Total win Predictions

One nation under God blah blah and liberty and justice for all. He does it every time. That one nation crap. Must be there cult ritual. They do meet at a town hall for the pukes. Sound like a cult town. Might get children of the corned there weirdos. Probably a ghost town until season. I imagine nothing else is there🤷🏾‍♂️

They better right now on paper I give him that. We will be fighting and we building up our squad. So I hope he fear us 2025 and beyond. Go on and laugh at us, I mean we haven’t won nothing. I hope we quiet that one day.

I see like 8 wins. Anything can happen that’s just where I see us. That’s about where we been on average most recent years. We won’t be push overs though. I just can’t look at you straight in the eye and say I feel we a 10 plus win team. We don’t suck,but I feel 2025 is are arrival date on real contenders.!If it happens this year cool but I don’t expect fireworks and contenders quite yet JMO! But I will shoo be cheering. I did like our offseason and the direction right now.

My main point here is not about the Bears or Vikings. My point here is that the Lions are not a team to be feared after winning the division once in over 30 years. The North is a storied and proud division. I will not stand by while I see anyone claim the Lions are the kings of it. It's literally laughable to me.

I realize many here "hate" the Packers from the deepest part of their soul, and will root for both the Vikings and Lions, and ANY other team, when they play the Packers. That is fine. The Vikings, Lions and Bears consider any game against the Packers has their Super Bowl.

Yes, the Lions are "irrelevant" to the Packers. The Packers have bigger fish to fry. The Packers goal is bringing another Lombardi back to TitleTown. They didn't name the Super Bowl trophy after just any teams coach.

OneTeamOneNation
PackerNation!

Really tough to predict for several reasons.

First, Kirk Cousins is a much better QB than Sam Darnold. Yet the Vikings were 4-4 when he went down. Mostly because of turnovers and the Defenders learning a very different scheme.

But part of it was clearly on Kevin O'Connell. Sticking with Mattison. Abandoning the running game too quickly. Getting plays in too late. All issues that persisted either late into the season or all the way to the bitter end.

With the talent Minnesota had when KOC arrived they should have been Top 5 in scoring before the Achilles injury. The highest they ever got was 8th. Why? Playcalling. Pure and simple.

O'Connell doesn't attack Defendes horizontally at all. Even worse, they're horrendous in the Screen Game. The Rushing Attack bizarrely focuses on running up the gut instead of behind their awesome Tackles.

But the Vikings excel at passing over the middle from 1 to 20 yards. In such a way that even Journeyman QB 'Gunslinger without a Gun' Nick Mulllens can put up big numbers against bad Defenses like the Lions. Darnold should be better than Mulllens.

Even if Kevin keeps abandoning the run too quickly Jefferson is still uncoverable. Addison will continue to get better. I wish they had a legit WR3 to pick up the slack until Hockenson comes back. Powell is a WR4 to me and Naillor is unproven and made of glass.

Overall, I expect about the same out of the Offense as what we saw after Kirk went down. They will get shut down by good Defenses, especially on the road, no matter how much Jefferson balls out. They will move the ball against average to bad Defenses and should make more kicks in the Redzone.

So around a .500 Team on Offense unless O'Connell stops running Inside Zone Runs straight up the gut. And for the record, Aaron Jones is an Outside Zone Runs guy just like Dalvin Cook. So he doesn't automatically fix the issues with the ground game even if he somehow stays healthy.

The Defense to me is tremendously improved. Tremendously. Flores got zilch out of Lowry and Davenport. Had to play Evans. Had to rush Harrison Phillips on 3rd and Longs. None of that will happen this year. AVG is a much better football player in every facet of the game than DJ Wonnum. Much better. Dallas Turner will be better than Marcus Davenport because he will actually play. Cashman is much better at covering the horizontal stuff that Hicks was too old to rally to stop. Harry as a rotational Box-Only Chess Piece is fun. Van Ginkel and Turner can absolutely drop into coverage and confuse the crap out of QBs.

The glaring weakness remains at Corner. Those inverted Zones with positionless responsibilities got exposed. Partly because Murphy was the QB of the CBs and got hurt. But also because Evans sucks and Blackmon wasn't making plays on the football. Shaq Griffin helps. He should play in the realm of League Average under Flores. Murphy is probably League Average if he stays in the Slot. If one of Blackmon or Jackson isn't a total liability this should be a Top 10 Defense early and consistently.

The problem is the schedule. I agree with whoskmoon, it sucks. Darnold won't be up to speed to start the year unless he gets heavy preseason reps. Does anyone here believe that will happen? The running game has been bad for 35 games. That's a big enough sample size to indicate that Kevin can't curate an NFL caliber ground game. Expect the Offense to struggle mightily against the bad early season conditions: 9ers, Texans, Packers in Lameblow, Jets. And then Offenses that can really move the ball in the Lions and Rams.

A 1-6 start is entirely possible. And that's with the Defense staying healthy, which is paramount considering the lack of depth at ILB and CB. BTW, having a lot of bodies doesn't mean the CB Room has good depth.

I see 6 or 7 wins based on the schedule. That could change if Kevin becomes less 1 dimensional. He's basically the Reverse Kyle Shanahan. Kyle's Teams kills you from sideline to sideline. But when the 9ers really gotta have it on 3rd and Long over the middle of the field his Teams just can't consistently come through. O'Connell kills Defenses over the middle of the field but when that's taken away his Offenses just don't do anything else well enough to threaten opponents.

If KOC improves his design and playcalling maybe a higher ceiling of 8 or 9 wins. After 35 games I just don't see that happening.

I see like 8 wins. Anything can happen that’s just where I see us. That’s about where we been on average most recent years. We won’t be push overs though. I just can’t look at you straight in the eye and say I feel we a 10 plus win team. We don’t suck,but I feel 2025 is are arrival date on real contenders.!If it happens this year cool but I don’t expect fireworks and contenders quite yet JMO! But I will shoo be cheering. I did like our offseason and the direction right now.