Tis the season for all the teams to become champions.

I do think the Vikings will be a tough opponent this year. They do have some talent on both sides of the ball. Cousins is a good/not great QB. They will win probably a little over half their games.

Will the Packers take a step back? Possibly. Our offense is going to look very differently without Adams. Does it mean it will be worse? No not necessarily. It just means it will look differently. Our Defense will look differently also. But how much different? I think a quite a bit. We have a trio of CB's that could give us the best trio of CB's in the league. Our safety's are underrated. And we drafted 2 players that should give the front 7 an immediate boost.

While the Packers could take a step back, lets not think that the Vikings automatically are going to run away with the division. They have an all new coaching stuff. They don't have Aaron Rodgers either. I don't see the Vikings winning 13 games this year.

Until GB gets dethroned they are the kings of the North!

"Will the Packers take a step back? Probably, because it’s going to take some time for Aaron Rodgers and that offense to come together. But that team will be forged on the strength of the defense."

I am forever the ultimate optimistic when it comes to the Green Bay Packers. I'm a "Homer" to the umpteenth degree and I KNOW this about myself and don't care. This entire offseason I've had the opinion the Packers offense will be just fine. No Davante Adams? No Problem.

BUT, Aaron Rodgers HAS to buy into what MLF will be selling this year and he has to buy in 100% Rodger is actually my biggest concern this year. By that, I mean WILL Rodgers be 100% in on what LaFleur is selling? This is a team built on a strong defense and running game. He has a HC who can scheme open my grandma if he just trusts him.

Rodgers doesn't have Adams this year to force feed the ball. The offense MUST be run the way MLF has designed it to be truly effective and give the Packers a chance. Rodgers is a REALLY smart dude. He knows how this team can get to the SB this year. Run the ball, and play great defense. That doesn't mean Rodgers won't be great this year because he will. THIS may be his greatest season ever. But it all starts and ends with the running game and defense.

PS... Colin Cowherd is a TOOL. The Vikings have NO CHANCE to win 13 or 14 games...

PSS... PLEASE Cory, NO MORE pictures of Kurt Cousins. I understand it's like 5 days till TC starts, but Goddamn...Please no more pictures of ANY Viking.

I think the article meant that "if" they were going to take the next step it was up to the quarterback because he has the pieces in Cook and Jefferson. Kirk can't stay average. He states defenses keep him less then average with pressure. I think that's how you can win against every quarterback though. Even AR is just average or less with people in his face.

13 wins??? With Kark at QB??? Not a chance!!! vikes went 8-9 last season and there is no reason to expect more from them, than that. I think the vikes will finish behind both the Packers AND the Lions, in the NFC-N, this season. Packers will have a 14-3 record, Lions will go 9-8 and the vikings will go 8-9, again, or maybe 7-10, with the new management team, in place. Who knows where the Bears end up? Probably 6-11, at best, as they gave Fields nothing to work with and offered him no OL protection. I loved ESB as a Packer. I think he will be a top target for Fields, but won't be enough to improve their record. But the vikes... with Kark at QB and our defense bearing down on him, often, well, I almost feel sorry for him! Almost. We can look forward to the vikes picking in the top 15 spots in the 2023 Draft and then, screwing that up. A hapless organization, if there ever was one. They are desperate for a winning record as evidenced by the NFL scheduling them to play the Packers, in week one. Seems their hopes lie in thinking they will catch us unready to play a Division game, so early in the season. SKOL!!! GO PACK, GO!!!

And please stop posting pictures of Kark on these pages!!!

How good will our O line be at the start of the season? How in synch will Rodgers be with the new offense? How will this change during the season?

To be honest, Jefferson is seemingly going to be the best receiver in the division by some margin. To win against the Vikings we will have to score and we face them immediately. We need to come out of the gate fast, something that I’m not sure is likely offensively based on last year.

That said, I think our D is set up to handle Jefferson as well as any and ought to be better against the run than it has been in the past. Jones and Dillon are no less daunting than Cook, however. So how effectively will they be used and how well can LaFleur integrate the new components in the passing game?

The “established” three: Lazard, Cobb and Watkins aren’t going to terrorize our rivals, even if they can stay healthy. We will need to use rookies and inexperienced players in offensive skill positions in a way that amplifies their strengths and integrates them early and do a more consistently better job utilizing our RBs.

In both cases, the O line needs to come out of preseason settled and able to block as well as protect. We need a more intelligent use of players in pre season than last year and then it’s time for LaFleur to live up to his hype as an offensive guru and make this work without Adams and probably Tonyan initially. That likely requires a level of personnel changes that goes against Rodgers’ seeming preferences and some element of the illusion of complexity, something that mostly evaporated last season.

Over to you LaFleur. There is not going to be as much to hide behind this year even with Rodgers. LaFleur is going to have to find a way to make this offense effective or he will look more and more like a guy with a system and Rodgers and not a lot more. This season may well make or break LaFleur in GB.

