Vikings (2-6) at Packers (8-0), 8:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN
Line: Packers by 13
The Packers’ All-Pro safety, Charles Woodson, committed a grave football faux pas when he spoke honestly about the possibility of an undefeated season. “I’d love to go undefeated,” he said last week. “Not just the regular season. The whole thing.”
Those words can be interpreted as both a jinx and bulletin-board fodder: the equivalent of crossing a black cat’s path under a ladder while shouting, “Neener, neener!” at the opposition. Proper N.F.L. etiquette requires players to desire victory above all else, but never over any specific opponent (except next week’s foe), let alone all of them.
Woodson’s remarks were poorly timed, considering how beatable the Packers have looked recently. Woodson acknowledged that the defense has been playing poorly, and Packers wins have taken on a familiar pattern: the offense builds a seemingly insurmountable lead, then gives the opponent most of the second half to try to surmount it. The offense does not help the defense much during these late collapses: it seems to have two speeds, Warp 9 and Game Over, and it often switches to the latter mode a little too soon.
The Packers’ tendency to score 30 to 40 points, then fall asleep under the old stone bridge, suggests that when they do lose, it will a devastating spectacle. Maybe Woodson just wants to get that heartbreaking loss out of the way. It is a masterly piece of story-line control: he casts the Packers as boastful in November, they absorb a loss or two, and they enter the playoffs humbled and hungry, simultaneously the defending champions and the team eager for redemption. Or perhaps, having accomplished so much in his career, he has evolved beyond the need to pretend that he does not have ambitions. In pro football psychology, the first theory actually makes more sense.
Pick: Packers
(Pick does not reflect betting line)
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