Welcome back to the Charter podcast brought to you by St. Xavier University.

I am Ruthie Polinsky along with Alex Shapiro, and we are very thrilled to be welcoming in the Star Tribune's Ben Gessling, who covers the Minnesota Vikings, and he is here to talk about two teams on very different ends

of the NFC North Spectrum at this juncture in time. And Ben, I guess we'll just start with this.

I mean, the way that the Vikings looked last week felt like this is a team that's built to make it to the very end.

And I think this week, as we've sort of been previewing this matchup, the second time

these two teams meet, it looks like this is a Super Bowl team, this Vikings team.

And I'm just curious to hear sort of what the narrative has been like for you all,

especially after the way Sam Darnold looked and has continued to sort of trajectory upwards.

Yeah, it's been interesting because this certainly was not the trajectory we thought would

take place this season.

I mean, this is not a team that was expected to be near the top of this division.

In fact, a lot of people probably had them at the bottom of it behind the bears thinking

that everybody was going to be fairly competitive in the NFC North.

So it has taken a lot of turns this year, but it does look like a team that has a lot of the pieces of what it would need to make a deep run.

Certainly winning the division would help because it probably comes with the number one overall seed.

That's difficult to do with the Lions only have one loss and have a lot of the tiebreakers.

But the quarterback play of the Vikings have gotten has certainly been at a championship level.

They have managed to avoid a lot of destruction to their offensive line, even though they lose

Christian Darius on their left tackle.

And the defense certainly has been one of the best in the NFL.

I mean, it really has been done with a lot of pieces that came

in on one-year deals or came in kind of his underwhelming or under unheralded pieces that

...