Packers’ NFC North reign ends with 20-13 loss to Vikings

Two plays later Minnesota returned the favor when Captain Munnerlyn returned an Aaron Rodgers fumble 55 yards for another Vikings touchdown. “I hope there’s a lot more on the horizon”. Nevertheless, take Seattle, as this team is too experienced and too driven to lose in the postseason to a team as young as the Vikings are on offense. Hopefully they keep winning them. “Now I’ve just got to get up early tomorrow morning – I’m not looking forward to it – and I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do to get ready for Sunday”, he said…. White athletic tape encircled the fingers on his hands. They were first in the National Football League in points scored, at 31.25 per game.

“We haven’t won four in a row like the Packers”.

Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy is entering his eighth playoffs as a head coach. You appreciate moments like this. “We’re built to do this – we just have to do it”. He’s misfired several times in the majority of recent games, an occurrence that was incredibly rare in his past.

Rodgers finished the regular season with a 92.7 passer rating, which is a career-worst for him.

But the punishment to the bodies was at least rewarded with a title of some sort this time.

“We’ve got to put that one behind us”, receiver James Jones said. “With that, it definitely means a little more to the guys that are eight-years plus here with this organization”.

The Panthers will host a home playoff game for the third straight year. Theoretically, it gave them a slightly easier 2016 schedule. Right now, the Packers look like a shell of the team that had a Super Bowl appearance in its grasp past year before a late Seahawks rally in Seattle. Green Bay got in, but it would take quite the leap of faith to presume the Packers are in a spot in which they can get hot right now. “You look at any statistical analysis that holds up as far as point production, a series with a big play in it leads to point production”. “It’s terrible hard, and when you get these opportunities you have to try to take advantage of them”, said Zimmer, the defensive backs coach for Dallas in the 1995 championship season.

“I think they’ve just figured out how to play”, Zimmer said. The defense isn’t even a top ten defense in the NFL.

The Ravens finished 5-11. While doing so, the Vikings are going to need to play spectacular coverage on Doug Baldwin, who has really come alive since tight end Jimmy Graham went down with a season-ending knee injury.

“I went with my gut feeling”.

“You never know how many opportunities you’re going to get”, he said.

McCarthy said that for his team to succeed in Washington on Sunday, they have to handle all that comes with playoff football on the road, and do something that his team perhaps appeared to struggle with Sunday against Minnesota.

“We haven’t had a good record against them”, Greenway said. “From Day 1 he saw how much potential this team had, and now we are starting to see the fruits of our labor”. It’s a great feeling to win the division. “We’re on our way”. They’ll have the home turf on Sunday, horns out and shields up.

“Heck, yeah”, Robison said. It isn’t every year we get 10-5 vs. 10-5 with a division crown at stake.

Here are the five biggest takeaways from the Packers’ 20-13 loss to the Vikings. The Seahawks beat Minnesota just as badly in the teams’ first meeting, a 38-7 victory that was somehow worse than the score indicated.

49ERS 19, RAMS 16: Phil Dawson kicked a 23-yard field goal 11:33 into overtime for his fourth of the game to lift San Francisco past St. Louis in Jim Tomsula’s last game as coach.

Bridgewater must play an important supporting role for the Vikings to advance to the second round of the playoffs, but a victory only will come if the defense is fantastic and Peterson is a force on a day in which bitter cold is predicted with sub-zero wind chills.