Every NFC North team would make the playoffs if season ended today

The NFC North division is off to a historically great start, with all teams above .500 and no team having more than two losses through the first seven weeks of the season. As the Chicago Bears were on their bye week in Week 7, the Green Bay Packers held off the Houston Texans, while the Detroit Lions handed the Minnesota Vikings their first loss of the 2024 season.

With each team at either 4-2 or 5-1 in the division, the NFC North, with the Bears, Lions, Packers, and Vikings all thriving in the first half of the season, could potentially see three, or even all four, of the division's teams making the playoffs.

Currently, it is slated that if the playoffs started today, all four teams inside the NFC North would make the playoffs with the Lions as the top seed in the NFC, with the Vikings (5), Packers (6), and Bears (7) all claiming wild card spots in the conference.

One of the most interesting points about the state of the NFC North division is the lack of matchups between the four teams so far this year. Only the Vikings have played a divisional opponent more than once (Lions and Packers), while the Bears have yet to play a single game against a division opponent (their first is Green Bay in Week 11).

The emphasis for the Bears moving through the rest of the regular season will be winning the game that on paper see them as a favorite, and being prepared to go through the gauntlet of this tough division. During the team's three-game winning streak, there's been no denying the growth of rookie quarterback Caleb Williams and the offense as a whole which looked lost after the two games, but has now seen several dynamic performances from their playmakers since.

It has been 14 years since Chicago last won a playoff game, having lost in the wild card round each of their last two appearances (2018 and 2020), while the Lions made it to the NFC Championship Game last year, and the Packers and Vikings have had multiple appearances in the past five years.

Giving credit where it is due to all the opposing teams in the division, Detroit is off to an incredible offensive start that can't be ignored. In the last four games, the Lions have scored more offensive touchdowns than Jared Goff has thrown incompletions, which is the first time that's ever been done since the NFL-AFL merger.

The NFC North has been incredible to begin the 2024 season, but how the four teams will play against each other will more than likely one of the biggest stories in the NFL's second half of the season. With four teams all capable of making the playoffs, and all of those teams needing to play each other multiple times over, each divisional game in the NFC North feels like appointment viewing for the rest of the year.

This article originally appeared on Bears Wire: Every NFC North team would make the playoffs if season ended today