Vikings-Packers game moved to prime time

Will the lack of a running game without injured Marshawn Lynch and Thomas Rawls be the downfall for the two-time NFC champs? A trip to Arizona brought about nearly no positives, and it’s left many wondering if a road to the Super Bowl is anything more than a pipe dream.

The Texans scored a season high in points despite starting their fourth different quarterback this season. The outcome was most certainly decided less than five minutes later after a sack led to an Aaron Rodgers fumble that was returned 36 yards for a Cardinals touchdown. As a team, Green Bay has 15 interceptions this season, tied for No. 7 in the NFL. Even with a home loss to St. Louis on Sunday, the Seahawks are 7-2 in their last nine games and as hot as any team that isn’t already situated for a first-round bye.

Speedster John Brown (61 catches, 958 yards, seven touchdowns) has given Palmer a down-field threat to take the tops off defenses. And it is because of that predictability the Vikings rank eighth in yards per play (4.67) and 16th in first down percentage (12.6 percent) on those plays.

Arizona gained 381 total yards of offense. Abbrederis finished with one reception for 5 yards.

In general, a play counts as a success if it gains 40% of yards on first down, 60 percent of yards on second down, and 100 percent of yards on third down. The Packers converted 29 percent of third-down opportunities.

It turns out that Green Bay’s backup offensive linemen weren’t ready to play.

Injuries to Andre Ellington and Chris Johnson were supposed to derail the Cardinals’ running game. And that’s with one game remaining against a struggling Green Bay offense. So is the underdog mindset the demanding 59-year-old, who was passed over so many times for head coach positions in the past, has unabashedly tried to instill in his players. There are a lot of pretty good teams out there. Dwight Freeney was effectively dead in San Diego, and he sacked Rodgers three times on Sunday.

“It’s up to Rodgers to drop back, identify the defense, analyze the action and decipher which of these individual routes is best to target”, he wrote. Barclay and Walker didn’t even come close to achieving that standard Sunday. “After we got beat by Seattle and the Green Bay game, the mentality of our team has changed a little bit for the better in my opinion”, Zimmer said. Perhaps you’ve heard that.

Actually, though, this has consistently been Rodgers’ production recently. In his previous 55 games, he did it six times.

Sandwiched around Rodgers’ only touchdown of the game were strip sacks and fumble returns by the Cardinals for touchdowns. Rodgers handed the ball to James Starks, who promptly fumbled yet again. The Vikings can’t care who they’re going to play. There was a parade of big fellas limping to the sideline during the Cardinals game.

Arizona’s dominance quickly quieted a large portion of Sunday’s crowd, thousands of which were Packers’ fans wearing green and yellow.

These are, after all, the Minnesota Vikings we’re talking about. A win would increase the Vikings’ regular season record to 11-5 and give them home-field advantage to host Seattle in the first round of the playoffs. “It would mean a lot (to win the division)”.

Green Bay will face the NFC East and AFC South in 2016, and will stay exclusively in the Eastern and Central time zones.

If the Packers win, they’ll be the three-seed in the NFC playoffs and play either Seattle or Minnesota in the wild-card round of the playoffs. If the Seahawks lose to Arizona in Week 17, it’ll be Green Bay hosting Seattle. It then plays every team in one division from the opposite conference (which rotate every four years) and one division from the same conference (rotating every three), while wrapping up with a game against the teams in the other two divisions in the same conference that finish in the same divisional spot.