For the first time in National Football League history, we will have a Wild Card team that won 14 regular season games. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Wild Card, which began in 1970 with one team earning a playoff berth without winning their division and has grown to three teams joining four division winners in each conference today, was installed to allow a good team not to be eliminated.
What we have this season is two great teams playing out of the same division and meeting tonight to decide who gets the top seed in the National Football Conference and who is relegated to the fifth seed and opens the postseason on the road.
A lot is at stake for the Minnesota Vikings and their hosts tonight, the Detroit Lions.
The point spread has been pretty consistent with the home team favored by three, which when factoring in the home field advantage pretty much equates to these two teams being equal. In fact, while the Lions burst out of the gate, put together their longest ever franchise win streak of 11 games, and smoked many opponents with an offense that attacked from all different directions, the Vikings have been like the turtle in this race.
Other than dropping back-to-back games to the Lions and Los Angeles Rams mid-season, the Vikings have been perfect. And they come into tonight’s titanic battle with less injuries than the Lions are struggling with.
Detroit has had 11 defensive players miss games this year while spending time on the injured reserve list. Perhaps their most dominant defensive player, Aidan Hutchinson, was lost early in the season to a broken leg. A couple weeks ago their two-headed running game was cut in half with the loss of David Montgomery.