NFL puts Lions-Vikings winner-take-all game on Sunday Night Football

Posted by author December 30, 2024 Football

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — The Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings made the NFL’s job easy concerning how to configure the Week 18 schedule.

The winner-take-all season finale between the Lions and Vikings has been moved to Sunday Night Football. Ford Field will host the last game of the regular season, with the NFC North title and No. 1 seed up for grabs at 8:20 p.m. Sunday.

It’s as juicy of a late-season matchup as possible, with two of the NFL’s hottest teams facing off with everything on the line for Game 272. The league leaves the final week as flexible as possible, with every game listed as “TBD” until after Week 17.

The Lions are enjoying their best regular season of all time, running the table in the NFC North and on the road to this point. But the Vikings have kept the pressure on all year long, not losing since Week 8, and they just beat the Green Bay Packers in Week 17 to set up this big game.

Detroit won the first meeting between these two teams in Week 7, with Jake Bates nailing a clutch kick down the stretch of a back-and-forth game.

But first, the Lions are in a weird situation. They have a Monday Night Football game against the San Francisco 49ers that can’t move the needle before returning home for the big-time showdown.

Dan Campbell has said the Lions will approach that game like any other, and the head coach has left no doubt about his plans in San Francisco.

“Yeah, I’ll make this easy for everybody. That way, all the critics can jump out and start attacking, but that way, you don’t have to debate them anymore,” Campbell said earlier this week. “We’re bringing everything that we have to this game, and we are playing, and I don’t care what it looks like, and where it’s at or who’s this, who’s that, we’re going out to play and win this game out on the West Coast.

“So, there you go.”

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