NFC North flexing its muscles early with each of its four teams at least two games above .500

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Never in the past two decades has any division started out as strong as the NFC North has this season.

With the undefeated Minnesota Vikings leading the way, all four NFC North teams are 4-2 or better. This marks the first time since the league’s 2002 realignment that all four teams in a division have won at least four games through the first six weeks of a season.

“The division is good,” Detroit quarterback Jared Goff said Sunday after the Lions rolled to a 47-9 victory at Dallas. “The division is really good. It’s probably the best division in football right now.”

It’s hard to argue otherwise.

The four teams in the division have a combined record of 17-5. It’s the first time in NFL history a division has had a .750 or better combined winning percentage through Week 6 or a later week in a season.

Minnesota is 5-0 and Detroit’s 4-1. That leaves the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers tied for last place despite 4-2 records that would give them at least a share of the lead in any of the NFC’s other three divisions.

Part of the reason all the NFC North teams have such strong records is the lack of intra-division games at this point of the schedule.

The only game matching two NFC North teams so far this season was the Vikings’ 31-29 victory at Green Bay on Sept. 29.

They’ve mostly been playing teams from outside their division instead. And they’re not just winning those games. They’re romping.

With the first-place Vikings idle Sunday, the other three NFC North teams won their games by a combined margin of 116-38. Green Bay beat the Arizona Cardinals 34-13 at home, while the Bears routed the Jacksonville Jaguars 35-16 in London.

The four NFC North teams have a combined plus-211 point differential, the best for any division through the first six weeks of a season since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger. The best point differential through the first six weeks of a season before this year was the AFC West’s plus-173 in 2013.

“I just think there’s a lot of good teams in our division right now,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said. “So it will get interesting once we all start playing each other.”

This surge is particularly surprising because it’s not that long ago that the NFC North struggled to have more than one quality team.

Green Bay was the only NFC North team with a winning record in 2020 — though Chicago also sneaked into the playoffs with an 8-8 record that year — and was the only division member to avoid finishing below .500 in 2021. The Vikings were the only NFC North team to reach the playoffs in 2022.

Things started to change last season. Detroit went 12-5, earned its first postseason win in 32 years and reached the NFC championship game while Green Bay finished 9-8 and advanced to the divisional playoffs.

Now all the teams in the division have reason for optimism.

After going a combined 17-46-2 from 2018-21, the Lions have emerged as contenders under fourth-year coach Dan Campbell with help from astute drafting. The Packers made a seamless transition at quarterback last year when they traded four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers and handed the job to Jordan Love, who performed well enough to earn a four-year, $220 million contract extension. The Chicago Bears haven’t had a winning season since 2018, but they’re making major strides with rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft.

Some preseason prognostications suggested Minnesota would finish last in the division, since the Vikings were coming off a 7-10 season and had lost quarterback Kirk Cousins in free agency. The Vikings instead have emerged as one of the NFL’s biggest surprises.

“It’s a lot of guys that are still hungry,” Vikings outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard said in describing his team. "A lot of guys have faced a lot of adversity. We’ve got guys that are either late picks, third round, whatever, undrafted. Guys are still in that mode of proving themselves.”

This fast start could enable the NFC North to have more than two playoff representatives for the first time since the NFL went to the eight-division format in 2002. The NFC North also could match what happened last year in the AFC North, where each team finished with a winning record: Baltimore (13-4), Cleveland (11-6), Pittsburgh (10-7) and Cincinnati (9-8).

Of course, the records of these NFC North teams could suffer once they start beating up on one another in divisional play. The NFC North finally has its second divisional matchup of the season Sunday when Minnesota hosts Detroit.

“It just makes those games that much bigger,” Packers center Josh Myers said. “Most of them are still coming, and they’re going to be huge.”

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AP Pro Football Writers Dave Campbell and Josh Dubow and AP Sports Writer Stephen Hawkins contributed to this report.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL

Steve Megargee, The Associated Press