Our trip through 2026’s over/unders ends with the NFC North – the best division in football, so long as you consider the entire division, top to bottom. All four teams in the division have estimated DVOAs of -4.1% or better – no other division can claim that. The Minnesota Vikings, the only team in the division with a negative projected DVOA, should be substantially improved on offense by bringing an NFL-caliber quarterback onto the roster. The Chicago Bears have championship hopes after winning the division for the first time in eight years, while the Green Bay Packers believe their planned-for replacements can keep their playoff streak alive. And not one of those three is the best of the bunch in our projections, with a once-again healthy Detroit Lions expected to once again rejoin the ranks of contenders. It is also, however, a heavily flawed division. No team has a deep pass rush. The Lions are already dealing with injuries yet again. The Bears’ defense is theoretical, at best. The Packers will be missing some of their very best players until who knows when. The Vikings are starting a castoff at quarterback. None of these teams seems, at the outset, complete. And that’s what makes the North so fascinating. It’s a question of which team answers their questions and pulls together the best version of who they could possibly be – and realistically, it could be any of the four. That sort of wide-open race should be fascinating to watch, at least until we figure out who the true contenders actually are. Remember, you can search for the best odds on these, or any other props with our Prop Shop.
Chicago Bears (9.5)
In 1932, the Chicago Bears won the NFL title, and the league started recording individual statistics. While Chicago was a run-first team, a man named Keith Molesworth was fourth in the league with 346 passing yards, establishing the franchise record. Molesworth would push that to 433 yards the following year, and then Bernie Masterson would take over – 446 yards in 1935, 615 in 1937, 848 in 1938, 914 in 1939. But Bernie wasn’t going to master the T-Formation, and Sid Luckman would go on to break, and then shatter those records. 941 yards in part-time work in 1940, then 1,181 in 1941 and an unthinkable 2,194 in 1943 – the Bears had the most innovative offense in the game, and no one could match that production. Luckman would push the record to 2,712 by 1947, which in turn stood until Billy Wade cracked the 3,000-yard barrier in 1962. And there the record stood, through the merger and into the 16-game era, until we get to Erik Kramer’s 3,838 in 1995 and, finally, Caleb Williams’ 3,942 from last year. Chicago remains the only team, then, without a 4,000-yard passer, somehow having let the modern game pass them by. Well, Ben Johnson’s offense may not be quite as innovative as the T-Formation was, but they are once again, 80 years later, on the forefront of the offensive game. Come hell or high water, Williams will finally pass that landmark and drag Chicago kicking and screaming into…let’s be generous and say the 1990s. This is in part due to my faith in William’s development and Johnson’s innovations, and in part because Chicago’s defense appears to be the worst in the league by a substantial margin. Yes, the Bears are your RedZone team of the year: all scoring, all the time. Second in projected offense, 32nd in projected defense. They’re perfect for popcorn watching, for catching highlights in games where you really don’t care who wins. A great game features good defensive plays, but two teams turning the field into a track meet makes for a good game. And it will probably lead the Bears to winning more games than they lose, if only just. The defense is going to regress hard and flatline, and that’s going to mean Chicago won’t be as successful, win/loss-wise, as they were a year ago. I’d guess that keeps them out of the playoffs. But at least they won’t be able to be mocked for an archaic passing game anymore. Probably. Johnson has said that he wants his offense to break the all-time scoring record. Good luck. They’ll need it. Strongest Position: Even with the offseason shuffling, it’s still the offensive line. Joe Thuney is in the discussion for best guard in football, and Darnell Wright and Jonah Jackson make for a stud right side of the line. The big question mark is Garrett Bradbury taking over at center, and while he is admittedly a downgrade, he’s also broadly fine in a league where quality centers are thin on the ground, to say the least. Weakest Position: Throw a dart at the defense and you’ll hit a problem. I can not believe they didn’t bring in a single new pass rusher to try to bolster the corps behind Montez Sweat – not that Sweat is who you want as a top pass rusher, anyway. But his presence means the edge rushers may still be better than the interior of the line, where Grady Jarrett is lining up next to… Neville Gallimore? James Lynch? A pile of gym mats left at Halas Hall? Your guess is as good as mine. Biggest Question: Williams has been getting top-10 quarterback hype, and even occasionally MVP hype. Can he duplicate his growth from 2024 to 2025, or was last year’s intriguing but still developing player his ceiling? How much more Caleb is there? Verdict: Under, but only just. Chicago feels very much like a 9- to 10-win team, so I can’t blame you for going either way here; I just think the odds of a defensive breakdown or two are higher than the offense being able to outgun everyone all year long.Detroit Lions (10.5)
