The Minnesota Vikings have been awful so far this season getting off to a 1-4 start, getting humiliated at home by teams like the 202 Dolphins and sputtering on offense as the greybeard Brett Favre (supposedly the savior come out of retirement) has thrown just 5 TD passes and 7 INTs in the team’s first 5 games of the season.If you had read that headline a week two weeks ago you would have thought that there was a crack-riddled monkey writing these online wager headlines.
This is not exactly the type of information that would ordinarily make a discriminating online wagering fan bet the house on this team winning the competitive NFC North division. But it’s not so much what the Vikings are going to achieve as what their division rivals are not going to achieve that makes the Vikings such an attractive online wager option as the champs of the NFC North.
For starters, the Green Bay Packers (3-2), a team that was expected to dominate the division and started off looking like it was the team to beat, is injured past the point of no return. The latest to go down was QB Aaron Rogers (1,233 yards, 9 TDs, 6 INTs) who is currently concussed is likely to miss at least one game. That’s on top of losing starting RB Ryan Grant for the season and a host of other players. This team is for a very long season if they can’t get healthy soon.
The other contender in the NFC North is the Chicago Bears; a team that has been a pleasant surprise to many online wager fans as they’ve ran up a record 4-1 so far this season. QB Jay Cutler has been fantastic with a passer rating of 102.2 and a TD/INT ratio of 6/3. But he’s also concussed and this team will have to learn how to run the ball is it wants to play in January. It currently ranks 22nd in the league with just 98.6 rushing yards per game and defenses are going to kill Cutler if the running game doesn’t come to life soon.
All that means is that the Minnesota Vikings are looking in pretty good shape for a division title run. The new addition of Randy Moss has also paid instant dividends and when Sidney Rice returns this will be one of the most productive passing games in football, which is a very scary thing considering the Vikes also have RB Adrian Peterson in the backfield.