The Packers Were Thoroughly Exposed in Week 18, and Better Hope They Learn From It

We don’t know whether Aaron Rodgers will be back, but we do know the NFC North should no longer fear this franchise like it has.

Hopefully, the most effective remedy for hubris in the NFL is thorough exposure, the kind that leaves a team no choice but to reevaluate the path that led it to a certain point. In that case, maybe the Packers will be cured of their affliction thanks to a season-ending loss on a prime-time stage that may come to be the end of an era.

Take your pick of moments in Sunday night’s Packers-Lions game, one that should have given Green Bay a manageable path to the postseason, seeing as the Lions already knew at kickoff they had nothing to play for but the chance to embarrass a division rival. Will anything click?

• How about the sight of Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn wiggle-shuffling down the sideline, celebrating a first down as if he was leading a conga processional at a best friend’s wedding?

• How about the sight of Lions running back Jamaal Williams thrusting in the end zone en route to breaking Barry Sanders’s single-season franchise record with 17 rushing touchdowns?

• How about the sight of Packers coach Matt LaFleur trying to pump up a crowd on the Packers’ final relevant defensive play of the game—the second fourth-down conversion the Lions made in as many drives—and getting the kind of muted response an aging rock star receives when he tells the audience he’s going to try out some new stuff?

Will Rodgers return for 2023? That’s not the only question the Packers should be asking right now :: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK

This wasn’t just a loss. In the fourth quarter, it was an almost-scripted, theatrical lampooning of one franchise by another.

It’s easy in a moment like this to point the entirety of the finger at someone like linebacker Quay Walker, who was ejected from Sunday-night’s game for shoving a member of the Lions’ medical team, a moment that truly seemed to sink the Packers from an emotional standpoint and suck all the frozen air out of Lambeau Field. There is no easier analysis to be had than picking apart a singular moment that was so obviously objectionable and mindless. But Green Bay should be interested in the processes in place that preceded that moment, both immediately and in the long term.

Watch other games with similar stakes, like the Titans-Jaguars game the night before, and see a good defense self-policing, ejecting its coworkers from a self-sabotaging situation like a presidential bodyguard. At Lambeau on Sunday, we actually saw a second Packers defender, Devonte Wyatt, take a swipe at the unpadded, helmetless Lions trainer, who just seemed to be trying to work his way into the scrum to do his job. The Packers are lucky they didn’t have to suffer the mortification of having both of their 2022 first-round picks bounced on the same play. This was the second time this year Walker was ejected, by the way. A player hasn’t had a pair of those in a single season since 1994, according to Football Zebras.

It’s easy to point the entirety of the finger at someone like Aaron Rodgers who, by virtue of being the veteran heart and soul of this team, carries some responsibility for Green Bay’s collective ethos and preparedness. Regardless of whether he’s coming back for 2023, and regardless of whether that uncertainty had anything to do with the endless display of disjointed offensive performances, this general staleness was allowed to exist and linger for the better part of 18 weeks without any meaningful transformation. The Packers won only a handful of games at the end of the season because of a massive turnover windfall that granted them a favorable number of extra possessions, as we wrote when they kept their season alive in Week 17.

As a result, they are looking at the future of a division that no longer has to take them so seriously. This Lions team that beat them in the season finale, should it retain the best parts of a talented coaching staff, will also come back in 2023 with a healthy Jameson Williams for a majority of the season, and can add two more top-20 picks in the fold. The Bears team Green Bay was able to haughtily poke fun at for the better part of the decade just locked up the No. 1 pick in the draft and is preparing to build its team in a responsible way, loaded with capital.

In each of the last three years before 2022, the Packers amassed sizable regular-season win totals only to be gutted in the playoffs. This year, they weren’t even able to manage that. Perhaps ’23 is the year they’ll realize they weren’t as good as they imagined. As much as that hurts now, it could come in handy if they want to maximize whatever is left of this team.