No division in football has more collective preseason excitement than the NFC North. The Lions, fresh off their first playoff win in 32 years, are among the NFC favorites. Following a strong second half of last year and a narrow miss at their own NFC Championship appearance, the Packers just signed Jordan Love to a large extension. Caleb Williams expectations are so high that betting markets currently favor the Bears to post their first winning record since the Double Doink. Even the Vikings, the NFC North team most in transition, are enjoying a flurry of training camp headlines praising J.J. McCarthy’s early performance.
It’s a good time to be an NFL fan in the Upper Midwest. Unfortunately for those who meet the description, they’re likely to be let down.
The first red flag is that the outlook is positive for all the NFC North teams. In a league in which teams play more than a third of their schedule against division opponents, it’s nearly impossible for all these teams to outperform expectations.
The second red flag is that every one of these four teams fits a specific archetype of a team who’ll disappoint.
The Bears: The “Generational Talent”
To find the last time a first overall pick posted a winning record as a rookie QB, you have to go back to Andrew Luck in 2012. Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, and Bryce Young all suffered losing seasons their first year. To be fair, only Goff’s team obtained that first overall pick via trade, as the Bears did. Most of these teams were coming off of terrible, terrible seasons. By the same token, though, expectations for all those teams were low. I don’t think any of them were favored to post a winning record, like the Bears currently are. Caleb Williams faces higher expectations than Mayfield, Burrow, and Lawrence, all of whom arguably proved themselves more in college competition. It’s going to be hard for Williams to live up to the hype.
The Packers: The Half-Season Darlings
The thing about almost making the NFC Championship is that what it really means is the Packers played well in Dallas. They smoked the Cowboys. That was one game. Three weeks before that victory, they were sweating out a narrow win in Charlotte after losing to Tommy DeVito and getting stomped by the Buccaneers at home. They really did have a strong second half of the season—they beat the Lions and beat the Chiefs right before the Tommy Cutlets game—but it was inconsistent at the same time, and the Cowboys win is carrying a lot of weight for one performance. Everyone sees what the Packers see in Jordan Love. But nobody has seen it over even one full season of play, and it’s not like he has the 49ers’ roster backing him up.
The Lions: The Not–Quite–Conference–Favorites
Say everything goes as betting markets predict. Say the Lions finish the year tied with the Eagles at 11–6. With the Eagles’ facing the easier NFC portion of the schedule, the Lions would have to go on the road in the divisional round. This isn’t quite how markets see it—they have the Lions slightly likelier than the Eagles to win the NFC—but the fact we have to split hairs on whether the Lions would be second-round favorites underscores how close their hypothetical win probability is to 50% in that hypothetical game. If the median expectation is for the Lions to have a 50/50 shot in the divisional round if they get there, that means it’s likelier than not that the Lions do not make the NFC Championship this year. The likeliest case, in other words, is that the Lions come up short of last year’s performance. This doesn’t mean they’re bad, but I’d guess the average Lions fan is anticipating bigger things.
The Vikings: The Team Without a Quarterback
I don’t have anything against J.J. McCarthy’s performance at Michigan. He did what he had to do, and in a lot of cases that involved handing the ball off. He had a great offensive line, and he may have benefited in 2022 from the sign-stealing, but you don’t have to carry a team to the title to be a deserving national champion. Still, he was the fifth quarterback selected in April. And, he’s only the backup. And, the Vikings are playing in a division with two of the NFC’s five most likely Super Bowl contenders. The Vikings are in the most sympathetic situation as far as meeting expectations goes. None of the hype around them can be described as “breathless,” and breathless is certainly a word that can be used on each of the other three. But it’s still a recipe for a hard year. Right now, ESPN’s FPI doesn’t have them favored in a single game in September or October.
Miscellany
- The White Sox fired Pedro Grifol, and as we have said too many times to count, that seems wise. The level of bad play (historically bad) and the style of bad play (jarringly sloppy and lazy) both pointed to problems beyond roster construction, though of course the White Sox have roster construction problems as well. Now, though, our clubhouse theory gets tested. Do the White Sox get better from here? They almost have to, right? If they finish 40–122 or better, they will have won at a higher rate under the interim, Grady Sizemore, than they did under Grifol. The White Sox’ remaining schedule is fairly average, so we don’t need to worry about that piece of the equation. One complication? Sizemore was on the White Sox’ staff already. That’s how interims generally work. One distinction, though: Unlike a lot of managerial firings, this was a house-cleaning. The bench coach, third base coach, and assistant hitting coach also all went out the door. Maybe the White Sox front office does understand what it created.
- Are the Braves going to miss the playoffs? After Saturday’s games, they were safe by more than a game in the Wild Card standings and they only trailed the Phillies by five, with the Phillies amidst their worst stretch of baseball all season. Since then, the Phillies have gone 3–1, taking a series from the Dodgers in the process. The Padres and Diamondbacks have gone a combined 8–0. If the Mets win as a favorite this afternoon in Denver, the Mets will have gone 3–2. The Braves? 0–4, with two shutouts and an average final score of 10–3. If the Mets win this game, the Braves will go to bed tonight on the outside looking in. This is understandable—Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. were projected to be worth twelve wins, and they aren’t the only players hurt—but it’s happening at a bad time, right in the heart of Atlanta’s window. Neither Sean Murphy nor Matt Olson is producing at a level that justifies next year’s salary, and each is both about to hit the decline on the average aging curve. They’re both signed through 2028, and they’re not the only ones. This gets at the heart of the problem with what seemed like such an infallible early-extension approach: In a vacuum, each deal makes sense. Taken together, you can only signed so many before you start sacrificing future flexibility. The Braves signed a whole lot. The Jorge Soler deadline acquisition could imply this doesn’t concern them all that much, but it could also imply a feeling of urgency—an imperative to make the playoffs that verges on panic. They might be the most interesting team to watch this winter even if they make it to October and October goes well. If they don’t make the playoff field, put them front and center.
