The National Football League has 30 teams in action today and a dozen outside venues where weather will not play a major role. There will be some rain in Foxboro, where the New England Patriots host the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Seattle, where the Seahawks entertain the Detroit Lions. But, the league has once again avoided severe weather that could significantly affect play on the field.
In most seasons, the work we do on Monday and Tuesday will set us up with a few games we are looking at for money rated plays. Not this year. During a typical NFL regular season there are seldom injuries during the week that dramatically affect a teams available personnel on game day. This goes particularly for quarterbacks, who wear red shirts during practice and are not tackled in drills.
In the 2021 campaign, a team’s roster can be severely weakened late in a week due to a virus outbreak that sends groups of players to the reserve COVID-19 list and inactive for game action. That is what happened this week with the Minnesota Vikings, who play the Green Bay Packer today in an important contest for both teams.
The Vikings need to win their final two games and get help to earn a Wild Card berth. They are currently ranked eighth in the National Football Conference, and only seven teams from the NFC advance to the playoffs. Today’s game at Lambeau Field was going to be a difficult task for Mike Zimmer’s squad, they had downed the Packers earlier this year and Green Bay is looking to close out their season with a couple wins to secure the top seed and single postseason bye in the conference.
Early this week, the Vikings prospects took a severe hit when quarterback Kirk Cousins was placed on the reserve COVID-19 list and is out of action today. His replacement, Sean Mannion, was a 2015 third round draft choice of the St. Louis Rams and has been a career backup with only two previous NFL starts.
The switch at quarterback sent the point spread in this game soaring, with the Packers initially a seven point favorite while this morning they are listed as a 13 point pick. The Packers giving the touchdown would have been a pick for us this week, but the 13 point spread takes the game off the board for us.