The division has been beating up on the rest of the league, but is it sustainable?
The media and the NFL have made much of the NFC North’s success in the first six weeks of the 2024 season, and rightfully so. The division as a whole has an 17-5 record through those six weeks, and not only are they setting records for the league since the 2002 realignment, but they’re also the top four teams in one specific — and important — metric.
However, much of that early success has been the result of beating up on other divisions, particularly the AFC South. In fact, there has only been one game between NFC North teams so far, which came two Sundays ago when the Vikings beat the Packers 31-29. That leaves the back end of the schedule loaded with divisional games that will sort out the pecking order in the North and will likely end up with one or more teams out of the playoff hunt rather than the group becoming the first to send all four teams to the postseason.
That self-winnowing should start on Sunday, when the 5-0 Vikings and 4-1 Lions meet for a massive game. But a deeper look at the schedules show just how heavily division play is weighted towards the latter part of the year. For example, five of the Packers’ final nine games are in the division; for the Lions it is 5 of 10. The Vikings finish with four division games in the final seven weeks, while the Bears have all six division games in their final 8 contests.
For now, these teams are all doing good work against the rest of the NFL. That late-season stretch will decide which of them are for real and which will be on the outside looking in come January.
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Yes. And it’s not particularly close.
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To wit, the top four teams in the entire NFL are the four in the NFC North. The biggest challenge to getting four teams in the postseason will be the Bears, who have an absolutely brutal second half — particularly because they play all six of their divisional games in the final eight weeks.
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This seems like something that might be important to install.