When the 2022 NFL schedule was released late last week, many of us immediately expected to see the Minnesota Vikings hosting the Chicago Bears in Week 18, because. . .well, that’s just the way the NFL had done things over most of the last decade. The final regular-season home game at U.S. Bank Stadium in every season of its existence has featured the Bears, and Bears at Vikings has been the final game for the purple in all but two years since 2014.
However, the NFL threw a bit of a curveball at us this time around, and as a result we’re going to see something that we haven’t seen in a very, very long time.