The Packers’ oldest rivals may be the Bears, but their most heated rivalry, at least in the 21st century, has to be with the Minnesota Vikings. That’s probably because of the simple fact that the Vikings have been much better over the last 20 to 30 years than the Bears, which leads to a lot of high stakes matchups.

You can see evidence of those stakes in how many of the Packers’ best performances against the Vikings are relatively recent. There’s plenty of old gold here, too, but as we look at the brightest moments by Packers players, take note...

Saturday is going to have a sleepy slate of games before things really ramp up in rivalry week, where we’ll get #4 Georgia @ #16 Georgia Tech and #3 Texas A&M @ #17 Texas on Black Friday and #1 Ohio State @ #18 Michigan and #14 Vanderbilt @ #20 Tennessee on Saturday. This week, though, we will only get two top-25 matchups on the entire slate, in part because the SEC has (mostly) scheduled cupcakes leading up to their rivalry games.

Let’s break down these top-25 matchups and the top NFL prospects in these games, [according to the consensus draft...

The Green Bay Packers dropped their final injury report of the week on Friday, which included that receiver Jayden Reed (shoulder/foot) was a limited participant in practice after having his 21-day practice window open up today. Reed is officially listed as out for Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, but he at least got this extra practice in before the short week of preparation against the Detroit Lions.

Packers Players Ruled Out vs. Vikings

• WR Jayden Reed (shoulder/foot)
• CB Nate Hobbs (knee)

Beyond Reed, the only other player who was ruled out on Friday was Packers cornerback...

Every year for about five years I’ve been predicting a decline for Minnesota Vikings safety Harrison Smith, because, well, most 31-year-old safeties decline pretty quickly. However, Harrison Smith is not most safeties, and to his immense credit, he has bucked the odds year after year after year.

In retrospect, this was actually a dumb thing to project because Smith is in my opinion a Hall-of-Fame caliber player, and those guys tend to age gracefully. The Packers didn’t even acquire Charles Woodson until his age 30 season, and he had many great years thereafter. Smith is not Woodson’s caliber (almost no...

The Green Bay Packers are poised to get some reinforcements for their banged-up wide receiver room. Currently, the team has six wideouts on the 53-man roster, and five of those were listed as limited in Thursday’s practice ahead of the team’s Week 12 matchup with the Minnesota Vikings. The only receiver practicing in full was Malik Heath, one of the last men on the depth chart at the position, and even Bo Melton — who is formally listed as a cornerback — was limited as well.

When Friday arrived, however, the Packers got a welcome face back at practice. Jayden...

One thing I like about the Green Bay Packer front office is that I know they have a big database of players and college prospects somewhere inside 1265 Lombardi Avenue, and that it is at least somewhat knowable if you know what to look for. For instance, last year I wrote a piece about how almost every Packer cornerback shares a RAS comp with Marshon Lattimore.

Kent Lee Platte’s Relative Athletic Score (RAS) database is very much the type of database I described above. It catalogues almost every prospect who joins the NFL based on their Combine and Pro Day...

If the Green Bay Packers want to win on Sunday, then they need to make sure Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy continues to look like one of the worst quarterbacks in football.

That’s not hyperbole or even an unfair shot at a divisional rival’s QB. When on the field, McCarthy has been one of the worst quarterbacks in football, and the Packers can’t afford to let second-year QB get any kind of momentum, either in the short and long term.

Through five games, McCarthy is completing just 52.9 percent of his passes, averaging 6.0 yards per attempt with six touchdowns...

The Packers’ schedule this year is stupid, and the stupidity kicks into high gear this week.

With seven weeks remaining, the Packers have played just one of their six divisional games, meaning their final five are jammed into the last month and a half of the season. This is dumb and stupid and wrong for many reasons, both aesthetic and structural.

Divisions have outsized importance in the landscape of the NFL. The easiest way into the playoffs is to win your division, and the NFL will award you with a home playoff game for your trouble if you manage to...

The Green Bay Packers host the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday afternoon, and this game will be yet another chance for this Packers squad to demonstrate that they can play better than they have during their rough stretch over the past several weeks. It’s time to turn the focus up — there can be no more letdowns if this team wants to make a big run at a division title over their final seven games.

First up in this divisional gauntlet is Minnesota, whose new quarterback has been showing up on highlight reels for all the wrong reasons. J.J. McCarthy has...

We covered this a little bit last week, but I wanted to give you an update on an interesting phenomenon that I’ve found: The Green Bay Packers’ rushing game basically plays up to their opponent’s season-long averages. This is all to say, we might have the most meh run game in the league, even though the Packers have gone out of their way to get big — not just in the backfield or the offensive line, but also at receiver — to ensure that the team had an advantage on the ground.

Obviously, running back Josh Jacobs’ status going into...

Throughout training camp, Green Bay Packers rookie second-round pick Anthony Belton had practiced exclusively at the tackle positions, in a backup role, for the Packers. To me, that was somewhat understandable, since Travis Glover was placed on the injured reserve early on and Kadeem Telfort, who was a roster bubble player to begin with, would have been the next man up at tackle if there were an injury to Rasheed Walker or Zach Tom. (Spoiler: Telfort didn’t make the final roster cut.)

Then, the Packers traded for Darian Kinnard, spending a draft pick on a one-year rental tackle. That, in...

With running back Josh Jacobs (knee) and receiver Savion Williams (foot) returning to practice for the Green Bay Packers on Thursday, the Packers’ only non-participants in practice this week have been defensive lineman Karl Brooks (ankle), linebacker Quay Walker (neck) and cornerback Nate Hobbs (knee). Green Bay should be relatively healthy going into their matchup on Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings.

At the moment, the Packers are hovering around touchdown favorites at home versus the Vikings, similar to the confidence that the bookmakers had in Green Bay over the New York Giants last week.

What do you think happens in...