Road to the Super Bowl: NFC North

Hey there RealBookie, I’m glad to see you here. This is the episode where we’ll talk about the NFC North.

The Chicago Bears are one of the league’s premier franchises, and have been around for over 100 years. The team started in Decatur, Illinois, but spent just one season there before moving to Chicago. Let’s take a look at some of the important notes on the Chicago Bears.

The Bears have been playing their football games at Soldier Field since 1971. Before their time there they played at Wrigley Field, the same location as the Chicago Bears. The multi-purpose stadium located on the north side of Chicago holds over 61,000 fans for a football game. The stadium is the oldest in both the National Football League, and also Major League Soccer. Soldier Field has become one of the city of Chicago’s must-stop locations when visiting the city.

The Bears head into the 2023 season with 786 career wins. That’s in over 1400 career games. The Bears have won 17 playoff games in their career.

George Halas is known as one of the winningest coaches of all time. Halas finished his coaching career with 318 wins and 148 losses. Another guy that will go into the record books is the running back Walter Payton. Payton rushed the football nearly 3,900 times and finished with more than 16,000 yards and 110 touchdowns.

The Chicago Bears have a long history of success, dating back to their days in the Western Division of the National Football League prior to the merger of the AFL and NFL. The Bears have 9 NFL Championships, with 8 of them coming before the merger.

The very first quarterback in Chicago Bears history was Pard Pearce. He made just 11 starts with the organization. Jay Cutler is the leader in passing touchdowns for the Bears, but second in interceptions. Second, on the list for touchdowns is Sid Luckman, with 137, but he has the most interceptions, with 132.

The Bears have 30 players that were prime members of the franchise and another 7 that spent portions of their careers with the Bears.

The Chicago Bears have a mascot by the name of Staley. He is Staley Da Bear, and is around at all home games with a customized team jersey on. Dick Plasman was the last player in NFL history to play without a helmet. His final game with the Bears came in 1940, and no one since has done so. The first player the Chicago Bears ever drafted was Joe Stydahar, a tackle, back in 1936. Finally, Beattie Feathers of the Bears, became the first back in NFL history to rush for 1,000 yards in a season. In 1934, he finished with 1,004.

The Detroit Lions were founded back in 1930 in Portsmouth, Ohio, but quickly moved the franchise over to Detroit. The Lions headquarters are located in Allen Park, Michigan.

In Portsmouth, Ohio they played at Universal Stadium. Once they moved to Detroit, the Lions had three locations before their current home at Ford Field. First, they were at the University of Detroit Stadium. They played there until the end of the 1940 season when they moved to Tiger Stadium. The Lions and Tigers shared the stadium until 1974. Then, the Lions moved to the Pontiac Silverdome. The Lions were by themselves there until the end of the 2021 season.

Finally, in 2002, the Lions opened Ford Field in Detroit. Ford Field is the home of the Lions, along with the Michigan Panthers of the USFL. Ford Field hosted Super Bowl XL, where the Steelers beat the Seahawks.

Back in the late 1930s, when the team was coming together, the ownership wanted to put a team together that would be the “King of the NFL” They associated that with how the Lions are the king of the jungle. They also felt it would work well to have a tie-in with the Detroit Tigers, the baseball team in town.

The Detroit Lions hold the worst record of any franchise between the years 1973 – 2023. Detroit during that time is 312-448-4.

The 2008 Detroit Lions go down as one of the worst teams of all time. The Lions joined the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the second team to lose all 16 of their regular season games.

The Detroit Lions have never won a Super Bowl after the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Before that time, the Lions won four League Championships.

The Lions won four conference championships as well. Detroit has been to the postseason 18 times in franchise history. The Lions have yet to make the postseason since 2016.

Matthew Stafford is the Lions’ leader in touchdowns thrown. He finished his time in Detroit with 282 touchdowns and 141 interceptions. Next on the list was Bobby Layne, with 118 touchdowns. Those are the only two Lions quarterbacks with 100+ touchdowns in their careers.

There are 22 guys as part of the Detroit Lions, with 17 of them from the Detroit Lions strictly. The other 7 guys spent portions of their careers with the Lions. The first guy in franchise history that was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame was Dutch Clark.

Probably the most famous Detroit Lions player of all time. 1989-1998 running back Barry Sanders went into the Pro Hall of Fame in 2004. He was a 6 time all Pro-first-team player and made the Pro Bowl 10 times.

The Lions have a mascot named Roary the Lion. He wears a blue football jersey to the Lions came with the number “1” on it. Rory is the spokes lion for the Detroit Lions kids club and is typically at every home event the Lions host. Detroit also has its own cheerleaders. They are called the Detroit Lions Cheerleaders.

The Lions have had 30 head coaches in the history of their franchise.

