me for it later, but I have some major concerns with Williams and to be blunt, most of it is just the fact that he’s in Chicago.
How will Caleb handle losing (likely) many, many football games? Do you think a guy like Allen is going to enjoy or tolerate a young quarterback who hasn’t done anything in the league suddenly pouting on the sidelines? This team feels like the epitome of “offseason champions.” Lots of potential and a ton of great moves on-paper, but without a great coaching staff, this could just be another disaster in Chicago.
Last on our tour, we have the Vikings. The Vikings, plain and simple, are looking toward 2025 and beyond. This isn’t to say that Sam Darnold couldn’t meet the potential that scouts saw when he was drafted third overall in 2018. Maybe Kevin O’Connell can bring out the best in Darnold, especially since he has a plethora of elite offensive weapons at his disposal.
The defense should improve in 2024 and show more consistency throughout the season. But look, are we really going to crown the Vikings as the NFC North champs in 2024? Absolutely not. The Vikings are in the not-especiallly-competitive part of their “competitive rebuild,” and are likely to win somewhere between four and eight games in 2024. The Vikings might be a tough out next season, but without elite quarterback play, it’ll just come down to being unable to finish close games.
Does that put the Vikings last in the division? Probably not. I believe Detroit wins the division again, but sees more challenges than they did a year prior. Green Bay looks like they’ll stay around .500 behind inconsistent QB play. The Vikings are prepared to surprise some by winning more than expected and finish right behind the Packers, which leaves the Bears finishing last due to inexperience at important positions and poor coaching. Save this one for later, unless it works out differently, of course.
Up Next