With the ankle sprain of Kyle Orton keeping him out for a month and leaving the Bears QB job up to the one and only Rex Grossman, the NFC North is up for grabs between the Packers, Bears, and Vikings. Even if Orton was still in there the division title will come down to the finish.
Looking at the Bears and Packers upcoming schedules, 10-6 should be enough to get Vikes their first NFC North division title. Since there are eight games left I divide the remainder of the schedule up into two- four games stretches. The Vikes need to shoot for 3-1 in each stretch would get them the requisite 10 wins.
The first stretch: vs. Pack, @ Tampa, @ Jacksonville, and vs. Bears. Breaking this down, the games against the Pack and the Bears are must wins. They can't afford to go 0-2 against either one of them since they already lost to both on the road so in essence they have to find a way to win either at Jacksonville or at Tampa.
The second stretch: @ Detroit, @ Arizona, vs. Atlanta, vs. NY Giants. The game @ Arizona is going to be tough so you figure the Vikes will have to win the other three to get to double figures in wins. The game vs. Atlanta was one you could circle as an automatic win at the start of the season but that is no longer the case. That would be a nice one to get for tiebreaker purposes since the Falcons have already beat the Bears and Pack. It could come down to the last game against the Giants, who could very well be playing for home field throughout the NFC playoffs.
I will put another post out there in a few days on my predictions for all of the divisions in the NFL and who I think will get the wild cards.
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