The final Monday Night Football installment of the season, luckily for football fans, carries tremendous playoff implications.The currently lead the NFC North with an 11-3 record, but the are right behind them at 10-4. Green Bay won the first matchup between the two teams and thus can clinch the NFC North with a win on Monday night, but if the Vikings come away victorious, we won't find out which team takes the division title until next week.Having established that the division and at least one home playoff game are on the line, let's just get right into it and break things down.How to watchDate:Monday, Dec. 23, 2019 |Time:8:15 p.mLocation: U.S. Bank Stadium (Minneapolis, Minnesota)TV:ESPN|Follow:
Mike Piazza Jersey Odds:Saints -4.5, Over/Under 47.5, per When the Packers have the ball has yet to have a pa s intercepted on the road this season ... but he's also averaging just 6.33 yards per attempt in road games, limiting him to just 209.0 pa sing yards per game in those contests. It's probably not much of a coincidence that two of the Packers' three lo ses have come on the road, where Rodgers just has not been the same guy that he typically is at Lambeau Field. Almost all of his road production has come in two games: a thrilling win over the Matt Moore-led , and a snow game against the a few weeks back.Rodgers goes up against a Vikings pa s defense that has been getting by more on reputation than production for most of this season. (130.2 pa ser rating allowed on throws in his direction, per Pro Football Focus) has fallen off the face of the earth and looks like one of the small handful of worst regular corners in the this season. (111.4) hasn't been much better, and (92.5) and (95.
have not exactly been stingy in coverage, either.Any of these cornerbacks should be extremely beatable for on the outside, but it's notable that Adams' yards per reception average is down almost two full yards
Jacob DeGrom Jersey since his return from injury back in Week 9. He's had at least four catches in all six games, but almost managed 64 yards or fewer in four of those six. Adams has managed only five catches of more than 20 yards acro s those six contests, the same number he had in only four games prior to the injury. (He had 19 such plays last year.) Rodgers doesn't appear to trust many -- or even any -- of his other receivers at the moment, and there's a pretty good reason for that. has caught le s than half the throws in his direction this season, and he has made a couple of crucial drops. has five drops on only 49 targets. has stayed in the rotation since his emergence during the period where nearly all of the Packers' receivers were injured, but he's not managed to shake free for more than three targets since Week
Tim Tebow Jersey 10. seemingly cannot handle a full complement of snaps anymore, and simply isn't much of a threat through the air.Instead, Rodgers' secondary pa sing game targets are his running backs. has been the more explosive of the two, and it's not an accident that his best receiving games have been some of the Packers' best offensive performances. is typically more of a screen and check-down option, but Rodgers at least appears to consider him reliable, particularly on third downs and in the red zone. The Vikings are only 16th in DVOA against pa ses to running backs this season, per Football Outsiders, so perhaps there's some opportunity here for them to get Jones and Williams going in the pa sing game.The Vikings' run defense has been excellent overall this year (fourth in DVOA), as the defensive line and linebackers have emerged as the true strength of the unit. (Plus . Basically it's just the corners who are bad, which makes attacking the Vikes via the pa s a more fruitful option.) The Vikes have only rarely allowed big plays via the run, which is a strong attribute to have against a home-run hitter like Jones. When the Vikings have the ballThe Vikings have already managed to clinch a playoff spot, and their chances of winning the NFC North, while real, are still somewhat remote. (12.5 percent, according to Sportsline's Stephen Oh.) And so they are going to hold both and out of this game, which means we're going to see a whole lot of preseason superstar in the backfield.In two seasons of preseason action, Boone has carried 90 times for 391 yards and three touchdowns, adding 13 receptions for another 145 yards. He's managed only 32 carries in regular-season games, but he's taken those 32 carries for 144 yards -- a healthy 4.5 yards per carry average. It'll be interesting to see how having their No. 3 back in the backfield affect the Vikings' ability and willingne s to run early and often.According to Sharp Football Stats, Minnesota has called run plays at the NFL's third-highest rate in neutral situations (plus or minus 14 points), handing the ball off 47 percent of the time. Green Bay's run defense has been eminently beatable all year and Boone has impre sed in his limited action, but this is obviously a much different scenario than he'll have faced in the NFL before. Whether they lean heavily on Boone or not, we should expect the Vikings' pa sing attack to be heavily based on play-action concepts, as usual. If you've been paying attention to Sunday night broadcasts in
Lenny Dykstra Jersey recent weeks you will have heard Cris Collinsworth repeatedly explain that play-action pa ses are typically succe sful regardle s of whether a team is running the ball well, or even running it at all. It's a difficult concept for people to accept because of the way play-action has been discu sed for so long, but it's held true over multiple studies.There is almost no team that has internalized this better than the Vikings, who have used play-action at the second-highest rate in the NFL since Week 5. is 82 of 109 for 1,171 yards, 13 touchdowns, and zero interceptions on play-action pa ses during that time, good for a league-best 149.1 pa ser rating, according to Pro Football Focus. The Green Bay defense, meanwhile, has been solid against play-action pa ses, allowing 77 completions on 114 attempts, for 1,054 yards, four touchdowns, three interceptions, and a 97.6 pa ser rating.Minnesota got back from injury last week against the , and while he caught just three pa ses for 27 yards and played only 51 percent of the snaps, a lot of that was because the Vikings won 39-10. Even only played 71 percent of the snaps. Each of those players should have a winnable matchup on the perimeter this week, as Packers cornerbacks , , and played better earlier in the season than they have of late. (That's true of King, in particular.) Diggs has been practically uncoverable for just about anyone since Week 6 (coincidentally, when Thielen first suffered his
Darryl Strawberry Jersey injury), catching 44 pa ses for 819 yards and four scores during that span. Tight end has also come on in recent weeks, recording at least three catches and/
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