One Last Chance to Win the Division

Cover Photo from Monday's Green Bay Press-Gazette

Last Sunday was another weird Sunday for Packers football.  Aaron Rodgers missed his 7th consecutive start as the Packers played the Steelers with a shot at the playoffs on the line for both teams.  While the Packers played well in spots, ultimately you cannot give up 38 points and expect to win a lot of games.  

In the case of this game, exceedingly untimely penalties and turnovers essentially undid the Packers, and unlike the 1995 game between these teams, there was no "Yancey Clause" to bail them out.  Sure, the screwed up ref timing on the final 10 seconds did not help, but absent the penalties and turnovers, the Packers would not have found themselves in the position of needing a TD to tie the game.  The Lions, who should have won the NFC North a month ago, had knocked themselves out of the playoff chase earlier in the day.  And this loss to the Steelers (38-31) left the Packers planning for next year's draft.  

Unless, of course, the Bears managed to lose the Sunday night game to the Philadelphia Eagles.  Oh, boy, did they ever!  The Eagles went up by 21 points in the first quarter, and never took their feet off the gas, beating the Bears by the score of 54-11.  My old friend Dick Karth said, during the Sunday night Bears-Eagles game: "As a GBP fan who went to the game today at Lambeau Field in all the snow and everything ... I'm not happy.  But I'm glad I'm not a Bears fan tonight!   What an embarrassment it must be for Bears fans!"

As a result of the Bears' game, Matt Flynn need not have been so forlorn, as he looked in the picture above.  It turns out, the game against the Steelers did not matter one whit.  Win or lose against the Steelers, the Packers would still need to win the finale against the Bears to win the division and make the playoffs.  Dramatic developments in the last couple of days have Aaron Rodgers returning for this game, Clay Matthews out with a re-broken thumb (I can't imagine him playing again this year), Eddie Lacy will apparently play through the pain of his injured ankle, and as an added bonus, as of this writing, it is quite possible that Randall Cobb will be activated and play.

I am, to be honest, surprised that Rodgers will play.  After all of the talk last week, repeated endlessly on every football website, that Rodgers was not that close to playing against the Steelers, and that he was at "extraordinary risk" if he returned to the field, I really thought that he would again not be activated.  And particularly after Clay Matthews re-broke his thumb, I thought the lesson the Packers would take away was to err even further on the side of caution with Aaron Rodgers.  Despite all that, he will play, which not only changes the complexion of this game, but if the Packers win, it will change the complexion of the playoffs in the NFC.  Rodgers, if he is close to his normal self, is simply not prone to make the same kinds of mistakes that his merry band of backups have made in the almost 8 games since he broke his collarbone.

This game has all the looks of a shootout now.  As bad as the Packers' defense has been, the Bears' defense is worse.  And as well as the Bears' offense has played at times, the Packers' offense is capable of matching them score for score, and, I would argue, getting a couple of extra scores along the way.

The Bears, of course, have a new offense under Marc Trestman, and it has been impressive at times, with Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, and Matt Forte providing the weapons for Jay Cutler.  The Packers-Bears game earlier this season is not much of a predictor, since almost all of the game was played with Josh McCown and Seneca Wallace at quarterback.  But now that Jay Cutler is back, we just need to remember what Charles Woodson said last year: "It's the same old Jay.  We just need to be in position.  Jay will throw us the ball."  If there is one thing that is critical in this game, it is that the Packers must take advantage of every one of those opportunities.

Quite a Football Weekend!

Cover by Green Bay Press-Gazette

I never got around to writing a post last week.  My only excuse is that I have been on vacation.  But when I sat down in a vain attempt to try to write something, my conclusion was that picking the Falcons the previous week had worked like a charm!  As a result, if I had ever finished that post, I was going to pick the Cowboys.  Now that I am really on a roll, I will get the suspense out of the way, by picking the Steelers in Sunday's game.

Being on vacation, we got to watch the game with old friends from our youth, Larry Bailin and Marc Blum, and with new friend Kathy Blum.  Like everybody else, we suffered through the first half, watching the Packers limp along to a 26-3 deficit, and saw the Packers' realistic playoff chances dwindle away.  The 3 points the Packers got were fueled almost entirely to a single big pass and run by James Jones.  For the rest of the half, the Packers' defense looked inept, giving up chunks of yardage, rarely getting pressure on Romo, missing opportunities for interceptions, and the like.  On offense, there were a few good plays, but lots of misfires, everything from dropped passes by Jordy Nelson (!) to penalties, to offensive line breakdowns, and of course Matt Flynn's interception.

