Another big match-up on Sunday will take place Sunday night and it features the Indianapolis Colts visiting the San Diego Chargers. When the schedule came out several months ago, fans pointed to this match-up as a possibly Championship Game preview. Well, so far this season the Colts have lived up to those lofty predictions but the Chargers have not.

Now when these two teams clash, the Colts will need to win to avoid back-to-back loss (remember the Colts lost the big game to the Pats last Sunday). Meanwhile, the Chargers need to win just to stay above the .500 mark. And if it wasn’t for a very weak division, the Chargers would already be clinging to their playoff hopes.

So we will see how well the Colts can bounce back from last week. And we will see if the Chargers can once again pick themselves up after being badly beaten last week by Adrian Petersen and the Minnesota Vikings. The Chargers certainly have the talent to play with the Colts, but they’ve yet to play up to that talent level this year. If they hope to do anything in the stacked AFC, they better start playing a lot better football on Sunday night.

Another key match-up on Sunday features the Green Bay Packers hosting the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings have shown flashes of being pretty good this year and the Packers have exceeded everyone’s expectations so far this season. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this match-up is the fact that the Pack can’t run the ball and the Vikings can’t throw the ball. But that’s okay because the Pack has the ageless wonder Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings have rookie-of-the-year-to-be Adrian Petersen.

The temps in Green Bay will probably be in the mid to high forties. There is also a 40% chance of showers. If we throw a little wind into those conditions, which very well might happen, then you have conditions more favorable to running the ball. That would certainly favor the Vikings. But the weather forecast isn’t all that bad. The Vikings would probably prefer to go into frozen Lambeau with lots of wind and driving snow.

Still, the Vikings are coming off a big win against the Chargers and I think they are going to give the Packers all they can handle and then some. This will be a lot of fun to watch. It will be yet another measuring stick to see just how real the Packers are this year. Because so far (at 7-1) they have been nearly perfect.