NFL Predictions Week 7: Christian Ponder Will Be Surprisingly Good vs. Packers

Christian Ponder is doomed.

At least, so it would seem. He's making his first career NFL start on Sunday, he has a very bad Minnesota Vikings team surrounding him and he will be tasked with leading it over the Green Bay Packers.

These would be the same Packers, by the way, who are 6-0. It's safe to say that them taking on a hapless team like the Vikings qualifies as a mismatch.

Hence the reason Ponder is doomed, of course.

I may be alone here, but I actually don't think Ponder is all that doomed. On the contrary, I actually think he might surprise people when all is said and done on Sunday.

There are a couple of reasons I say this. The first and foremost is that Ponder likely won't be tasked with doing too much in the first place. Primarily, his job will be to hand the ball off to Adrian Peterson and then watching him do his thing. You and I could probably do that if we were asked.

The danger, obviously, is that the Packers will load up the box in an effort to make life that much tougher for Peterson. Because we're talking about arguably the best running back in football (I think Darren McFadden is better, and I'm probably right), it would be foolish to take it for granted that this is actually going to work. But because the Packers boast one of the league's best rush defenses, it probably will more often than not.

As a result, Ponder will have to throw the ball sooner or later. That, naturally, is when things will get truly interesting. 

We don't really know yet how efficient Ponder can be with his throws. He chucked it 17 times against the Chicago Bears this past Sunday night, completing just nine passes for a 52.9 completion percentage, but it's way too early to tell whether or not this is par for the course.

Working in Ponder's favor is the fact that the Packers have hardly been invulnerable against the pass this season. They tend to get passed on quite a lot thanks to the big holes they put teams in, but it's not an accident that they are 31st in the NFL in passing defense.

All Ponder has to do is find the holes. This will be easier said than done, mind you, but not impossible.

Will Ponder torch the Packers for 300-plus yards and a small handful of touchdowns? I highly doubt it.

But will he make a disgrace of himself in front of the defending champs and the rest of the known world?

I highly doubt that too. Ponder will be somewhere in between.

Prediction: 16-of-29 passing, 225 yards, one TD, one INT.