While we don't know yet if J.J. McCarthy will be playing in the matchup, we do know that there will be actual stakes on the line when the Minnesota Vikings host the Detroit Lions later this week on Christmas Day inside U.S. Bank Stadium.
Thanks to their loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday, the Lions now desperately need a victory over the Vikings on Thursday to remain alive in this season's NFC playoff picture. If Minnesota comes away with a win over Detroit later this week, then the Lions will be officially eliminated from competing in the 2025 postseason.
Thanks in part to McCarthy, the Vikings already have one win over the Lions this year, back when the two teams faced off in Detroit in Week 9. So, since Minnesota can't compete in this season's playoffs, they might as well make sure the Lions can't either.
A whole lot has changed for the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions in the past year
Around this time last season, Minnesota and Detroit were getting ready for a gigantic Week 18 matchup that determined the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Now, it's very possible that both teams will be watching the 2025 playoffs from home just like all their fans.
While things have turned out a lot differently for the Vikings and Lions this season than they did in the 2024 campaign, we probably shouldn't be too surprised with their performances this year.
Minnesota decided to move on from Sam Darnold and roll with an inexperienced McCarthy as the team's starting quarterback for 2025. The second-year Vikings quarterback has experienced plenty of growing pains this season, and it's resulted in the team falling short of its expectations.
Then there's Detroit, which lost both of the team's top coordinators in Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn during the offseason, in addition to more than a handful of other assistant coaches, and they've failed to achieve the same level of success this year that the franchise experienced in 2023 and 2024.
This year's late-season matchup between these two NFC North rivals still has something on the line, but the stakes are nowhere near as high as they were at the end of the 2024 campaign when the Vikings and Lions battled with home-field advantage and a bye in the first round of the playoffs on the line.