Through Youth, Injuries and Slumps, Packers Earn Playoff Spot

Nobody expected the Green Bay Packers to reach the playoffs this season. Nobody with a bit of sanity expected the Packers to reach the playoffs after a 3-6 start. But here they are, headed to the playoffs after beating the Bears.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Who knows if Jordan Love will win an NFL MVP or be in the Hall of Fame conversation. But on Sunday, he did what Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers failed to do by leading the Green Bay Packers to the playoffs as a first-year starter.

In 1992, Favre and the Packers lost their final game of the season to the Minnesota Vikings and fell a game short of the playoffs. In 2008, Rodgers and the Packers lost five consecutive games to fall out of the playoff race by early December.

In 2023, the Packers closed the regular season with three consecutive victories. With a 17-9 win over the Chicago Bears on Sunday, they are unexpected playoff participants.

Love, who was magnificent in beating the Bears, forever will be compared to Rodgers. Their histories together are just too intertwined to ignore.

In 2008, Rodgers inherited a team that reached the NFC Championship Game in 2007 and a strong group of playmakers but led the team to a 6-10 finish. Only a victory in the finale over the 0-16 Lions prevented a six-game losing streak to end the year.

In 2022, Rodgers and the Packers reloaded for one more run after falling short in NFC title games in 2020 and 2021. That team started 4-8 before riding a wave of takeaways to four consecutive wins to earn a Week 18 win-and-in showdown against the rising Detroit Lions at Lambeau. The Lions won. With the Lions and their legion of fans celebrating, Rodgers trudged off the field for the final time as a member of the Packers following a final-pass interception.

In 2023, Love took over a team with the youngest roster in the NFL. His perimeter playmakers were impossibly young. Gone were stalwarts Allen Lazard, Randall Cobb, Robert Tonyan and Marcedes Lewis. Instead of giving Love a veteran pass-catcher to serve as a security blanket, second-year receivers Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs were the veterans of a group supplemented by rookie receivers Jayden Reed and Dontayvion Wicks and rookie tight ends Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft.

A new quarterback and, generally speaking, a new team meant a new outlook.

For years with Rodgers, every season kicked off with realistic expectations of a Super Bowl. This year’s team?

“I think nobody had a lot of expectations coming into it,” Love said this week. “We know every week we’re trying to put our best foot forward, go out there and win every game, and put ourselves in position to get in the playoffs.

“As the season’s gone on, there’s been highs, there’s been lows, and we’ve been able to learn a little bit about what the team’s all about. I think we found out a lot, just how we go through adversity, stick together and come out the other end. So, there’s been a lot of lessons throughout the season, but I’m happy to say we’re in position to get in the playoffs if we win this last game.”

The team routed Chicago in Week 1 and used an implausible comeback to beat the Saints in Week 3 to start 2-1. However, the Packers lost four consecutive games. In Week 2, Love had an opportunity to win the game at Atlanta but threw four consecutive incompletions. After beating the Saints, Love had chances for last-drive rallies against Las Vegas and Denver but threw interceptions.

At 2-5 and 3-6, a top-10 pick seemed more likely than a playoff berth.

Which was fine. This season never really was about this season.

From Green Bay’s perspective, sure, it would be great to win games. But this year was always about the journey and not the destination.

Was Love good enough to be the worthy successor to the throne that belonged to Rodgers, Favre and Bart Starr? If so, great. This season could be used to build chemistry with that fleet of talented pass-catchers to set the stage for 2024.

If not, then the Packers would perhaps be so bad that they could draft a quarterback with that top-whatever draft pick.

For the first half of the season, Love had the worst completion percentage in the NFL. He was off-kilter with his feel for the offense and off-target with his accuracy. But, week by week, Love got better and better.

Starting with their Week 11 victory over the Chargers through their Week 17 victory at the Vikings, Love was tied for first in touchdown passes, tied for first in interceptions, fifth in completion percentage and second in passer rating. Love, of course, can’t throw passes to himself. With each week, that young group of receivers and tight ends looked like the foundation of this next generation of championship contenders.

With a really good quarterback, anything is possible. The Packers improbably swept the Chargers, Lions and Chiefs to improve to 6-6. Then, just as improbably, they lost to the woeful Giants on the road and at home to the mediocre Buccaneers to tumble to 6-8.

Green Bay responded with a win at Carolina, in spite of embattled coordinator Joe Barry’s defense, and a blowout win at the shorthanded Vikings.

That set the stage for Sunday at Lambeau Field against the rival Bears. Coach Matt LaFleur entered the day 9-0 against Chicago. His surging offense, led by that hot-shot group of pass-catchers, was getting healthy at just the right time.

“I think every game’s a learning experience for these guys,” LaFleur said. “You never want to make one bigger than the next. This is the next game and, quite frankly, I feel like we’ve put ourselves in this position in terms of had our backs against the wall these last couple games, knowing what’s at stake, and we were able to climb out of that.

“I’m excited for our guys to go out and to be in our home stadium with that playoff-type vibe around it.”

For a team so young, the big-game experience gained this year should pay dividends for future years as general manager Brian Gutekunst tries to build the next championship team.

Every team has to deal with adversity. Every team has to respond to key injuries. For the Packers, there was David Bakhtiari’s season ending after one game, injuries that sidelined Christian Watson, Aaron Jones and Jaire Alexander for significant chunks of the season, Alexander’s bizarre suspension and the crumbling of the first-round-pick filled defense.

And yet, here they are, headed to the playoffs, one of 14 teams left in the race to the Super Bowl.

“I think any time you go through a struggle and you can come out the other side, you’re usually better for it,” LaFleur said after beating the Vikings. “We’ve certainly faced our fair share of adversity in all phases and our guys continue to fight. They continue to battle. They continue to show up on a daily basis with a great attitude and the willingness to work.

“When you do that, good things happen. They generally tend to happen that way and just super-proud of the effort of the men in the locker room and just really happy for them, but again, it means nothing if we don’t take care of business next Sunday.”

Business was handled. Up next: The playoffs.