Little mention of Minnesota's defense in the article. Media members often hyper focus on the offense as if this is flag football. Minnesota has a more than respectable defense, plus they added Zadarius Smith. If Smith is healthy he's still a terror to deal with.
I think the real problem with the Vikings is the team quit on Mike Zimmer. The front office recognized this and brought in a new coach. This is a situation not unlike what happened in Green Bay when the players started to lose faith in McCarthy. In comes a new coach, new approach, and the Packers quickly returned to their winning ways.
The Packers-Vikings games should be dogfights this year. Oh, and by the way, with Aaron Rodgers at QB, he will find receivers to complete passes to. The national sports media dopes have all but written off the Packers because they traded D. Adams. I think they will be surprised Rodgers will continue to move the offense, and more surprised when they see the Packers improved defense.

The Vikes offense always scares me, especially Cook who seems to play very well against us. However, the middle of our D should be more stout this season and our 3 CBs should negate their very good WRs. The D is full of question marks, but I just have that feeling that Zadarious will have a solid 9 sack season.

I must admit that I am afraid of the Vikings O as others have said. I think that our D has improved at least on paper. And while I do not like Cousins ( and even before his vaccine stance) he has always seems to come up big against us. We beat the Vikes last year when Cousins got Covid - good on him - and lost to him when we couldnt hold onto the game ending interception. But we always seem to have trouble with them at Lambeau. I think that the one thing that they dont have this year - that has seemed to have effected AR's play against them - They do not have Zimmer. Dont know why some guys seem to have AR's number and maybe some smart guy needs to research that so that Lafleur can conteract that. The other thing that the Pack can do against the Vikes is run the ball down their throat. With Cousins eating so much cap up - they will be soft somewhere.

I would not be surprised if the Vikings win more games this year. After all they play the Lions and Bears twice and many of the rest of their opponents are beatable. Yet 13 wins is a stretch. As mentioned, they have a great RB and superior WR. But what about their defense? They drafted defense and picked up Z for a reason. Zimmer was supposed to be a defensive guru. And now he is gone. On the other hand our defense has improved enough to counteract their offense and give our emerging offense more opportunities.

I'm surprised (or maybe I was not?) that Cory forgot about the new head coach and coaching staff of the Vikings.

I'm not scared of the Vikings, and I expect Rodgers to be salivating at the prospect of facing the Zimmer-less Vikings defense. 😁

Is it feasible that the Vikings can have a record swing of 3 wins over last year's total?
Is it feasible that the Packers could have a 3 win dip from last year's total?

The answer is yes to both.

The Vikings are not a team to be taken lightly, and the Packers aren't a team to overestimate. The Vikings have a new HC and the Packers have an HC who is set up for the Law of Averages to come knocking on his consecutive 13-win minimum of the last three seasons.

It will be an interesting season if both the former asked questions come to reality, and the North just may seat a new King, and another SB appearance might be taken away from the Rodgers era.

I suppose anything is possible, but 13 or 14 wins is really, really stretching it. They would almost have to duplicate what the Packers did in 2019 with a new wonder boy head coach and new offense, but this time with a new defense as well. They'll have to improve significantly on their porous pass defense as well as avoid injuries to their star players to reach such a lofty goal.

The basis for Cowherd's (who recently expanded the total to 16 wins!) speculation seems to be that the Vikings lost a lot of close games last season, have a favorable home/road schedule, and that Zimmer and Cousins didn't get along personally. But it still didn't prevent them from losing to the then-winless Lions at home; or Cousins from putting up solid numbers en route to a Pro Bowl season.

This appears to be a case of a sports host going completely goofy just to attract attention.

Dalvin Cook is a dangerous player when he's healthy and if they use him a little differently in the passing game they could have a top 5 offense this year. The last 4 years Cook's ADOT is negative 1.675 yards while his yards after catch is around 9.7. The first number is about the lowest on the NFL and the second one is really good. Now they have new coaches coming from the Rams scheme and it will be interesting to see if they try to get Cook more involved in the intermediate passing game.

Cousins is normally going to Cousins and cost them 2 or 3 games a year but only threw 7 interceptions last year. He's usually in the 11-13 range so I'd expect some regression there.

Their defense and OL is still pretty suspect. Think I'd take the under in game 1.

Win all your home games, beat your division opponents on the road, and beat one more weakling on the road. That’s 13 wins. Under LaFleur, we’re something like 15-3 against the division. The Bears are 0-6 against us. This is domination,

The Purple are ALWAYS the offseason champion, and they often start the season strong but always fade towards the end. We have a golden opportunity to put a stake in the heart of their season, in the opener, on their field.

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Even minus Adams, we’ll still be one of the best offenses in the league at protecting the ball. Jones and Dillon are still here. We’re not going to put a weak offense on the field.