Here are your 2026 NFC North champions. I’ve been fairly pessimistic on the whole during these over/unders because I’m writing them in response to the lines Vegas puts up, and Vegas likes to cash in on preseason optimism – this is the time of year when most fans think their guys can win it all. But here, I think the average fan thinks of Detroit floundering down the stretch last year and downgrades them too much. Oh, not you, gentle reader; if you’re reading these previews, you’re already ahead of the random fan who just tunes in on Sundays. But I’m probably a step further down the road than the bulk of you when I say that I think if anyone’s going to prevent the Rams or Seahawks from representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, it will be these Detroit Lions. Crazy? Maybe a little; they’re certainly not shoe-ins the Next Best Contender status or anything. But it’s not just that they were third in DVOA last year or were unlucky in one-score games and in the training room. Nor is it the fact that their schedule is incredibly easy, thanks to their fourth-place finish – though all of that helps, of course. No, it’s the fact that I still think this is a top-five roster, and I was heartened by the offensive improvements over the late half of the season as they figured out what their offensive identity is going to be in the post-Ben Johnson era. Drew Petzing isn’t Ben Johnson, but he squeezed more juice out of the Arizona offense than their talent could generate on its own, and oh, is this Detroit offense talented. Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Sam LaPorta – that’s maybe the best RB1-WR1-TE1 combo in the league. I also have more faith in the offensive line rebuild this year than last year, when they were kind of doing it on the fly. Entering the year with a plan is already a step up, and I think Blake Miller, in particular, is going to be very good sooner rather than later. My concerns about the defense were somewhat mollified with the news that both Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph will be back sooner rather than later. Honestly, the Lions will likely be better in December than September with them back, Cade Mays returning, Isiah Pacheco getting up to speed, and the development of Miller and Derrick Moore. No, I see a lot of reasons to be excited here. Predicting Detroit to the Super Bowl has historically been a very dumb thing to do, and no, I don’t think they’ll crack the Rams-Seahawks top two. But the potential is there, and this may end up being the scrappy team no one wants to play in January.
Green Bay Packers (9.5)
I am not touching this line with a 10-foot pole. Talk about teams that will be better in December than September, right? Micah Parsons, on the PUP list to start the year. Josh Jacobs, indefinitely suspended. Tucker Kraft, slowly working his way back in. A receiving room in transition, shall we say. A new defensive scheme under Jonathan Gannon. Question marks all along the offensive line. 2025 backups being asked to play major starting roles early. A brutal early-season schedule. At least among contending teams, and barring the inevitable injury plague, there may not be a contending team who looks more different from Week 1 to Week 18 than Green Bay. But contending is right. Jordan Love plus Matt LaFleur makes the Packers one of the few teams with a top-10 quarterback and top-10 playcaller, and that papers over a lot of cracks while everything around them gets settled. And the Packers do not need to destroy the competition early on to hit 10 wins – four of their final five games are at home, and they have the potential to set themselves up for a late season surge to get their by now bylaw-mandated seventh seed. If they can just to 5-6 by the start of December, I think they clear the over here. But with this much confusion and uncertainty, I would not put a nickel on this line either way. Steer far, far clear. Strongest Position: Jordan Love led the league in passing DVOA over the last eight weeks of last season. Scientists are trying to figure out why he’s been so much better in November and December than September and October throughout his career. Add another point to the ‘furious late charge’ column. Weakest Position: It’s conceivable that Josh Jacobs does not play this season. If not, Green Bay is going with MarShawn Lloyd, Chris Brooks and Kaleb Johnson. Yikes. Biggest Question: When is Micah Parsons back, and when is MICAH PARSONS back? Even if Parsons comes off the PUP list for Week 5, he may not be at full power. 80% of Parsons is a good player, but the guy they traded multiple first-round picks for might not show up until December – or 2027. Verdict: I have to make a pick because it’s the format, so I’ll go over based on a late-season charge. But I’m staying far, far away.Minnesota Vikings (8.5)
The worst team of the four and still coming off of a winning record in 2025. The sharks swim in the NFC North. The less-controversial part of our relatively low Vikings projection is not thinking Kyler Murray will suddenly become amazing in Minnesota. It’s true that he’s leaps and bounds past the motley crew the Vikings had to start last season, and they still managed to crawl their way to a 9-8 record. The offense should be better with a quarterback who belongs on the field! It’s just… if Murray was even an average starting quarterback, he wouldn’t have been available. If you could bottle Good Murray up and only get that player, he’d be a top-10 player. But maddening inconsistency has been Murray’s hallmark, and while that’s better than maddening sucktitude, it kind of limits how good an offense can be over a full season. So that leaves it up to Brian Flores’ defense to pull Minnesota back to a winning record, and he’s certainly the man you’d want in charge to do that. The Vikings were third in defensive DVOA last year, after all. But our projections have them falling back to the middle of the pack; not enough to keep the offense afloat. And you know what? I can see it. There’s a lot of turnover here – Jonathan Greenard traded away, Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave gone leaving Minnesota with a new defensive interior, Harrison Smith’s status somehow still up in the air. In Flores we Trust, I suppose, but add in the personnel turnover to the innate year-over-year inconsistency of defense, and can we really ask Minnesota to be a top three unit again? Mmm.