It was the sort of half that might have caused sane people to switch the game off and find something more productive to do.  Fortunately, we were all just crazy enough to keep watching, and we witnessed one of the great comebacks of all time.  It was, to me, sort of the flip side of the famous Thanksgiving day "Jason Garrett" game I wrote about here.  Re-watching that game, years later, it was hard to imagine how the Packers were going to end up losing the game, until it happened.  Re-watching Sunday's game, I couldn't believe that the Packers would end up winning, until it happened.

I read somewhere that someone had calculated that, going into the half on Sunday, the Cowboys had a 99.7% chance of winning the game.  Sounds about right, and that shows what a remarkable comeback it was.

The second half was a totally different game, and the Packers went on to score 5 touchdowns in the half to win the game, missing the 2 point conversion on the final one so that the final score was 37-36.  We saw everything from a 60 yard run by Eddie Lacy on the first play of the half, to Jordy Nelson stealing the ball away from the defensive back in the end zone for a touchdown, to more planned rollouts, screen passes and more quick release passes, counteracting Flynn's lack of mobility.  The Packers were still not consistently stopping the Cowboys, as they allowed 10 points to the Cowboys in the half, but they certainly looked better on defense than in the first half, by a large margin.

Let's not kid ourselves, this game could easily have gone the other way.  Late in the fourth quarter, I actually expected the Cowboys to pull it out, either by stopping the Packers on one of their TD drives, or by scoring the winning FG on the final drive, or by forcing a single turnover somewhere in the fourth quarter.  If Jordy doesn't steal that TD from the defensive back in the end zone, or if the evidence is not conclusive enough to reverse the call on the final interception, the Cowboys probably win.  And then if the Lions had not lost on a 61 yard field goal in the final minute on Monday night, the Packers still would not control their own destiny.  But now they do.  Win two games, and they win the division.  I am not sure they will be able to pull that off, but the opportunity is right there, waiting to be taken.

Now or Never!

These last few Packers games have had a now or never feel to them, at least to me.  "OK, they couldn't beat the Bears, but now that Seneca Wallace has had a week of preparation . . .."  "Well, you can't expect Tolzien to pull off a win against the Eagles in those circumstances, but now that he has taken the starter reps . . .."  "We all know that the Giants have the Packers' number, but wait until the Vikings come to town . . .."  "They didn't win, but a tie is better than a loss, and look at the way Flynn played - when he gets another crack at the Lions, look out!"

But what are you going to say about the Lions crushing the Packers on Thanksgiving Day, by the very ugly score of 40-10?  I have run out of excuses, and of optimism, for the Packers this year.  I couldn't even bear going back to re-watch the Lions game.  I realize it was just a pre-planned Black Friday sale, but it seemed somehow strangely fitting when, early Friday morning after the game, I got a Packers Pro Shop email promotion announcing a 30% off site wide sale.  My confidence in the Packers is at least 30% off.

Anyway, I think "now or never" time has really arrived.  If the Packers were to win their 4 remaining games, I could see maybe a 50% chance that the Packers win the division.  The Lions would have to lose 2 games, but that could happen (they have away games at the Eagles and Vikings, and home games against the Giants and Ravens).  The Bears would have to lose one, but in my scenario of the Packers winning out, that happens when the Packers beat the Bears in week 17.

On the other hand, how likely is a Packer four game winning streak?  Let's be honest, not that likely.  They have not won any of their last five games.  The offensive line is in disarray, with Center Evan Dietrich-Smith listed as questionable for the game.  The defense is in free fall.  They still don't have Aaron Rodgers back, even though everyone (including Rodgers) seems to have assumed that he would be ready to play this week.  But the four game winning streak, if it is going to happen, has to start against the Falcons tomorrow, without Rodgers.  As disappointing as the Packers have been this year, the Falcons have probably had an even more disappointing season.  They were, after all, in the NFC Championship game last year, where they blew a 17 point lead to lose narrowly to the 49ers.  And yet they are 3-9 as they arrive in Green Bay today.  They have beaten no good teams, only the Rams, the Buccaneers and the Bills.  They may not have had the injury problems the Packers have had, but losing Julio Jones for the year is, without question, a severe loss.

I am predicting a Packers loss.  Maybe that will switch up the mojo.