The “FOX NFL Sunday” crew broke down the current state of the NFC North race after the Thanksgiving Day matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions and after the Chicago Bears‘ big win on Black Friday.
“The Detroit Lions may have lost their toughness,” Julian Edelman said. “How are you a tough football team? You can run the football, you can stop the run [and] you can protect the quarterback. Seven quarterback hits, three sacks on Jared Goff [and] seven hurries. They couldn’t protect him. Jared Goff needs to have that middle of the pocket.”
The Lions fell to the Packers on Thursday, 31-24. Despite a milestone game for Goff in which he reached 3,000 passing yards in a season for the ninth time in his career, the Lions weren’t able to pull out the win. Green Bay outpaced Detroit in both passing and rushing yards and was relentless on defense. The Packers sacked Goff three times and finished with eight tackles for loss, while the Lions failed to record a sack and had just one tackle for loss.
The Lions (7-5) are now third in the NFC North behind the second-place Packers (8-3-1) and the first-place Bears (9-3), who Edelman believes are the real deal this year after defeating the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles.
“I’m buying the Bears,” he said. “They’ve been able to run the ball down people’s throats. … They had long, methodical drives [against the Eagles]. Look at Caleb Williams. … He had two plays that stood out to me — that third-and-8 where he doubled back and he made the first down with his legs, and then the touchdown to [Cole] Kmet when he’s rolling to his left [and] hits that backside post to Kmet in a windy, hard-condition day to throw the ball. That’s all you need.”
It wasn’t pretty for the Bears, but they got it done against the Eagles with those aforementioned methodical drives. Chicago (39:18) had the ball nearly twice as long as Philly (20:42) and completed 85 drives, while the home team had 51. In all, the Bears finished with 425 total yards and outrushed the Eagles by nearly 200 yards (281 to 87).
The only NFC North team left to play in Week 13 is the last-place Minnesota Vikings (4-7), who are set to take on the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday afternoon (4:05 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app). The Vikings are on a three-game losing streak, with their only win in the past six games coming against the Lions earlier this month.
