The Green Bay Packers got a useful look at their division rival over the weekend, and it only sharpened the picture in the NFC North.
Minnesota’s unbeaten run finally snapped when the Detroit Lions ground out an ugly win, and the result said plenty about how shaky the Vikings’ offense really is. What had looked like a hot start now looks a lot more fragile, especially after that Week 1 win over Green Bay helped launch the run in the first place.
For the Packers, the takeaway is pretty clear: there’s not much reason to treat Minnesota like the team to fear in the division. Green Bay sits two games back of the Vikings and currently holds the tiebreaker over the Chicago Bears, but the bigger threat to a Packers push in the NFC North does not appear to be Minnesota.
Kyler Murray has been at the center of the concerns. He has completed less than 60% of his passes in each of the past two weeks and has only five touchdown passes against three interceptions. The Vikings have topped 23 points only three times this season, and the rest of their schedule has exposed an offense that has spent too much time stuck under 20.
That makes Minnesota look more like an early-season mirage than a real problem for Green Bay. The standings may create some noise, but the source of the concern is fading fast.
Detroit showed exactly how to handle the Vikings by leaning on the run game and forcing Brian Flores to answer in a more traditional way. The Lions controlled the clock and put the pressure squarely on Minnesota’s offense, knowing Murray was not going to bail them out in the biggest moments.
Green Bay may not have the same run game to copy that formula, but the Packers still have one more matchup with Minnesota, and plenty of other teams left on the Vikings’ schedule can take the same approach Detroit used. That’s why the standings can be misleading here. The Packers have more to worry about from their other two division rivals than from the team sitting atop the early race.
Minnesota’s win over Green Bay in Week 1 now looks like a perfect storm, one that masked a lot of flaws. Sunday’s loss did the opposite. It pulled the curtain back, and for the Packers, it made one thing look even more true: everything is still in reach.
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