With the anticlimactic return of Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers are once again the consensus favorite to win their third consecutive NFC North title this upcoming season.
But the conference shouldn't sleep on the Minnesota Vikings. And according to former NFL linebacker and current team radio analyst Ben Leber, they have just as good a shot to clinch a home playoff game.
"It's a two-team race. And I'm confident that the Vikings have everything they need to beat Green Bay and win this division," Leber told The Zach Gelb Show on Tuesday. "Outside their first game last year -- when there was so much turmoil going on within the Vikings' roster and COVID and all that stuff -- I think that was an anomaly... So, you give this Vikings team a full complement of starters, no doubt in my mind they can take down Aaron Rodgers.
"I'm more concerned with the Packers, for sure. You've got Rodgers and a pretty darn good front-seven, defensively. And that's where, if the Vikings' offensive line can come together and provide Kirk [Cousins] protection, you've already mentioned all the weapons the Vikings have -- they have more weapons than Green Bay does. I do think the Vikings win this division."
Minnesota, which finished in third place with a 7-9 record last season, hasn't started training camp on the right foot. According to a recent report from the Washington Post, the Vikings' vaccination rate ranks dead last in the league -- only 64.5-percent of players are fully vaccinated -- and starting quarterback Kirk Cousins, who's unvaccinated, is one of a handful of players currently on the reserve/COVID-19 list.
"This Delta variant is rough," Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer told reporters at camp on Monday. "You can see the cases going up every single day now. That's why, for the sake of everybody's health, I think it's important [to get vaccinated]. But some people don't understand, I guess."
The Vikings, scheduled to open the regular season in Cincinnati against the Bengals on Sept. 12, currently have the second-best odds (+250) to win the NFC North, according to the William Hill Sportsbook.
The entire Vikings conversation between Leber and Gelb can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow The Zach Gelb Show on Twitter @ZachGelb and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.