Sunday for the Week 17 National Football League action has a lot of rain in the forecast. At five of the eight outdoor games on today’s schedule rain is in the forecast. Not severe winter weather, but the wet stuff.
When this happens, that happens … or so some would think.
The final couple weeks of a season require making sure the team you are betting on wants to win as much as you’d like them too. That was the case yesterday, where the Green Bay Packers seemed to throw up the surrender flag before the game against the Baltimore Ravens started. It’s not that Green Bay doesn’t want to end the season in a hail of confetti in their team colors next February at the conclusion of Super Bowl LX, it’s just that head coach Matt LaFleur decided before his team took the field yesterday there were bigger fish to fry down the road.
His decision to not play starting quarterback Jordan Love despite him clearing concussion protocol was the first peg in his team getting blown out at home by the in need of a win and hope to follow Ravens.
With the loss, the Chicago Bears clinch the NFC North Division title before they take the field tonight at Levi’s Stadium to meet the San Francisco 49ers. The home team is still in control of securing the top seed in the NFC for the playoffs, which would require a pair of home wins to close out the regular season tonight and next Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks.
The Bears could actually still win the top seed in the NFC but that would require them winning their last two games and getting a lot of help from other results.