Aaron Jones and Za’Darius Smith lead Packers to NFC North title

Pro Bowl snubs a week ago, Aaron Jones and Za’Darius Smith showed they belong with a dominating Packers win over the Vikings on Monday night

The Packers’ Aaron Jones and Za’Darius Smith both didn’t make the Pro Bowl this season. On Monday night against the Minnesota Vikings, they made sure to remind voters of that snub.

Jones rushed for 154 yards and two second-half touchdowns as the Packers (12-3) clinched the NFC North title with a 23-10 victory in Minnesota. Jones now leads the NFL with 16 rushing touchdowns, the most by a Packers running back since Hall of Famer Jim Taylor had 19 in 1962.

The third-year pro put the Packers ahead for good late in the third quarter, ripping open what had been up to that point a defensive struggle for both teams. Green Bay had been held to just three Mason Crosby field goals and had turned the ball over three times in the first half alone, including quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ first interception since Week 6. But when Jones ran in from 12 yards out, the Packers took their first lead of the game 17-10 after a two-point conversion.

Jones wasn’t done there. With just under six minutes remaining in the fourth, he burst through the line and rushed 56 yards into the end zone to cement Green Bay’s hold on the matchup between NFC North rivals.

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He took care of the offense; Smith made sure the Vikings and quarterback Kirk Cousins didn’t find any. Monday night was the 117th all-time meeting between the Packers and Vikings. Smith is the first Packer with 3.5 sacks in any of those games. He finished the game with five tackles for loss and five hits on Cousins, only the fifth player since 1982 with that many disruptive plays in the backfield. A former fourth-round pick who spent the first four seasons of his career in Baltimore before signing with Green Bay in the offseason, Smith is the first player with more than three sacks on Monday night in five years. He’s now up to 13.5 sacks this season, tied for fifth in the NFL.

It wasn’t a fun night for Cousins and the Vikings offense, who are now locked into the sixth seed in the NFC and face the daunting prospects of having to win three road games in the playoffs. Playing without their two leading rushers, Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison, the Vikings were held to just 139 total yards and seven first downs, the fewest for the franchise in a home game since 1971. Cousins’ touchdown pass to Stefon Diggs early in the second quarter would turn out to be their final points of the game; they failed to record a first down on their next four possessions.

In 1979, Bob Geldof’s Boomtown Rats had a hit single with “I Don’t Like Mondays.” The song isn’t about Cousins, who was born nearly a decade after it came out, but it might as well be. Cousins is now 0-9 in his career on Monday Night Football, the worst record of any quarterback in primetime in NFL history.

Head coach Mike Zimmer, though, said after the game he doesn’t want to hear about Cousins’ struggles on Monday nights. “I’m not going to get into this Kirk Cousins on Monday night thing and all this stuff,” he said. “Offensively, we didn’t play as well as we could play, I’ll say that.”

The Packers, meanwhile, are now not only guaranteed of being no worse than the third seed in the NFC, they still have a chance at the top seed next week with a win over the Lions combined with losses by the Saints and 49ers. While Rodgers and the offense haven’t looked like their usual selves lately, on Monday night, at least, Jones and Smith showed he doesn’t have to be for the Packers to win.