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Pressure is building on the New Orleans Saints. They’ve stumbled into a two-game losing streak while needing just one more win to clinch the NFC South, and now they’re going into Week 16 with an always-tough opponent standing between them and that elusive 11th win: Mike Zimmer’s Minnesota Vikings.
But the oddsmakers at BetMGM don’t anticipate a close one. They’ve opened up with the Saints favored by 7 points against the visiting Vikings on Christmas Day, with an over/under of 51.5. That suggests a final score around Saints 29, Vikings 22.
That might be a tough sell given how much trouble the Vikings have given New Orleans in recent years. Zimmer’s defense has swarmed the Saints offense, a system he’s known well ever since he and Sean Payton were coworkers on Bill Parcells’ staff back in the day. The Saints are 1-3 against the Vikings since 2017 and can’t afford another slow start like they’ve shown the last two weeks.
Elsewhere around the Saints’ orbit: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 9-point favorites to beat the Detroit Lions, which would keep them in the thick of the NFC South race. The only way Tampa Bay steals the division from the Saints is if the Bucs win both of their remaining games and the Saints lose both of theirs.
Another game to watch is the Sunday night matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Tennessee Titans, where the Titans are 3.5-point underdogs. A Packers win, paired with a Seattle Seahawks loss to the Los Angeles Rams (Seattle barely favored by 1.5), would clinch the No. 1 playoff seed in the NFC for Green Bay. While the Saints are mathematically alive to earn the No. 1 seed, their odds are growing longer by the day.
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