NFC North is pure CHAOS: Vikings & Bears 📈 Lions & Packers 📉

NFC North is pure CHAOS: Vikings & Bears 📈 Lions & Packers 📉

Welcome inside our CBS Sports studios. I’m Adam Shine alongside my guy, the great Kyle Long. And boy, Kyle, I feel like this NFC North, which we knew going into the season was going to be wild. I mean, if you’re a fan of any of these four teams, you’re thinking going into the year, my team has a real shot to make the playoffs and advance or win playoff games. This Minnesota Detroit game, wow. JJ McCarthy comes back. Hadn’t played since week number two. The Minnesota Vikings hadn’t won in Detroit since 2020. JJ McCarthy played brilliant football. Look, some dubs, you played the game brilliantly, are just bigger than others in terms of who you beat, where you beat him, where you beat them. Kyle, this is as significant a win by a team that a lot of people were counting out as we’ve seen in quite some time. So, I sat on the couch right over there behind the camera this morning doing our pregame show, NFL Today Plus, and they were asking me who’s, you know, who’s the best team in the NFC? And I said it was they they phrased it as, “Are the Packers the best team?” And I said, “Are they probably the best team on paper?” Yeah, but it’s the Detroit Lions. And for JJ McCarthy, for all that’s transpired over the last handful of weeks to come in there and not play world beating football, but to beat the Detroit Lions in Detroit, holy hell, that’s huge. You got to be just ecstatic if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan. A lot of questions about the quarterback position. We saw an injured Carson Wentz out there for the last few weeks taking his lumps. And you know, I respect the hell out of him for going out there and playing injured. But it’s JJ McCarthy show, right? And we got to see that today. There were some people who were wondering if Carson Wentz was, which was crazy talk by the way. If Carson Wentz was playing because they didn’t trust JJ McCarthy, that’s nonsense. I mean Kevin Oonnell, of course Mensah, coach GM respectively for the Vikings. They love this kid and he was just knocked silly in the game week two against Atlanta. Needed time to come back. But this is what he did in college. This is why they find ways to win. This is why in this impossible division, I picked preseason the Minnesota Vikings to win the division because if you have JJ playing like this, and by the way, if you can do this on the road in Detroit against the piping hot lines, do it anywhere. You could absolutely do it anywhere. You can do it anywhere. And I and I give a ton of credit to Quio Doofmens in Minnesota for building this team so that JJ McCarthy isn’t asked to throw for 300 yards a week. when he’s in the low red area, he can scamper. He can get a first down. He can get a touchdown for you. He can make a couple throws. You’ve got weapons on the outside. You’ve got the defensive side of the ball that’s been nails for a very long time. And the Detroit Lions ran into that buzzsaw today. And this is an offense in Detroit that we take for granted. They’re great every week, it seems like. Well, the Vikings were a little bit better. Their defense was a little bit better. And their secondyear quarterback coming off the bench essentially since week one is it goes out there and gets a win. And don’t forget week one, I think it was Monday Night Football against Chicago Bears. He went toe-to-toe with the number one pick. Went toe-to-toe in prime time and got a win. And this is another win in the division. And as you said, some wins are weighted a little bit heavier. This one’s very heavy. I never really took the cheese on Detroit being elites necessarily. I still think they’re obviously good enough, well coached enough to make the playoffs. To me, this one is more pro Minnesota than antiro. You agree? I would descri uh describe the Detroit Lions like this. They are not the team you want to get into a back alley brawl. Sure. Okay. Sure. And while there may be some holes in their team on the defensive side of the ball, you know, obviously some injury there. Christian Mahogany got carded off and I hope he’s doing well. That’s a good offensive lineman for the Detroit Lions. You just don’t want to fight that team because they may, you know, they got brass knuckles. They’re breaking bottles and they’re coming after you. That’s the Lions that I know and love and respect and they’re not going anywhere. You and I both know that. But to your brilliant point, this is about the Minnesota Vikings. And this NFC North just got heavier. It just got more exciting with JJ McCarthy back in the captain seat. And who knows what the heck’s going to happen now. And I love how you said you were teed up this morning about the Packers. Are they the team to beat? And the answer is no. And listen, I I think that if you watch that game last Sunday night, Packers and the Steelers, to me, it was more about the Steelers defense than anything else. Oh, you’re not giving Jordan Love credit. Nonsense. I watch even in the Arizona game before Pittsburgh. It was three quarters where he was horrible. Played well late. This was a terrible loss by the Green Bay Packers. There’s no fluidity on offense at home to the Carolina Panthers. I just want to bang on your drum all day. They say they didn’t play that song much today, buddy. No, no bangs, no drums. Played it a lot when I was there. Yeah, I was a brutal loss for the Green Bay Packers. getting a half point favorite going. Tip of tip of the cap to old Bryce Young and the boys in Carolina. You know, I’m going to whisper this. They’re a pretty good football team. So, I think it’s almost one of these games where it’s more about the Carolina Panthers than the Packers. And we’ve seen the Packers, they have historically played teams below their competition, close or not as well as they should have. They lost to the Browns. This is another one that they’re going to look back at the end of the season and say, “What the hell happened against the Carolina Panthers?” And for me, this is more about the Packers than it is the Panthers because of what you just said that they played down to a level of competition, you know, and I think when it comes to Jordan Love, people try to make Fletch happen. It’s not Favre Rogers Love. I think it’s Fetch. That’s Fletch, right? Fetch. He’s trying to make Fetch happen. Fletch. Fetch. We’re talking Mean Girls. I’m Yeah. Fletch. Fetch. Fetch. I got you, boy. Mean Girls reference. Whatever they’re trying to do, it’s not happening. And Mean Girls is a classic movie. By the way, this bare victory and sitting at this desk right here watching this puppy with you, man, I I first of all, I thought Chicago won that game a zillion times down the stretch. And Caleb Williams was unbelievable. And Coloulston Lovelin, you got to love sports. First two touchdowns of his career. That was huge. Caleb Williams, three touchdowns. Also caught a touchdown. You had the Hail Mary that failed at the end. an onside kick, all the points at the end of this game. By the way, let’s give Chicago credit. They were on that winning streak. Then it was kind of a dud in Baltimore, losing to Tyler Huntley. They find a way to win this messy finish. I thought it was a zeniest finish, craziest finish of the year. This is the kind of game under Matt Eberfloose. They find a way to lose. I can do nothing here after the dust settles, but stress the positive for Chicago. You know, even in a shootout with the Cincinnati Bengals, where the defense gave up upwards of 40 points. The look on Ben Johnson’s face at the end of that football game tells me everything that I need to know about where the Chicago Bears are headed and where they are right now. For another Mean Girls reference, the limit does not exist, Adam. The limit does not exist for this football team. They’re going to continue to bolster. They’re probably going to get active at the trade deadline. They’re going to bring some guys in because I think that this team can compete with any team in the National Football League and we saw it this week. We’ve seen it in weeks past here. Parody is a real thing in our league. In any given week, any team can punch somebody in the mouth and they’re going to hit the canvas. So for the Chicago Bears, keep swinging. I like their plan for not putting everything on Caleb’s plate and just allowing this team to win games as that a team. It’s not one guy, it’s the team. And Ben Johnson feels that and I feel that as a bear, former bear. The NFC North, the mean girls of the NFL.

Kyle Long and Adam Schein discuss the competitiveness in the NFC North, as all 4 teams are at least .500 after Week 9.

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