One of the biggest storylines of the first half of the NFL season has been the dominance of the NFC North. Through nine weeks, all four teams in the best division in football look like potential Super Bowl contenders, and there will be a ton of movement in the standings throughout the back half of the season.
The Green Bay Packers enter Week 9 at 6-3, which would be sitting pretty for most teams. But Matt LaFleur's squad instead enters the week in dead last in the NFC North. The Chicago Bears lead the way at 7-2, and the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions sit at 6-2.
In Week 10, the Packers and the Vikings will battle for playoff position in the second leg of their home-and-home series in 2026. The two teams played in the season opener, with the Vikings coming back from a late deficit to get a 39-22 win in Minnesota.
Both teams will look a lot different in Week 10. The Packers, who started 1-2, have won five of their last six games and are one of the hottest teams in the NFL, thanks to Jordan Love putting together an MVP-caliber season. The Vikings played both Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz in that game, but now Kirk Cousins is the likely Week 10 starter after Minnesota acquired him at the trade deadline to address their QB issues.
Cousins playing his first game back in Minnesota against a very good Packers defense will get a lot of the attention coming into this one, but the other side of the ball is just as intriguing. Love is leading one of the most explosive passing games in football, and Brian Flores has been an unsolvable puzzle so far this season.
What lessons can be taken from the first meeting, and how has Green Bay improved in order to challenge Flores' unit this time around?
The Packers are all Jordan Love, all the time
At the midway point, Jordan Love is leading one of the most crowded MVP races in recent memory. There are a number of quarterbacks who can stake their claim as the MVP so far this year, but arguably nobody is being asked to do as much for their offense as Love is.
The Green Bay offensive line has been littered with backups and below replacement-level players all season long. The running game is not only nonexistent; it's historically bad. The Packers get absolutely nothing in the offense that doesn't come from Love's arm, and that arm has been on an absolute heater over the last six weeks.
After posting a negative EPA per dropback in each of the first three weeks of the season, Love has been at +0.10 or better in each of the past six games. That includes two outings over +0.40, and a dominant +0.65 masterpiece on Sunday in a win over the New England Patriots.
Love specifically excels at two things that help the Green Bay passing game flourish while mitigating the flaws of the offense and the personnel: he avoids sacks and he is willing and able to constantly push the ball down the field to find explosive plays. The Green Bay offense, because of the running game, isn't built to sustain long, methodical drives. Love counters that by picking up chunk after chunk.
Love has been pressured 136 times this season, more than any quarterback not named Bryce Young or Daniel Jones, per Next Gen Stats. The Packers allow more quick pressures than any other team by a significant margin, so he is constantly under duress. Despite that, his pressure-to-sack ratio is just 12.5%, the sixth-lowest mark in the league per PFF.
The former first-rounder is a pro at drifting back in the pocket to buy himself an extra second, and he still has the arm to get the ball down the field even with guys in his face. Love is averaging 9.7 air yards per attempt this year, the second-highest number in the league behind C.J. Stroud. 15.8% of his throws go 20 or more yards in the air, the highest mark in the league.
But it's what he is doing on those deep throws that is so impressive. He is posting +0.45 EPA per dropback on deep passes this season, and his +24.5 total EPA on those throws is third-highest in the NFL. Last week against the Patriots, Love was 6-of-8 on deep passes for 235 yards and a touchdown.
Of course, that kind of production will be very hard to replicate against a Vikings defense that makes it hard to do just about anything you want to do as an offense. The Vikings pressured Love on 23 of his 46 dropbacks in Week 1 and sacked him four times, as the Minnesota pass rush constantly affected him in the backfield.
Incredibly, the Vikings have been somewhat gettable this season when opposing quarterbacks are able to get deep throws off on them this season. Minnesota's +0.13 EPA per pass allowed on those throws ranks just 10th in the NFL this season.
But it's getting the time to make those throws that is so difficult to do against the Vikings. Flores's defense has 29 sacks on the season, tied for the highest number in the NFL. It is getting pressure on 44.7% of opponent dropbacks, by far the best in the NFL. Their average time to pressure is just 2.53 seconds as a team, tied for the third-quickest in football.
Love, with his patchwork offensive line in front of him, will almost certainly have to work from under duress almost all day on Sunday. Whether he is able to have the same success doing so as he has recently will go a long way toward deciding the result.
Christian Watson and Matthew Golden have emerged as stars
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, of course, but the Packers have built their offense this year in a similar mold to what the Bengals have done for so many years. The running game is not helping at all, the offensive line is below average, and the offense is being driven by the quarterback and two receivers dominating on the outside.
Not many saw that coming from Christian Watson and Matthew Golden, but that is what they have. The two young stars complement each other perfectly, with Watson serving as a downfield terror while Golden is a true route-running savant in the underneath game. Golden still has the speed to create big plays down the field, but he is a monster at creating separation underneath and turning that into big plays.
Heading into Week 10, Watson and Golden rank third and fourth in the NFL in receiving yards, respectively. Watson has been hyper-efficient on his targets, racking up 41.2 receiving EPA this season to rank third in the league.
Watson and Golden have been the drivers that allow Love to throw the ball down the field so much. Both of them rank in the top 11 in the NFL in air yards per target, so when Love airs it out down the field, he is usually looking for one of them. They both rank in the top six in deep target rate as well, per Next Gen Stats.
Despite their flaws, Watson and Golden are what make the Packers' passing game so hard to stop. Golden wasn't as involved in the game plan during the first meeting against the Vikings, but Flores will have to have a plan for him in this game. Look for both he and Watson to make a big impact on Sunday.