NFC North Floors and Ceilings
By Lee Wakefield
It is time to look forward to the 2023 season here at The Touchdown. To do so, I will look at each NFL team giving my floor and a ceiling for their season ahead.
This is my first article series since coming to the site, so please let me know your thoughts and criticisms over the ever-increasing number of social channels you can find us on.
Anyway, let’s get into it with the NFC North…
Minnesota Vikings
What are the Vikings? Before thinking about the floor and ceiling for this team, this is the question that needs to be answered. NFC North Champions can be very temporary.
The Vikings are going for a competitive rebuild according to General Manager, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
Is Adofo-Mensah just talking with new-age GM-speak? I’m not sure anybody knows.
Is it a particularly bad roster? No. On offense, it looks pretty solid, and with the star power of Justin Jefferson, Kevin O’Connell’s offense should be just fine and should be able to overpower some teams on their own.
However, the defense looks fairly lacklustre and I feel the hiring of Brian Flores is an attempt to make up for some talent deficiencies with more man-coverage, aggression, and what will probably be a weighty uptick in blitz rate.
The Floor:
If the mass departure of experienced talent proves that the 2023 Vikings are more rebuild than competitive then I feel like a record of around 8-9 could be the floor. I don’t expect this team to be bad but Flores’ defense can be feast or famine. Therefore year one it could take some adjustment.
On offense, the floor is high but this team could get one-dimensional really quickly if Alexander Mattison can’t step up full-time into the RB1 role.
The Ceiling:
It probably is unrealistic to expect a repeat of 13-4 in 2023, even if we’re predicting the ceiling. The Vikings won a lot of one-score games last season and that kind of thing can be volatile. That said if the defense fires immediately, Flores has them playing well and the offense is also humming with Jefferson and TJ Hockenson destroying defenses through the air, 11-5 could lead them to another divisional crown.
Detriot Lions
What a time it is to be a Lions fan! Detriot has been a bottom-feeder team in the NFC North and NFL for quite some time. Detroit has recorded only two winning seasons in the past 10. The exclamation point being that they’ve had just as many three-win seasons in the past four years.
However, the hype has arrived, after the team went 9-8 and narrowly missed out on the playoffs and, according to Amon-Ra St. Brown the team is ready to embrace the hype.
Momentum certainly is gathering and the arrow appears to be pointing upwards for the Lions. Whilst the Bears and Packers may have been surpassed, especially with Aaron Rodgers now out of Lambeau, the Vikings are probably still better, and therefore a playoff berth is not guaranteed. Let alone a first playoff win since your writer was in nappies.
Were it not for a string of betting-related suspensions, including key wide receiver, Jameson Williams, it really would be good vibes only in Detroit.
The Floor:
I don’t see them taking much of a step back. So much so, I’m pegging the floor at 8-9.
This team plays hard for Campbell, they have talent and Ben Johnson is a Head Coach in waiting for 2024. That said, Green Bay is still in the division, the Bears could be better and this team isn’t used to having expectations upon their shoulders. What if it just doesn’t click as well as it could do immediately and it’s another slow start?
The Ceiling:
The schedule is kind after the season curtain-raiser against the Chiefs and Detroit could get on a roll between weeks 2 and 6 before they meet the Ravens in week 7. Five of their six NFC North games are booked for the second half of the season, once suspensions begin to drop off.
Signing DeAndre Hopkins could solve the short-term wide receiver issue and ignoring the order in which the players were drafted, it’s undeniable that the Lions got better via the draft. Couple that with another year under Dan Campbell and Ben Johnson continuing to be one of the better play-callers in the league, could we see an 11-win Lions team? Don’t rule it out. NFC North champion? We’ll see.
Green Bay Packers
Jordan Love is certainly going to be one of the richer, more interesting storylines in the NFL this season.
How has he developed over the past three years since he was drafted out of Utah State? Has the tutelage of Aaron Rodgers helped? Does the team trust him enough given they declined his fifth-year option and extended him for one year beyond his rookie deal at a much lower rate of salary?
Outside of Jordan Love, what of David Bakhtiari’s future? Which of the young skill position players will step up? There’s just so much intrigue around what is traditionally one the of most stable and self-assured franchises in the league.
The Floor:
Well, it truly is the floor, isn’t it? The floor is that Jordan Love just isn’t that guy, he’s not shown as much growth as Matt LeFleur tries to tell us he has, and without Aaron Rodgers calling his own plays when he doesn’t agree with LeFleur the offense crumbles.
The defense is choc-full of first-round picks so should be able to keep the Packers in games but to win games, teams need points, so it might not be enough.
At least at 5-12 they could draft Love’s replacement.
The Ceiling:
The Scotch Whisky Association determines that whisky must be three years old to become a whisky, but most are matured for even longer.
What if three years is just about the right amount of time for a Wiscy QB to mature?
If Love hits the ground running and Matt LeFleur can actually run the offense without a grumpy QB freelancing, perhaps the offense can thrive without a superstar running it. Kyle Shannahan doesn’t need superstars running his 49ers offense and LeFleur is from that sort of background, so it feels entirely feasible.
The defense should be good and if they’re great, Green Bay may just have the last laugh as they return double-digit wins and actually improve upon last year at 10-7.
Chicago Bears
As an NFL fan, I find Chicago to be really a interesting team this year. I really liked their trade of the first-overall pick, and they followed that up with a nice draft overall. I particularly liked the pick of Darnell Wright, who I had as the Bears’ perfect pick. This season is all about making sure that they do everything they can to accentuate Justin Fields’ talents
DJ Moore, Roschon Johnson, and Tyler Scott should give Luke Getsy’s offense more firepower. Simultaneously, Wright and the rest of the somewhat underrated offensive line should give Fields more time, so the potential for growth is there, and in 2023, growth is what matters.
The Floor
What if it just doesn’t work, with growing pains across the board and the hit rate on young talent just isn’t what we expect?
We know Fields can run the ball, more on that in a moment, but what if he just doesn’t progress as a passer? We know it’s in him, we saw it at Ohio State, but the NFL is different.
The NFC North is one of the least forgiving divisions in football as well, especially if you’re already starting from behind.
I feel that the Bears will improve from their three wins in 2022, but by how much? The floor for me is 4 wins.
The Ceiling
There is a discussion around the new offensive meta in terms of efficiency in the NFL being QB mobility and in particular, the efficiency of QB scrambles.
The brilliant Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz covered this superbly for The Ringer here.
Justin Fields is a QB who could definitely continue to tap into this, as he did in 2022 – Fields had one of the best EPA/play on rushes. However, it is in the passing game, where he had the worst EPA/play in the entire NFL on passing attempts.
If his passing can improve with calmer eyes and improved decisions, if he can just not take 55 sacks and he can continue to be a force as a ball carrier, the Bears may have found their solution at QB and a vital foothold in their ascent to relevancy again. 8-9 would be a great launch point for 2024 for this team, especially considering the extra draft capital they’ve accumulated.
Feature Image Credit: Elsa, Getty Images
Lee Wakefield
NFL, CFB & NFL Draft
Lee Wakefield IS A defensive line enthusiast, Chargers Sufferer, and LONG-TIME writer and podcaster with a number of publications. Find his Chargers content over at Bolt Beat. @Wakefield90 on twitter