It’s an announcement that we all saw coming, but it’s still nice to have it confirmed anyway.

The National Football League has just announced that next Sunday’s matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions at Ford Field will be played in the Sunday Night Football slot at 7:00 PM Central time on Sunday, 5 January.

Given the stakes in this one, it’s not a surprise that this is the game that will be taking place in that spot. The winner of the Vikings/Lions game will wrap up the #1 overall seed in the NFC and will get the lone bye on the NFC side in this year’s playoffs. The loser will drop all the way to the #5 seed and likely be looking at a trip to face whoever wins the NFC South.

To clarify, it doesn’t matter what happens to the Lions on Monday Night Football when they face the San Francisco 49ers. Even if the Lions were to lose to the 49ers, they would still win the North and the #1 seed with a victory over Minnesota next week. Dan Campbell has already said that the Lions will be going “all out” to win in San Francisco, which seems weird given the potential stakes, but hey. . .Dan Campbell.

Unless I’m missing something from a historical perspective, this is the biggest Vikings/Lions game that’s ever happened. That’s not an exaggeration. . .there just hasn’t been a game between these two teams with as much at stake as this one.

The game will be kicking off at right around 7:20 PM Central time and will be carried on NBC. You can bet that we’re going to have all sorts of coverage of this one throughout the week.