How does one sum up the 2015-16 Green Bay Packers?
The television announcers mused on how one would begin to write up last weekend’s divisional round game in Arizona, where the Packers with no timeouts covered 96 yards over the final 55 seconds to send the game into overtime.
The game, which the Packers lost to the Cardinals 26-20, had so many turning points that it was next to impossible to encapsulate in 18 or so column inches.
In the same vein, it’s hard to know how to regard a season full of promise that started on a bad note before the first kickoff.
Everyone will remember having lost one of the best players in the preseason, and how it impacted the title chances. When wide receiver Jordy Nelson went down with a knee injury, there suddenly was a bad moon rising for the Packers, who were tabbed as the favorite to win the Super Bowl.
But they battled through the myriad bumps of a hot-and-cold regular season and made the playoffs, which is every team’s goal every year. To that extent, mission accomplished.
The Packers lost their chance to win the Super Bowl because they fell in the divisional round to a team they should have, would have or at least could have beaten.
In a dramatic turnaround from the 38-8 beating they absorbed three weeks earlier, the Packers won both lines of scrimmage, outrushing Arizona 135-40 and sacking Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer three times. Arizona, which had nine sacks in their last meeting, got to Packers QB Aaron Rodgers just once.
But taking the measure of a team as talent-stacked as the Cards required a near-perfect effort, and in the end for the Packers there were too many penalties and missed opportunities.
It’s fair – and acceptable – to comment on any of the professionals’ individual performance. For example, it was great to have Pro Bowl cornerback Sam Shields back on the field, but it would have been nice if he could’ve hung on to one of the three interceptions that escaped his grip. The one with 4:40 left in the fourth quarter would have been especially welcome, in that it would have stopped the drive that gave Arizona a 17-13 lead.
Dare to point out missteps by the officials, though, and straight away you’re a whiner.
Whatever. There were three blown pass interference non-calls in the last four minutes that cost the Packers, two of them dearly. One was an offensive interference on the Cardinals’ Jaron Brown on their go-ahead touchdown pass.
Another big one came on a Packers third-and-5, when Arizona’s Dustin Bethel grabbed Jared Abbrederis’ arm. That no-call forced a fourth down that the Packers didn’t convert, setting up the field goal that made it a 7-point game.
By the time the refs missed Jerraud Powers tugging on Janis’ torso on a third-and-20 shot down the field, there were enraged Packer fans convinced that the refs were such feckless bumblers they could probably screw up a coin toss.
But, of course, that would be exaggerating. The idea of anybody botching a coin toss is just silly.
Missed calls and heartbreak aside, the Packers gave a good account of themselves. They fell short because they got burned on a broken play in overtime. In any case, it was an unforgettable game. If there is such a thing as a good playoff loss, we saw one last weekend.
As happened throughout the season, Rodgers was called to the postgame podium to glean some perspective on the whole ball of wax.
With a passing-of-time sort of melancholy, he spoke of how this group could change down the road, how there were no guarantees that neither the player nor coaching personnel would be the same next year, and how the focus should be on the team’s numerous accomplishments.
On the mark, as usual.
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