The Green Bay Packers are the third oldest franchise in all of the National Football League. In small-town Green Bay, the Packers are the only stockholders-owned franchise in the league.

The Green Bay Packers started playing their football games in Hagmeister Park, back in 1919. They played in 6 other venues before moving to their current home – Lambeau Field.

Bellevue Park, City Stadium, Borchert Field, Wisconsin State Fair Park, Marquette Stadium and Milwaukee County Stadium were the venues

Lambeau Field is known by many as the Frozen Tundra, Titletown USA, and the Shrine of Pro Football. It is known for the “Lambeau Leap” After a Packers player scores a touchdown, he leaps into the front row of the stands behind the end zone.

Why are the Packers named the Packers?. The story goes back to the early 1900’s when a member of the Press-Gazette in Green Bay gave them the name. The team had their first organizational meeting in 1919, and the team’s original sponsor was the Indian Packing Company. Originally, the newspaper didn’t know an official name and called them the Indians. Then, the next day, the paper referred to them as the Packers. The nickname stuck from that point on.

The Packers were 10 wins away from 800 in the regular season. The Packers have 36 postseason wins. Brett Favre is the top passer, with nearly 62,000 yards. Ahman Green was terrific in his time, with 8,322 rushing yards and 54 touchdowns, while Donald Driver was elite as a receiver, finishing with 61 touchdowns. Mason Crosby is one of the top kickers in all of the game, with just shy of 2,000 career points.

The Packers won 11 NFL Championships before the merger in 1970. Since the merger, Green Bay has won two other Super Bowls, and two during the AFL-NFL days.

The Packers have won their conference 9 times.

When it comes to the Green Bay Packers, they have produced some really talented quarterbacks. The names Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, Bart Star, Lynn Dickey, Tobin Rote, and Don Majowski are on the top six for passing yards in Packers history.

The Green Bay Packers have the second most players inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. They have 30 players. The Packers also have two coaches and executives into the Hall of Fame. The first was Vince Lombardi, the head coach from 1995-1967. He was inducted in 1971. Ron Wolf was the most recent and was inducted in 2015. Wolf was the General Manager for the Packers from 1991-2001.

The Denver Broncos are the only team in the NFL that have never won a regular season game at Lambeau Field. Heading into the 2023 season, every Green Bay Packers home game, whether it was preseason or regular season or even playoffs, has been sold out since 1960.

The Minnesota Vikings have been around since 1960 and are members of the National Football League.

They played at the Metropolitan Stadium from 1961-1981. Then, they moved to Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome until 2013. That’s when they moved for a season to TCF Bank Stadium, which is where the Minnesota Golden Gophers play their home games. Then, U.S. Bank Stadium was ready, and there they are now.

The Minnesota Vikings had several team names suggested to them. A few included the Chippewas, Miners, Vikings, and Voyageurs. The team was officially named the Vikings, and it was meant to reflect on Minnesota’s history of Scandinavian-American culture.

Adrian Peterson and Cris Carter are two names the franchise will never forget. Peterson rushed for 11,747 yards in his Vikings career, with 97 touchdowns. Carter was an elite receiver, with 1,004 catches and 110 touchdowns.

The 1998 team was known as an offensive juggernaut. After that season, the Vikings had the record for most points in a season, with 556.

Minnesota has been to the postseason 31 times. The Vikings, though, have only been to the postseason 5 times since 2012.

Kirk Cousins is the most current quarterback for Minnesota heading into the 2023 season. Heading into the season, Cousins will be fourth in career starts as the quarterback for the organization. With 2 starts in 2023, he will move to third in front of Daunte Culpepper.

The first true Minnesota Vikings player into the Hall of Fame was Fran Tarkenton. The quarterback from 1961-1966 and then again from 1972-1978 was inducted back in 1986. Paul Krause was next, in 1998. The safety spent 111 seasons with the Vikings.

Skipping ahead to most recently, Steve Hutchinson, the starting guard for the team from 2006-2011, was inducted in 2020. Other guys in the 2000s include Randall McDaniel, Gary Zimmerman, Rony Yary, Cris Carter, Carl Eller, Randy Moss, Alan Page, and John Randle. Moss was inducted in 2018 and Carter in 2013; both are known as the top receivers in the organization and even in all of the league.

●Alan Page, former Vikings star, is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He also was a justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court.
●There was a team in Minnesota before the Vikings. That was the Minneapolis Marins/Red Jackets that were in the NFL in the 1920s into the 1930s.
●A few nicknames for the Vikings include “the Vikes,” the “Purple People Eaters,” and the “Purple and Gold.”
●When Brett Favre signed from the rival Packers to the Vikings, he signed a 2-year, $25M deal. When he took on his former team on October 5th, he was the first quarterback to beat all 32 teams as a starter in the league.

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