Vikes Odds Going into Cincy, The Playoffs

It’s been a crazy year for the NFL, with a different contending teams’ MVP seemingly falling week to week, and while no team is without injury at this point of the season, the Vikings seem perfectly poised to enter the playoffs with a first-round Bye and a good chance at the first home Super Bowl in the history of the NFL (even if they’d technically be playing as the Away team). I know, knock on wood! The Vikings were on an eight-game winning streak before running headfirst into the Carolina Panthers in Carolina last Sunday, losing 31-24 in a game where they made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes while still almost pulling it out in the end. So, let’s take a look at some of the odds that the now 10-3 Vikings have going into a redemption game at US Bank Stadium against Coach Zimmer’s former team, the Cincinnati Bengals (with all stats coming from top sportsbook monitoring website, mytopsportsbook.com).

Playoff/Super Bowl Odds:

The Vikings are a virtual lock to make the playoffs, at 99% as of the writing of this article (at least according to this piece). While they still could end up 10-6 and miss the playoffs, a lot would have to happen that’d be extremely bad luck for the team (even this team). Beyond that, though, the Vikings have a 13% chance to win the Super Bowl, which while posted 20 hours ago seems low considering that the Eagles have a 19% chance. Beyond the Eagles, the Vikings trail the Steelers with a 13% chance and the Patriots with 22%. Perhaps a better way to look at this is to look at the Vikings’ chance before and after the Wentz injury, considering the implications there.

Here are the Odds each team had as of February of 2017, Week 8 of the NFL season and after the Wentz injury (courtesy of Scout.com):

Team Post-Super Bowl (2/6) Midseason (11/1) Post Wentz (12/10)
New England Patriots 5/1 7/2 9/4
Pittsburgh Steelers 12/1 7/1 4/1
Minnesota Vikings 16/1 14/1 8/1
Philadelphia Eagles 50/1 6/1 9/1
New Orleans Saints 50/1 20/1 14/1
Los Angeles Rams 75/1 20/1 16/1
Green Bay Packers 9/1 40/1 18/1
Jacksonville Jaguars 66/1 40/1 18/1
Seattle Seahawks 16/1 10/1 18/1
Atlanta Falcons 14/1 18/1 20/1
Carolina Panthers 25/1 28/1 22/1
Los Angeles Chargers 66/1 100/1 22/1

 

Spread Against the Bengals:

Before the Vikes can focus on the Post-Season, though, they do have to bounce back from the ugliest loss of the season (in terms of mistakes). No team wants to be moving backward in December and while the mistakes the Vikings made, especially on defense, Sunday in Carolina are entirely correctable, it’s still something that you might want to worry about if it carries into Sunday’s game against the Bengals. Thankfully, according to MyTopSportsBook.com’s affiliates, the Vikings are facing one of their weakest opponents on the season this weekend and thus are in prime position to put the Carolina game behind them.

As of the writing of this piece, the Vikings are 11 point favorites at home, the biggest line of the season for the Purple and Gold (this far into the week, especially). The Begals aren’t mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, so they do have something to play for, but with the number of injuries and the apparent lame-duck status of their head coach (and BFF of Mike Zimmer) Marvin Lewis, it looks like they’re more focused on the off-season than this weekend. That’s what this Vikings need to get right, especially if they’re going to be facing Aaron Rodgers before Christmas who very well could be playing for his teams’ playoff hopes/lives.

Odds of Winning the Top-Seed in the NFC:

Before the Panthers game, the Vikings held the tie-breaker with the Philadelphia Eagles and became the number one seed in the NFC (after getting to the third or fourth tiebreaker because the Vikings and Eagles haven’t faced one another). However, after losing to Carolina the Vikings have lost that tiebreaker, which means that with three games left the Vikes will have to end up a game ahead of the Eagles to get the number one seed. That’s entirely possible, but would essentially require the Eagles to lose two of three while the Vikings win out, and with veteran Nick Foles filling in for Wentz that might be too tall of an order (as he’s found success in the NFL and as the Eagles QB in the past). This Article from CBS Sports explains it pretty well.

However, with Wentz out for the season, one could make the argument that the #2 seed is just as good as the #1 seed. Assuming the Vikings have the #2 seed, they’d have home-field advantage over every team except for the Eagles (who’d they’d only face in the NFC Championship). The NFC has some dangerous teams and with only a couple games left it’ll be hard for Foles and company to get on the same page, at least to the point where they’d be able to beat a team like the Saints, Panthers or Falcons. The team that has home-field advantage very well could end up representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, considering the importance of that variable (imagine if the Vikings had played the 2009 NFC Championship at the Metrodome?). Also, considering the fact that people think that refs have been favoring home teams this season, that could be a large component also.

Conclusion: 

While the Vikings have lost their ability to control their own destiny they’re still in a prime position heading into the final three games of the season. While the Packers game just became a lot more interesting, should the Packers lose to the Panthers this Sunday there’d be no reason for Aaron Rodgers to start against the Vikings other than pride (and perhaps to play spoiler). Considering the fact that he’s not that far removed from having 13 screws placed in and around his collar-bone (on the same side that he throws from), hopefully, logic wins out and he rides the pine the Sunday after next. That’d give the Vikings three relatively easy games (as “easy” as an NFL game can be) going into the playoffs to really get healthy and back on the right path.

Especially if the Vikings end up with a first-round Bye, you’d think that they’d want to go into the end of the season firing on all cylinders and playing their best football. Sure, the Panthers game was disappointing, but they still came back from down double-digits in the fourth quarter, something they hadn’t shown they’ve been able to do (because they’ve always been leading, lately) this year. They also lost the turnover battle and basically just played sloppy football, so considering the fact that they did tie the game with 2 minutes left against a playoff team that’s a season removed from representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, it’s actually sort of a good sign to see the Vikings play that way and still be able to basically win.

All signs point to the Vikings getting back on track this Sunday.

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