Between the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings, the NFC North was supposed to be incredibly competitive in 2019.
Instead, the Bears laid an egg and the Vikings, while still good, were remarkably inconsistent, due much in part to Kirk Cousins' Jekyll-and-Hyde performance under center.
The Packers ended up winning 13 games and capturing the division title, although you never got the sense that Green Bay was a genuinely great team at any point throughout the season. The offense never really seemed to click, and the shoddy run defense was exposed in a major way in the Packers' brutal NFC Championship Game loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
In spite of that, Green Bay will be the favorite to win the NFC North once again in 2020, mainly because of the fact that the rest of the division just isn't very good at this point.
Neither the Vikings nor the Bears made any significant improvements this offseason, and the Detroit Lions are, well, the Lions.
So really, the Packers are the favorites by default. They have, by far, the most reliable quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, and the consistency they have displayed for the better part of the last decade cannot be ignored.
But who is Green Bay's biggest threat in the division?
Is it Chicago, which won 12 games and won the NFC North division crown in 2018? Or is it Minnesota, which won the division three years ago and made the playoffs as a Wild Card this past winter?
I picked the Bears to repeat as division champions in 2019 thanks to their stingy defense and what I thought was an improving young offense, but I won't make the same mistake again heading into 2020.
By process of elimination, the Vikings seem to be the Packers' biggest threats going into the upcoming campaign.
Keep in mind: I am not all that crazy about Minnesota. It's more of me not being enamored with Chicago and thinking Detroit will probably be in the cellar again.
The Vikings lost Stefon Diggs this offseason, as they traded him to the Buffalo Bills. They replaced him by taking LSU's Justin Jefferson in the first round of the NFL Draft, and while I really like Jefferson as a prospect, expecting him to immediately step in and match Diggs' production is probably unrealistic.
However, Minnesota still has Adam Thielen and a terrific running back in Dalvin Cook. Plus, the Vikings have a strong tight end tandem with Kyle Rudolph and Irv Smith Jr. The defense remains solid.
As for Cousins? While he was up and down for most of 2019, you can't just ignore how well he played for stretches, and I would certainly rather have him than the unenviable duo of Mitchell Trubisky and Nick Foles in Chicago. Yes, Detroit's Matthew Stafford is obviously better than Cousins, but there are 52 other guys on the team who make that point rather moot.
While I do think the Packers will win this rather unimpressive division again, I think it's the Vikings who will provide Rodgers and Co. with their stiffest competition.
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