Week Ten is the Packers’ bye week in 2010, but we still have plenty to cheer about this long football weekend.
Now that the season is past the halfway mark, and given the Packers’ standing within the Conference and within the NFC North, perhaps it’s time to expand our rooting interest. While we reasonably root against our Divisional rivals from the start of the season, it is hard to know how to cheer in other NFC games. Now that the teams are starting to sort themselves out a bit, however, we have a better sense for who our competition might be when it comes to the matter of playoff seeding.
With that in mind, then, our relevant cheering begins this Thursday Night! The Ravens visit the Falcons on the NFL Network -- a good inter-conference match-up of a couple of 6-2, Division-leading teams. The Falcons are a half-game ahead of us in the NFC standings, and so we’ll be Raven fans on Thursday Night.
Likewise, we now have a rooting interest each time the New York Giants take the field. Specifically, we’re rooting against them, for they too are a half-game up on us in the NFC. Unhappily, while the Falcons get a real opponent this week, the Giants get the Cowboys. I know that anything can happen in the Division, but it’s hard to imagine the Giants losing this one, given how both these teams have been playing of late.
Finally, we are also tied with the defending-champion Saints in our quest for NFC supremacy. I expect them to gain a half-game on us this weekend, as we’ll be sitting at home, while they’ll be beating the 1-7 Carolina Panthers.
Meanwhile, within the Division, the Lions/Bills match-up has a certain appeal to it. I think both these teams are better than their records suggest -- or at least each deserves more wins than they have actually achieved. I believe the Lions have the greater talent of the two clubs, however, and so I predict a Detroit victory.
And, elsewhere, I am honestly torn about the Vikings’ trip to Chicago on Sunday. It’s hard to root for either team, of course, and yet the match-up does have the advantage of assuring us that one of our Division rivals is sure to lose ground during our bye. Still, the practical question remains: whom do we want to see win this game?
On the one hand, the Bears are the team with whom we are currently neck-and-neck. They are also the one team within the Division to whom we have lost. Logic suggests, therefore, that our allegiance is with the visiting Vikings in this contest.
On the other hand, I believe the Vikings are a better team than the Bears, and for as dysfunctional as they are I am more afraid of them in the long run. In that respect, therefore, I would rather see them drop to 3-6 and become permanently despondent about the 2010 season. Otherwise, you see what happens… They get this heroic, come-from-behind victory against the Cardinals this week, they go into Chicago and beat a Division foe next week, and then they welcome in the Packers the following week -- riding a win streak, at 4-5, having tightened the Division race considerably, and feeling pretty good about themselves.
Bottom line? I am rooting for the Bears, though I think the Vikings are better, and I think the Vikings will win.
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