The Packers Will Own the NFC North

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So, I’ll get to the end first and work my way backward from there: I think the Packers can win the NFC North. I mean, it’s right there in the subject line. Lots of upside in the division, but without a runaway favorite and all four teams’ win totals between 7.5 and 9.5 wins, I sort of love the value of the only team with a coach with playoff wins.

1. The Bears will improve but have a long way to go

2. The Vikings defense is an issue and they will regress in close games

3. The Lions drafted a RB and have quite a few question marks on both sides of the ball for a favorite

4. You don’t need a top-15 QB to make the playoffs, especially in the NFC

The last point is the one I want to focus on the most. I already went over some of my thoughts on the Bears and Vikings, but the more I looked at the landscape of the NFC North, the more I realized that the Packers don’t need an MVP under center to end up with a division title.

Let’s poke around a bit in Titletown:

Offense

Very hard to speculate on the passing offense and likely a fool’s errand to try. All I can do is look at who they have, who they drafted, what’s been successful in the past, and where I could see it heading.

Watson and Doubs showed flashes last year and the two-headed monster of Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon has been and will be effective again. So the real test will likely be on LaFleur and the rest of the coaching staff to find ways to put a young QB in favorable positions.

Leaning on the aforementioned running back duo will help any QB, but I think a nice way to get him easy open receivers is to run more two TE sets. Especially since the receiver I’m most excited about isn’t a WR at all.

The more I dig in on Luke Musgrave, the more I like the pick. Maybe just a good bit of value since tight ends in general were sliding in the draft and he was coming off an injury.

He’s Kelce sized (actually an inch taller) and pretty damn fast. He missed most of his senior season at Oregon State with an MCL injury but was cleared to play in the Senior Bowl earlier this year and then went to Indy and laid down a 4.61 in the 40-yard dash.

The way he gets vertical leverage on cornerbacks already has me loving his upside as someone who will be beating the pants off of the sort of coverages he could be seeing with Watson and Doubs out wide.

In a bit of a theme, the Pack also drafted Tucker Kraft (SDSU, the one where Dallas Goedert went) who also missed a good chunk of time last season but had an electric 2021 with 65/770/6. Just like Musgrave (and Kelce) he’s 6’5”, 250 lbs.

Maybe it’s a scary prospect to hear that I want more rookies on the field more often for an already super young team but, they’ve had lots of success with 12 personnel and I think it’s a great way to help a young QB and counteract a lot of what defensive coordinators will throw at him.

Final tally: If the coaching staff is smart enough to use what works and Jordan Love isn’t a complete failure, this should be a middle-of-the-pack offense with upside, which is good enough in the North.

Defense

There are some legit stars and high-end players across all three levels. I’m convinced this will be the best defense in the NFC North (low bar to clear) if they stay healthy and continue to see the improvement from some nice young players.

This could (should?) be the best pass rush in the division and has a ceiling of being top 10 in the league. Getting Rashan Gary back from his ACL injury is the biggest key, but just running it back with most of the big contributors from last year should mean a big improvement from a defense that feels pretty close. Not as star-studded as some D-lines, but some very solid players involved along with the added bonus of a bit more depth this year after the drafting of Lukas Van Ness and some nice reports out of camp for the rest of the crew. Preston Smith, JJ Enagbare, Brenton Cox and Justin Hollins rotating through with Gary and Van Ness sounds good to me.

Quay Walker was one of my favorite rookies last year (when he wasn’t getting thrown out of games for shoving opposing coaches). He showed up quite a bit while in coverage (breaking up 7 passes) but very much sucks as a run defender and needs to continue to work on that to really reach his star potential. One of their better run defenders last year, Safety Adrian Amos is now in New York with their former QB, which doesn’t help. LB and Safety are for sure two of the thinner spots.

In the secondary Jaire Alexander is a full-on shutdown guy. Rasul Douglas grades out well and again, if the pass rush continues to improve, their jobs should be even easier. They both grade out well against the run as well.

The Schedule does have some rough spots but will also include two games against Justin Fields, as well as some easier tests in opposing QBs like Las Vegas, Atlanta, Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay.

Final Tally + Devils Advocate Notes: The rush defense needs to improve a bunch, they’re thin at safety and a little green at the interior defensive line. But all in all, this was a top-15 defense last year that should be trending up.

If you are really bought into this whole thing, the NFC is weak as a whole relatively speaking and there’s a good chance for this to be a playoff team, so 30/1 to win three games in the playoffs with an experienced coach isn’t the craziest thing but, I tried to keep it semi-realistic here (with an out if you still can’t shake the Lions hype).

A lot of horrible takes on the gambling suspensions handed down by the league yesterday, and I’ll do my best to not pick on Mike Florio every single time I send one of these, but Lord he makes it so hard. I’ll leave you to go find his latest lunatic take.

My general thoughts are this:

It’s tough because the NFL has a responsibility to manage the optics here, but there are plenty of road maps provided by other leagues in Europe where sports betting has been prevalent in the legal world for much longer. I can understand the feeling that it’s a bit hypocritical given the partnerships with sportsbooks and some players have even voiced some frustration on the subject.

As shitty as it is to never take the players’ side, I feel like my final opinion is that the players just need to figure it out and follow the damn rules. If I’m an NFL player, I’m calling my agent and having him send me the TL;DR bullet points of all the ways to get suspended for betting like yesterday.

I am in the same camp that thinks betting on the WNBA while you’re in the team jacuzzi shouldn’t be a 6-game suspension but the rules are the rules and it does not appear that there’s any current leeway.

The risk/reward is just way too big. You tell me I can’t sports bet or it’ll cost me my job at Burger King, I likely tell Randy, the shift manager, to get bent. You lay down the same ultimatum for a multi-million dollar position on an NFL team, I think I could likely follow the rules.

Data Viz to elaborate:

The worst part, we’re likely not done. In an article by Kalyn Kahler for The Athletic, one agent was quoted as saying “There’s a part of me that thinks we are going to wind up dealing with 30 of these.”

Very easy one here. It’s a survivor pool for the 2023 NFL Season. It’s free. If you win it, we’ll send you to the Super Bowl in Vegas next February. There is a cut-off for the number of entries we can take, so grab a spot and worry about the week one pick later.

Gambling is bad, but drugs are also still bad. Cam Robinson was the highest-graded returning lineman for the Jags and will now sit the first four games. This will mean a reshuffling of the line with Walker Little heading to LT and the rookie starting on the other side for now.

I had some help shopping the Packers’ lines for the betting preview (Thanks, Dan). If you’re price shopping, my guys at 4for4 have some nice tools that’ll lay out the best odds for ya. Connor took a quick peek at all 32 teams’ betting prices to make the playoffs ⬇️

I read the article below regarding the Players Association electing a new Executive Director and still don’t really understand why the secrecy was needed. Apparently, they take it real serious though:

The current CBA extends through 2030 so I don’t know what this actually means but, going back to the gambling suspensions, the people who will be advocating for the players will have some stuff on their plates before then.

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