Packers could struggle their way to Super Bowl
DETROIT - Anyone who’s watched the 2019 Green Bay Packers knows they’re no steamroller.
Too many of their 13 wins have come too narrowly — case in point, their second-half comeback from a two-touchdown deficit to beat the lowly Detroit Lions on the final play Sunday at Ford Field — to do anything but laugh off that notion.
Even though they’ve won five straight games, the Packers don’t feel like a hot team, either. Not like they did when Aaron Rodgers got on a late-season roll and ran the table to the NFC championship game in 2016.
Yet, here coach Matt LaFleur’s team was after its final game of the regular season with at worst the NFC’s No. 2 seeding and a coveted bye for the playoffs. I for one can’t escape the nagging feeling, as unimpressive as most of their wins have been, very much including their narrow victory over the three-win Lions on Sunday, that the Packers have as good a chance as anybody in the NFC to get to the Super Bowl on Feb. 2 in Miami.
No, they’re clearly not as good as they were in 2010 (Super Bowl win), ’11 (15-1 but divisional-round loss in the playoffs) and ’14 (NFC title-game meltdown).
Rodgers obviously is not the dominant player he was in those seasons. But they are better than that ’16 team, because they have Aaron Jones and can play at least some defense.
And while Packers skeptics have plenty of ammunition, think about it: If this team has to face Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints, it will be on a winter’s day at Lambeau Field, not in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Also, San Francisco, the best NFC team on paper, has been eroded by a couple of key injuries since humiliating the Packers in November and features a quarterback (Jimmy Garoppolo) who’s untested in the playoffs.
“I think the NFC is wide open,” said Rodgers, and he’s not wrong. “There’s six really good football teams that are in, and I think home-field advantage can be really important. Green Bay is a tough place to come and play, although we haven’t over my time had a distinct advantage as far as our win-loss record. I feel like this team can utilize the cold better than some of those other teams that relied on heavy passing games, where we’re a little more balanced this year.”
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is sacked by Lions defensive back Will Harris during the second quarter Sunday at Ford Field in Detroit.
To be sure, the Packers by only the narrowest of margins avoided the same choke job that cost the New England Patriots a playoff bye Sunday.
A loss Sunday would have sent the Packers into the postseason on a horribly demoralizing note, knowing they’d blown a top-two seeding by losing to a bad team. The Patriots now know how that feels; they have to play a wild-card game next weekend because they failed to take care of business against Miami.
Because of a horrendous first half, LaFleur’s team also came face-to-face with that possibility, down 17-3 in the early third quarter.
But say this for the Packers, they found a way to win despite the flat start, and despite Rodgers’ startling issues with throwing accuracy, to beat the Lions on a Mason Crosby field goal on the game’s final play.
“I’m thankful that we have a chance to take a week to evaluate,” LaFleur said, “to just look at everything that we’ve done, get healthy and then find out in a week who we’re playing.”
The Packers won mainly because of Jones (27 touches, 143 yards), at least on the offensive side of the ball. Rodgers had a shocking number of misfires — he overshot potential touchdown passes to Jones and Davante Adams, threw short on a deep ball to Jake Kumerow, missed Jones and Tyler Ervin on deep circle routes out of the backfield, and threw behind a couple receivers as well. Missing any one or two of those would be no surprise, but for him to miss that many and finish 27-for-54 passing can’t help but raise questions about his physical decline.
“Too many missed throws,” Rodgers said. “Felt good about the throws, that’s the crazy thing. Felt good about some of those I overthrew by a couple yards. Just a little bit off at times. But when we had to make some plays we made some plays.”
That last part is true too, even if Rodgers (72.0 rating, 323 passing yards) needs more help than he used to. The ultimate measure of quarterbacks is winning games, and Rodgers did put up 20 points in the second half and a gamewinning drive in the final 1 minute, 20 seconds. It brought to mind Brett Favre, who played his share of bad games only to pull out the win in the fourth quarter.
Still, the biggest thing for the Packers is they got the bye. Now maybe they’ll fritter it away and bomb out in the divisional round in two weeks. But they’re the NFC’s healthiest team, and the week off gives right tackle Bryan Bulaga (concussion) and center Corey Linsley (back) more time to recover after being unable to finish Sunday.
If all goes well with them, and no other injuries spring up overnight, the Packers could open the playoffs with every starter and rotational player available, save safety/linebacker Raven Greene, who’s still on injured reserve.
“That’s going to be an important part of our success — being healthy,” Rodgers said. “… It’s all great football teams now so the margin for error is even smaller. I like our chances, I like our football team and I like even more that we’ve got a week off.”