The NFC North, for reasons that have as much to do with your author’s youthful diet of old NFL Films highlights as anything else, just seems like more of a football conference than others in the NFL. Compared to, say, the AFC South — which we think of as basically a multi-layered helix of freeway flyovers surrounding an Applebee’s — the NFC North might as well be in another sport, or decade. These teams existed when your father was young; play in cities that are old, filled with giant stone buildings, and which are generally cold and varying degrees of unbearable for at least half the calendar year; are coached by men who have earned their mustaches. That’s some NFL football right there.

Some…pretty mediocre NFL football. With the exceptions of the Lions, who are doing an excellent imitation of an 0-16 team, all the NFC North’s teams are more or less equal in dullish moribundity. That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the NFC North. It’s all those awesome, tough, throwback-y things mentioned above, sure, but also a bunch of flawed, often mis-coached teams making tons of mistakes.

The Bears are in first place, but they’re still every bit a 5-4 team. While the probable return of QB Kyle Orton under center will be welcome and helpful this week…well, look at that sentence. Think about that sentence. Orton has actually been pretty good this season — and backup Rex Grossman was predictably mediocre in relief — but he’s throwing to a very lame-ish group of receivers and shouldn’t be the focal point of any playoff-caliber offense. While the Bears have run the ball fairly well all season and still have an excellent offensive line, this still isn’t an offense any team should be scared of.

Relative to Chicago’s 31st-ranked passing defense, though, the offense is pretty good. The Bears have a great many talented players on defense — and are one of the NFL’s very best teams against the run — but have been unable to consistently pressure quarterbacks, and thus have given up a ton of yards through the air. The Bears seem committed to their scheme, which, you know, is commendable, but other teams seem to have figured out that quick passes and shorter routes are an easy and effective way around said scheme.

That approach has worked fairly well for almost every team the Bears have played so far, and should work especially well for the Packers, who kind of use it every week, anyway. Green Bay had a terrible time with the Minnesota defense last week, but with RB Ryan Grant seemingly getting some of his 2007-style explosiveness back, the burden on gimpy QB Aaron Rodgers should get a bit lighter in coming weeks. Leaving aside last week’s letdown, the Packers offensive line has been pretty decent at getting Rodgers time to find his receivers on short, simple routes that allow them to run after the catch. If Grant can do anything against the Bears — and he averaged 4.7 YPC against the Vikings defense, which is better — then the Packers should be able to keep the Bears on their heels and off the field.

That last part is important, because the Packers defense has been pretty bad of late. With MLB Nick Barnett done for the season with an ACL injury, the Packers will shuffle the personnel in the middle and hope that their 28th-ranked run defense improves. To be fair, that ranking isn’t going to go down: Kansas City, Detroit, Oakland and St. Louis aren’t going anywhere. The secondary is the NFL’s best at getting takeaways and has scored a NFL-high 36 points this year by itself, and a decent showing by the run D should give the secondary a chance at a pick or two against Orton or Grossman or Jim Miller or Chad Hutchinson or whoever the Bears throw out there.

The NFC North isn’t the game-defining defense your author’s sentimental, NFL Films-addled mind likes to believe it is. But those John Facenda voice-overs echoing through our brain’s under-furnished corridors notwithstanding, one of these teams will probably win the division. Which team that will be is hard to say. This week, though, we’re picking the team with the good passing game over the team with the bad passing defense, then hitting up YouTube for some Gale Sayers highlights.

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