I love how everyone thinks the Vikings are getting old. Just a few stats first.
Average age:
Vikings Defense 27.2 (that's with P. Williams, 25.8 without him.) 4.3 years experience.(3.8 without P. Williams)
Packers Defense 26.7, 4 years of experience
Of course that is with Pickett, if the Packer decide to keep him. I figure they let him go and depend on Raji and find a backup for him. Without Pickett it drops to 25.8 years old and 3.7 years experience.
Of course the Packers also have to address Tasucher and Clifton. We all know how well they did without Tauscher. Tauscher and Clifton are both older then McKinnie and Hutchnison. But TT probably wont want to pay them so they will both more then likely be gone.
With Tauscher and Clifton the age of the Packers O-line is 29.4, the Vikings is 24.5 But the Vikings are getting old.
Key positions are getting old and injured. Obviously not the whole team there Einstein, you draft new guys just like everyone else. Your QB is 40. Guys like Pat Williams come to mind. McKinnie and Hutchinson too. How about Winfield? Add in Henderson just because of the horrific injury. Your purple helmet boys have a LOT of their key guys that they are going to replace soon. Tauscher and Clifton? Sure, but they are barely serviceable now as it is. We are not talking about replacing guys who are at the top of the heap at their positions. Right now, on our roster I only see one guy that is an excellent player who is getting up there and that is Woodson.
Green Bay has one of the best young cores in the league. Piece one is the QB. We have a guy who has 10 years of great football ahead of him. You have favre (or maybe you don't) and then you got nothing. That is the single biggest piece of any football team. We have Jennings and Finley - you have Rice and Harvin. Pretty much a wash there. You have Peterson - who is being WASTED in the favre experiment. The shelf life of RBs is always one of the shortest. We'll see how that plays out. We have Grant who isn't the player Peterson is, but it would also take Grant about 3 seasons to cough the ball up as many times as AD did in the NFCC game too. You have Loadholdt, we have Sitton so each has one solid young OLman. On D, I don't see a Clay Matthews anywhere on your roster. Greenway is a good player but Matthews was better than Greenway was this year and he was a rookie. We'll see what happens with Raji. And for young DBs I'd take Collins over anything you have in a heartbeat.
So, when it comes to YOUNG talent, I like GB's better. The fact that we have a young star QB and you don't obviously puts the queens at a big disadvantage. I think that IF favre comes back for you, the two teams will be fighting tooth and nail for the division and probably conference next year. If he doesn't your boys will be sucking our tail pipe next year and probably for years to come.
It is my opinion - and only that. That is why they play the games.