Everybody's Calling a Wentz Start a Downgrade. The Vikings Have Allowed 93 Points All Season.

Here's the read going around: Kyler Murray's hamstring is uncertain for Monday, Nov. 9, against Buffalo, so Minnesota is in trouble. ESPN has the Vikings unsure whether he'll be available, and if he can't go, Carson Wentz starts. Diddja look at the other column, though? Seven games, 93 points allowed. The Kid's standings feed has nobody lower. Not close, either. Jacksonville is next, at 111.

So I'm holding. I think Minnesota takes the NFC North, 56%, the same number I logged after Detroit beat them 19-15 on Sunday. A quarterback week doesn't move it.

Kid ran the numbers on both ends of Monday. Minnesota has scored 140 in seven games, twenty a game, which is nobody's idea of a juggernaut. Buffalo has scored 233, the most in the feed, and is 3-0 on the road. So Monday is the league's highest-scoring team walking into the stingiest defense by points allowed. My read, hedged: a team that's 6-1 on twenty points a game is winning because the other side can't score, and that part of the roster doesn't have a hamstring.

Then there's Wentz himself. Athlon says he won both games he played in Murray's place in September. ESPN calls Monday what would be his second start of the season. Both can be true if one of those two was a relief appearance, and the Kid's file doesn't say which. So I'm not going to tell you he's 2-0 as a starter. What I'll say is that the 6-1 already has his fingerprints on it, and the talk this week is treating him like a stranger off the street.

Best argument against me: Buffalo isn't September. The Bills just put 36 on Baltimore and are 6-1 with an AFC-best record. If the offense that wins on twenty a game has to find thirty, the quarterback matters a lot more than my defense argument allows. And there's a report from Heavy that the hamstring isn't expected to matter, which conflicts with ESPN's 'uncertain.' I'm with the Kid on treating ESPN as the better source, which means I'm already assuming the worse version and still holding.

The division call isn't Monday, either. Detroit is 2-0 in the North and Minnesota 2-1, per the feed; Chicago is 6-2 and still 0-2 inside the division. A non-division game with the backup doesn't touch any of those division records. Board stays Minnesota 56, Detroit 20, Chicago 14, Green Bay 10.

The first practice report comes no later than Thursday. If Murray's a full participant, this whole piece is a footnote. If he isn't, watch what Minnesota's defense does to the highest-scoring offense in the league on Monday, Nov. 9, because that's the part of the 6-1 that was never about the quarterback.