After tonight’s contest in Minnesota between the Vikings and Green Bay Packers there will only be one NFL regular season date left in 2023. The NFL played their Monday Night Football game last night to allow college football the New Year’s Day stage, and will complete their regular season next Sunday with all 32 teams in action.
It wasn’t always like this.
Not too many years ago the NFL played a Monday Night Football game to end their regular season. Then, a team scheduled to play in the Wild Card round complained that they had to open their playoffs on a short work week. So, the league moved all the games to Sunday.
The league also had a problem from the bookmaker lobby in having their games scheduled in advance for the final week where a number of afternoon contests could be rendered crucial or meaningless depending on results from earlier in the day. Books were trapped on what lines to set on the afternoon games that could be dramatically affected by the early results.
To erase this problem for the bookmakers, the NFL adopted a flex schedule for starting times for the final weekend contests. The games are slotted so contests that could affect another matchup all start at the same time.
Yep, the NFL, while preaching the ills of gambling, has been in a worker partnership with the gambling world for decades. Now, over the past two seasons, their partnership is boosted by huge advertising dollars with player agents actually negotiating salaries with gambling revenue figured into the bottom line.
Tonight, the Vikings and Packers meet in a contest between two teams that had dominated the NFC North Division for years, but now are perhaps headed to the bottom of the division. The Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears both have bright futures and the Vikings and Packers appear on a downward trend.
The Lions are enjoying their breakout season this year while the Bears could well land the top pick in the upcoming draft while holding the Carolina Panthers selection via last year’s trade that delivered the first pick in the 2023 draft to the Panthers and multiple high draft choices, including the Panthers first pick in next spring’s allocation of college talent to Chicago. The Panthers, with that top pick acquired from the Bears, selected Bryce Young with the first overall selection. Early returns indicate the Houston Texans got the better of the two quarterbacks chosen with the first two picks in this year’s draft in selecting C.J. Stroud.
So, tonight, we get a couple teams from the NFC North Division with matching won/loss records, both with seven wins and eight losses. The Vikings hold the tiebreaker over the Packers headed into this game based on their victory at Lambeau Field in October, but whichever team wins tonight will have the clear advantage over the opponent.
The Vikings have had to rifle through a number of quarterbacks this year following the midseason injury to Kirk Cousins. The Packers are in the first year with Jordan Love their full time starter.
The winner tonight is still alive for a playoff berth, the loser is out.
My leanings are with the Green Bay Packers but not enough to buck the chances of the Vikings at home.