Must see games this week...Pack/Rams, Vikes/Saints...

[purplefaithful]

Some great games...

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fuck the  packers

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The Four Must-See NFL Matchups for Week 8https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/10/26/18025980/aaron-rodgers-packers-rams-drew-brees
Even though it seems like there’s going to be a flood of activity ahead of Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, it’s nearly impossible to figure out which teams are buying and which are selling. There’s far too much mediocrity in the league for too many teams to consider themselves definitively out of the playoff picture. The Oakland Raiders and the New York Giants are selling. The Buffalo Bills probably should as well, but they’ve yet to enter the market. Who else does that leave? If the Indianapolis Colts beat the Raiders on Sunday, they’ll improve to 3-5 in a pretty pedestrian AFC South. Are they out of it? There are 13 teams with three wins, so we have very little idea which are good or bad yet outside of a few outliers. Two games this weekend will help us better understand good teams—the New Orleans Saints vs. the Minnesota Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams vs. the Green Bay Packers. Others will help us decide which average teams will remain in contention—the Philadelphia Eagles vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars, for instance. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but here’s hoping the season will start to reveal itself Sunday and we’ll have a clearer sense of what the playoff picture looks like heading toward the midway point.
(Spoiler alert: We won’t). 
The Saints and Vikings vs. the Salary Cap 

Kirk Cousins is not stealing money. In fact, both quarterbacks in this game are examples of how a team can contend with an expensive quarterback in a league where it is becoming increasingly common to build a contender with a young quarterback on a cost-effective contract.
Drew Brees has made $221.7 million in his career, and Cousins, who is not as good as Brees, will make $130.6 million after his fully guaranteed contract expires in 2020. The Vikings and the Saints have the lowest cap space in the league—the Vikings with $1.2 million and the Saints with an astounding $924,000 in space. For comparison’s sake, the Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans, both featuring former first-round QBs still on rookie deals, each have around $25 million in space. Brees and Cousins are both showing it’s possible to have a deep roster and an expensive quarterback. You’ve just got to find bargains elsewhere. For the Vikings, that includes Adam Thielen’s $6.1 million deal; for the Saints, it’s Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara—both of whom will make less than $1.4 million this year. Both quarterbacks have exerted their considerable leverage, and it worked out for player and team—I detailed Cousins’s journey to that contract earlier this season.
Brees’s quarterback rating is 132 when targeting Michael Thomas. I found this incredible, but as I dug deeper into the Saints’ matchup against the Vikings, I realized that figure is only 10 points higher than his regular passer rating. 
Brees is on track to complete at least 70 percent of his passes and 8 yards per attempt in a season for the fourth time in his career. That feat has been achieved just four other times in the history of the sport. The Saints have won five straight since getting run over by the FitzMagic train and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Week 1. They’re in the midst of a grueling portion of their schedule—the Washington Redskins and Baltimore Ravens the last two weeks, with the Vikings and Rams up next—but at the moment I would consider them alongside the Kansas City Chiefs, Rams, and New England Patriots as the league’s elite teams. 
Sunday’s game offers some nice matchups that will probably be relevant in January: Can the Saints’ secondary stop Thielen and Stefon Diggs? Can the Vikings’ struggling linebacker crew stop Kamara? Can a Minnesota secondary that just lost Mike Hughes slow down Brees? Are the Saints super pissed off about the Minneapolis Miracle? As with most teams this season, I have more questions than answers. Hopefully a few are answered Sunday night.