Nov 18 2008
Ménage à trois in the North
What is up with the ménage à trois in the North? The NFC North Division of the NFL, that is. They are currently involved in a 3 way tie. So far you have the Green Bay Packers, The Chicago Bears, and The Minnesota Vikings all staring at each other slap dab in a 3 way tie for first place. Each of these teams are sitting at 5-5 and no one seems to want to pull away. Heck, even the Detroit Lions, this years NFL punching bag, has yet to be eliminated from the playoffs and they have a 0-10 record.
What makes this worse is that there is almost no hope for this conference to land a wild card spot for the playoffs. It is either you win the conference or you take the holidays off. With all the byes gone and just 6 games left to play, no one single team seems to want to put some distance between themselves. And to make matters worse, all three teams are playing games against teams outside their conference this week. After week 12, we could still be tied.
What makes it worse is the conference games are pretty much split down the middle with the exception of the Vikings who are currently 4-3. The one big difference with these three teams is the point differential. Green Bay far exceeds the other two teams as they currently hold the edge with +65 while Chicago is at +9 and Minnesota is at -11. When you break it down further, you can see the Packers and the Bears have identical Home/Road records while the Vikings can not seem to win a game away from home as they are 1-4 outside the Metrodome.
The last six games only have 2 matches that pit any combination of these 3 against each other. That would be week 13 when Chicago travels to Minnesota to play the Vikings in the Metrodome. The last one is during week 16 and it will see the Packers heading to Soldier Field to do battle with the Bears. This is the only chances for these teams to control the destiny of their rivals.
Personally, if I had to pick a winner out of these 3 teams, it would have to be the Packers. What do you think. You can vote below.
packers are definitely the champs here