Week 9: Viking Bye Week

The Bye week comes at the midpoint of the season for the Vikings this year. A perfect time for a midseason review of the season thus far.

At the beginning of the year I wrote about ESPN’s ridiculous Power Rankings as well as my predictions for each Viking game. Let’s see how that’s played out.

ESPN’s Week 1 Power Rankings had the Vikings at number 9. Today they are number 3.

As for the schedule I predicted the Vikings would be 5-3 at this point in the season. Which was pretty accurate considering that they should have lost to the 49ers and the Ravens, but should have beat the Steelers. I also assumed Green Bay would be better than they are. The Green Bay defense is abysmal. So bad that they just gave up 38 points to previously winless Tampa Bay.

Instead of 5-3 the Vikings are 7-1 and hold a 3 game edge over Green Bay and Chicago. For Green Bay it’s essentially 4 games since the Vikings own the head-to-head tie breaker. The Lions don’t even factor in this discussion.

The division is all but locked up, with the assumption that a New York Mets style meltdown isn’t in the works. In fact, looking at the rest of the season the Vikings have a decent chance of being 15-1. Most likely they’ll lose 2 more games, perhaps three. I believe they’ll lose to either Arizona (road game) or Cincinatti (home game), as well as December 28th at Chicago. Favre’s record in cold weather games, since 2002 when it was snapped by Michael Vick, has not been good. So even though Chicago looks terrible, it’s conceivable that the Vikings will lose the game. But if push comes to shove I’m going to predict a 14-2 finish, but I see the Saint finishing 15-1 (they play Tampa twice, the Rams, Redskins, and Panthers; but could have trouble with New England or Dallas). With any luck the Saints will crumble in the playoffs and the Vikings will host the NFC Championship game. If not, it may be a tall order to face the Saints in the Superdome.

But forget all that. No negativity allowed this week… we are on the bandwagon here at Simpleprop… time to put on some Will Smith’s Miami!

“We’re goin’ to Miami… Bienvenidos a Miami!”

Skol Vikings!