GREEN BAY, Wisc. — When Minnesota Vikings rookie quarterback Teddy Bridgewater faces the Green Bay Packers for the first time in his promising NFL career Sunday, his biggest concern won’t be trying to keep up with and outscore sizzling counterpart Aaron Rodgers.

“Every time I watch him, he’s just out there spinning it. … It’s pretty cool watching him,” Bridgewater said of Rodgers.

But for all the adulation heaped by Minnesota’s rookie quarterback on Rodgers — the real challenge will come from who is looking back at the newcomer when he’s on the field.

Easy to overlook in the Packers’ scoring 50-plus points in back-to-back games for the first time in team history was Green Bay’s previously anemic defense coming to life.

“I’ve said around here we play our best defense in the second half of the season if you look over the time that we’ve been here,” said Dom Capers, the Packers’ sixth-year defensive coordinator. “So, you want to just keep working to keep that arrow pointing up because we know that November and December are the critical times you’ve got to be playing your best football. Every game becomes a big game. I think our guys understand that.”

Going into Sunday’s game against the Vikings at TCF Bank Stadium, few teams are playing better football than the Packers.

The Packers won six of their last seven games. Their ascent to 7-3 and a tie for first place in the NFC North came after Green Bay brushed aside a 44-23 loss at New Orleans on Oct. 26 before its bye week.

Coming off nearly a full week off, the Packers promptly blew out the Chicago Bears 55-14 and the Philadelphia Eagles 53-20 in succession.

Perhaps it was more than coincidence that two relatively strong performances by an opportunistic defense in those games came in concert with a bold midseason move by Capers. He opened both games with star outside linebacker Clay Matthews lined up as inside linebacker for the first time in his six-year pro career.

“I like the ability to where Clay’s a guy you can do a lot of different things with,” Capers said. “He certainly gives us a bigger, more physical presence inside. He’s an instinctive guy, (and) he reacts to things quickly.”

Yet, Capers certainly hasn’t reinvented Matthews at a new position. Matthews isn’t confined to lining up beside veteran A.J. Hawk on the inside. Instead, the four-time Pro Bowl player has become the versatile rover for the linebacker corps that former Packers cornerback Charles Woodson was for Green Bay’s secondary.

From one play to the next, Matthews can be inside, outside or, as what transpired a number of times in the rout of the Eagles last weekend, to the outside of the other outside linebackers on the field.

“They have to decide how they’re going to define him,” Capers said of opposing offenses. “Are they going to define him as a ‘Mike’ (middle linebacker) or define him as a defensive end? You try to tie that into your packages that maybe creates little more for them, put more on their plate.”

A few days before making just his seventh NFL start, Bridgewater acknowledged he was chewing considerably on the newly expanded playbook presented by Green Bay’s defense and what that could mean for Minnesota’s offense.

“We have to just know where those guys are at all times,” Bridgewater said.

He pointed specifically to Matthews and Julius Peppers, who’s flourished in his first season as both a Packer and at outside linebacker. Peppers has a team-high five sacks, just ahead of Matthews’ 4 1/2, and is the first linebacker in Green Bay’s illustrious history to have two interception returns for touchdowns in the same season.

Peppers’ first pick-six came in the Packers’ 42-10 rout of the Vikings in Green Bay on Oct. 2, when an overmatched Christian Ponder started in place of an injured Bridgewater. The Packers had a season-high six sacks in the game.

The second big runback for Peppers came at the expense of Eagles fill-in quarterback Mark Sanchez last time out.

“We have to understand where they are on the field,” Bridgewater said of Matthews and Peppers. “We know that Green Bay is playing some great football right now. They have one of the best teams in the league right now. It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s one that we’re up for.”

NOTES: LB Clay Matthews (groin) was limited in practice Wednesday. Among those not practicing were OLB Nick Perry (shoulder), LG Josh Sitton (toe), RG T. J. Lang (ankle) and TE Brandon Bostick (hip). CB Jarrett Bush was added to the injury list Wednesday with a sore groin.