If you've ever seen X-rays from collarbone injuries, you know the unsightly images can look like a jagged Wall Street graph after the stock market takes a big tumble. The visual also applies to a suddenly volatile NFC race after the Green Bay Packers announced the terrible news that a broken right collarbone will sideline quarterback Aaron Rodgers, quite possibly for the season.
When Rodgers plays, the Packers are the one team in the NFC with a quarterback great enough for the team to contend without much help from the defense and/or conventional running game. With Rodgers out, we stacked all 16 NFC teams into one of four groupings in what was already looking like a pretty wide-open conference.
"This is as open as I can remember it in a lot of years, because it is hard to say who the top one or two teams are in the conference," an evaluator said. "Usually, you would put the Packers and someone else -- Seattle, maybe -- that you feel strongly about. You just don't feel as strongly about those teams this year."
We start with the leading contenders, including three that have been to the Super Bowl recently with many of the same key players in place, including quarterbacks who have shown they can win playoff games with sufficient support. Every one of these teams is flawed enough to trade places with teams below them, which is why this NFC race will be a difficult one to handicap.