Brandon Veale column: The two-lane road to the Super Bowl

Every year on Labor Day weekend, I drive back to the Upper Peninsula for a fantasy football draft with friends.

The road between there and Duluth is long and not terribly interesting, but I have lots of things to keep me engaged enough not to drive into a ditch: podcasts, snacks, sometimes just counting down the various landmarks. There’s also time to think about football, a practice I prefer to put off as long as I can.

You see, I like football games, but a lot of the stories and manufactured debates that fill the rest of a game week, I could go without. Or at least I’d prefer to put them off as long as possible.

The Vikings have put a lot of unpleasantness off as long as possible. Sunday’s season opener against a decidedly vanilla New York Giants team feels quite winnable, but after that it’s the defending NFC champions (San Francisco), everyone’s AFC dark horse (Houston), a game at Lambeau Field, and a trip to London to face Aaron Rodgers one more time (at least in theory), this time with the New York Jets.

Throw in facing the Detroit Lions right after the bye week, followed immediately by a short-week cross-country trip to Los Angeles to play the Rams on Thursday night and Minnesota could find themselves 2-5 or worse when things start to soften up for them in the second half.

Kirk Cousins departed for Atlanta, leaving coach Kevin O’Connell to put the reins in the hands of Sam Darnold, now on his fourth team in seven seasons and somehow officially a journeyman at age 27. Darnold was only acquired as a “bridge” to hold the fort until first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy was ready, but McCarthy suffered a season-ending knee injury in preseason, so this is what you're getting, fans.

The Vikings’ defense is still fairly good, at least in parts, but Minnesota has the hardest schedule of any team in the NFC (based on last year’s results). Kind of like Ino, Wisconsin, the Vikings are not at the beginning of the road to contention and nowhere near the end, so they’re gonna need to figure out a way to keep themselves entertained along the way.

As for the Packers, I’m not exactly sure where they are. The end of the 2023 season, in particular demolishing the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff game in Dallas, was certainly encouraging but it still feels a bit premature to declare the torch officially passed from Brett Favre to Rodgers to Jordan Love.

And even if that goes smoothly, the Packers are now on their third defensive coordinator in six seasons, former Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley. The defensive line is not a problem but there are question marks among the linebackers and the secondary. Further, the Packers had a competition between two starting kickers and then gave the job to Brayden Narveson, a guy they found on the Tennessee Titans practice squad.

This is a team that probably still has some lessons to learn. Kind of like when you’re driving through Ashland, you have to make sure to slow down to 25 mph for a while, because getting pulled over is only going to get you to your destination later.

Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated picked the Detroit Lions to win the Super Bowl. The bad news is that SI has only picked one Super Bowl champion correctly in August in the 21st century (the 2004 Patriots) and has only correctly picked one Super Bowl participant in the last six years. Though it’s hardly ridiculous to think the Lions are Super Bowl contenders, even in the second half of the NFC Championship game in January, I was struggling to summon the suspension of disbelief necessary to imagine the Lions in a Super Bowl.

I think the Lions will find out that sometimes life gets in the way. You take the wrong entry in a roundabout and suddenly you’re headed into downtown Hurley instead of downtown Ironwood.

The Chicago Bears have No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams, and a selection of competent wide receivers for the first time possibly in club history. They’re overdue for their one good season in a 5-6 year span, but that only happens at certain times and under certain conditions, like a 4-point buck that runs out on US-2 near Iron River. Hopefully, the rest of the NFC North will have time to slow down and avoid them.

As for the rest of the NFL, trying to predict how that will turn out in January is probably harder than trying to predict how good the roads will be. You just hope you have a chance at Christmas to get where you want to go.

For all the talk of parity which the NFL likes to make, the Chiefs have played in the last six AFC championship games and the 49ers four of the last five. Even though there’s little reason to believe that will change, I’m rooting for someone, anyone different if for no other reason than in hopes that Patrick Mahomes will be asked to do fewer commercials. I’m going to pick the Ravens to the win the Super Bowl instead, hope that Ironwood gets a Culver’s and see what happens first.

Brandon Veale is the sports editor of the News Tribune. He can be reached at bveale@duluthnews.com.