By: Andy Davies

The 2022 NFL season is less than two months away. We have had Free Agency and the NFL Draft. We are currently in the training camp stage. 

The NFC North is not expected to be a widely competitive division, with the Green Bay Packers seen as the favorites despite losing Davante Adams and a fresh change at head coach in Minnesota. The Detroit Lions are seen by many as a dark horse and Chicago Bears aren’t seen as winning any more than six games. 

But who has the best quarterback? In the penultimate division ranking, here is a ranking of NFC North quarterbacks.

1. Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay Packers)

The easiest choice of the four positions. Rodgers is a back-to-back reigning MVP and is seen by many as the best in the league and most talented of all time. 

He may have lost Adams, but Rodgers will find a way to make it work as he always does.

There are some people in this world that make their skill look effortless and A-Rod is one of them. He has a 139-66-1 record as a starter and over the course of his career, he has thrown for 55,360 yards, 449 yards and 93 interceptions. He is a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Whilst he often gets stuck for only making one Super Bowl and having the same number of rings as Nick Foles, there is no doubt that Rodgers is by far the best quarterback in this division.

2. Kirk Cousins (Minnesota Vikings)

Whilst Rodgers’ record as a starter is 139-66-1, Even though these records are misleading due to it being a team effort, Cousins’ 59-59-2 is a perfect example of how his career has gone. 

If the film Dodgeball was released in 2022, Average Joes gymnasium would have Cousins’ face on it. He has been a constant figure of mediocrity, with fans often pointing out his lack of wins in ”˜Primetime’ games. 

To put it in comparison, Cousins has only two fewer career interceptions than Rodgers but 226 less touchdown passes. However, he has more to his game than the other two quarterbacks below him.

3. Jared Goff  (Detroit Lions)

A former number one overall pick, Goff has not been awful since he entered the league in 2016. He was part of the Los Angeles Rams team that made it all the way to Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta. 

However, his relationship with Sean McVay deteriorated and he was traded to Detroit in exchange to Matthew Stafford. We all know what happened afterward. 

Stafford proved he was the missing piece in the Rams Super Bowl jigsaw, further damaging Goff’s stock. Despite the Lions going 3-10-1 and head coach Dan Campbell publicly criticizing his quarterback, he still threw for 19 touchdowns and 8 interceptions. 

Goff has shown his talent on occasions but never on enough occasions. 

4. Justin Fields (Chicago Bears)

Fields has the ceiling to be second on this list in a couple of seasons time but as it stands, he simply hasn’t played enough or to a good enough standard to be considered anything but the bottom of the pile.

He showed flashes during his 2021 rookie campaign but was also playing under Matt Nagy. The hiring of defensive-minded head coach Matt Eberfleus is a worry for Field’s progression. Fields showed during college that he has all the intangibles to become a top NFL quarterback, but right now, he is the fourth best in the division.

The post Ranking the NFC North quarterbacks right now appeared first on Pro Football Mania.

By: Grant Schwieger

Monday, January 10^th, 2022, officially marks the end of the Mike Zimmer era in Minnesota. This does not come as a surprise, as reports had been surfacing all week about his tenure coming to a close, regardless of how the season’s finale against Chicago played out.

While the last few seasons have certainly been disappointing for the Vikings, Zimmer accomplished a lot during his eight-year run as the head coach of the Purple and Gold, ending with a record of 74-59-1. He inherited a squad in 2014 that ranked in the bottom half of the league in Expected Points Added per play on defense the previous few years under Leslie Frazier.

Under Zimmer, the Vikings immediately turned their defense around, ranking around league average in 2014-2015 before really excelling in 2016 and 2017. As a defensive-minded head coach, it was a relief to see Zimmer’s defenses perform well, as Frazier before him was also a defensive coach but was not finding similar results.

Everything peaked for Minnesota in that magical 2017 NFC Conference Championship game run, but Zimmer’s defenses still performed well through 2019 as well. Those defenses have fallen off sharply, though, the past two seasons, which is the biggest reason he finds himself departing Minnesota.

One thing most Vikings fans might not realize is how much stability Minnesota had at the QB position under Mike Zimmer. Although the Vikings often found themselves changing their QB every few years, the play at that position was never as bad as it was pre-Zimmer (looking at you, Christian Ponder, Matt Cassell, and Josh Freeman).

From Teddy Bridgewater to Sam Bradford, Case Keenum, and Kirk Cousins, Minnesota only had a QB rank in the bottom half of the NFL in PFF grade once under Zimmer (Bridgewater ranked 18^th in 2015). This is a big reason Zimmer never posted a record worse than 7-9 in his 8 seasons.

Mike Zimmer’s defenses in 2020 (which he called the worst defense he had ever coached) and in 2021 collapsed tragically compared to the standards he had set for himself in his first six seasons. However, one area he managed to almost always succeed in was third-down defense.

Although it ends up meaning nothing, Mike Zimmer got to go out with a victory yesterday against the Bears, with his defense putting forth a performance that hopefully left him with a bit of joy. A Patrick Peterson pick-six capped off a solid second-half defensive performance. Even with all the positives from yesterday, the thorn in the Vikings’ side all season still reared its ugly head.

Minnesota allowed a TD with roughly 30 seconds left to go in the first half, marking the umpteenth time the Vikings defense allowed a score inside of 2 minutes to go in the first half of games. Nearly 22% of the points this team gave up all season came inside of those two minutes of games. That is 22% of their total points allowed in roughly 3% of total game time this year. Truly incredible.

Minnesota will miss Zimmer’s no excuses, no BS attitude. That attitude often led to great quotes and soundbites out of him, which never failed to entertain. Zimmer went out on Sunday with a fantastic comeback to a reporter who asked him about his job status.

Mike Zimmer will be the first to tell you how these last few years have not gone according to plan. While you might be hard-pressed to find a Vikings fan who still wanted Zimmer to stick around, he gives Minnesota a lot of things to be thankful for. No more were the ugly seasons where the team was eliminated by December. His teams were always competitive, and he made sure they fought tooth and nail until the end.

Unfortunately, this sums up the history of the Minnesota Vikings franchise. They entered 2021 with the 7^th highest winning percentage all-time among NFL teams yet are the only team in the top 15 without a Super Bowl victory. Good, but never good enough. Will Mike Zimmer’s replacement finally get over the hump? Minnesota should start praying now.

The post Mike Zimmer is out: a tribute to the former Vikings coach appeared first on Pro Football Mania.