Little Brown Jug

A conversation heard on the field after the Michigan/Minnesota game on Saturday between the equipment managers after the players gave it back to them.

'Where do we put this thing now?' Equipment Manager #1

'I don't know, I suppose we'll just put it back in the same place it always is.' Equipment Manager #2

Remember what I said last week about the Gophers being overly reliant on Eric Decker to move the ball. Do you think we saw that today?

NFL Midseason Predictions (NFC)

Okay here we go with the NFC.

NFC East: Giants (12-4). The top three teams in this division, Cowboys excluded, all have a chance to win it since they all still play each other at least once before the season is over - the Giants and Eagles still have both of their games. I think there will be a tie for 2nd between the Eagles and Redskins and the Cowboys will finish in last even though they will probably have a winning record.

NFC North: I see a three-way tie for first at 9-7. I sized up all the matchups and it keeps coming up that way. Of course that is contingent upon the Vikes beating both the Pack and the Bears at home. Going through the tiebreakers, the head to heads would be 1-1 for all three, 4- 2 divsion record for all three, and 8-6 record against common opponents for all three. It would then come down to conference record, which I predict the Vikes to be on top of at 7-5, where the Pack and Bears would be 6-6 (Vikes 2-2 against the AFC, Bears and Pack 3-1). Did you get all of that? Of course the Vikes will let me down, probably as early as this weekend. In reality they are actually better off missing the playoffs again since then they could turn the page on the BChill era.

NFC South: Panthers (12-4). This is another divsion where all four teams could potentially have winning records or at least all four teams could have eight wins. These strong division are cancelled out by divisions like the....

NFC West: Arizona (9-7), in reality they really only need to win about one more game to capture the division since they are currently 5-3.

Wild Cards: There will be a three-way tie at 11-5 between the Eagles, Redskins, and the Bucs. The tiebreakers are too complicating to figure out without spending half a day on it and I have a wife, a kid, and a job so I will just say the Eagles and Bucs because I don't like the Redskins.

We'll see how I do, hopefully I get at least three teams right in each conference. Arizona and Tennessee are locks so I'm off to a good start.

NFL Midseason Predictions (AFC)

Nowadays everyone makes predictions on the NFL so I figured I might as well too. It usually makes for good discussion. I will pick a winner for each division and each conference's wild card with their projected record. I'll wait until right before the playoffs start to try and guess the Super Bowl matchup. I'll do the AFC today and the NFC tomorrow.

AFC East: Patriots (10-6) after the tiebreakers. I think both the Jets and Bill could finish 10-6 as well but the Patriots would finish on top because of tiebreakers. The Dolphins have a good chance of finishing over .500 as well.

AFC North: Steelers (12-4) easily. The only team with a shot of unseating them is the Ravens and at best they will finish 9-7.

AFC South: Titans (13-3) with the four-game lead they have now it would take a monumental collapse for them not to win it.

AFC West: Chargers (9-7). They have five home games remaining and they should be able to run the table on those and pick up a victory on the road along the way (at KC). Their only competitor, the Broncos, will probably only finish 7-9. However, they do play in San Diego the last week of the season so that could conceivably be a play-in game for the postseason since the Broncos have the tiebreaker due to Ed Hercules blowing that call when they played in week two.

Wild Cards: Jets (10-6) and Bills (10-6). I want to go against the Jets more than you can imagine for obvious reasons but they have a very winnable game at home against the Rams this weekend and their last five are all winnable. Sorry Colts fans but I think they will fall just short at 9-7 along with the Dolphins and Ravens.

If you couldn't tell, I didn't just randomly throw out numbers, I actually glanced at the remaining schedules, unlike the talking heads at ESPN. I'll still be wrong though.

Wide Open NFC North

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.