Packer Central

Here’s the Good News: Packers Just Won the Super Bowl

Check out the historical parallels between the 2010 team that won the Super Bowl and the 2024 team that fell to 9-4 with a loss to the Detroit Lions on Thursday night.

Bill Huber

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is reflected in the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is reflected in the Vince Lombardi Trophy. / Michael Chow/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK
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DETROIT – The bad news from Thursday night is the Green Bay Packers’ loss to the Detroit Lions means they won’t win the NFC North.

The good news is the Packers just won the Super Bowl.

Check out this historical parallel provided by Pro Football Network.

When the Packers won their last Super Bowl in 2010, they:

- Played on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 1.

- Had a Week 10 bye.

- Lost at the Detroit Lions in Week 14.

- Wrapped up the regular season at home against the Chicago Bears.

- Beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl; the Steelers started the season 9-3.

Now, here’s the story for the Packers in 2024:

- Played the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 1 – the Packers were the designated road team in Brazil.

- Had a Week 10 bye.

- Lost at the Detroit Lions in Week 14.

- Will wrap up the regular season at home against the Chicago Bears

- The Pittsburgh Steelers are 9-3.

The parallels run even deeper.

If the season were to end today, the Packers would be the No. 6 seed in the NFC playoffs. In 2010, the Packers were the No. 6 seed in the NFC.

In 2010, the Packers needed to win their final two games to get into the playoffs. This year, the Packers have a one-game lead over the Commanders in the race for the No. 6 seed and will have no worse than a two-game lead over the Buccaneers, Cardinals and Rams – all 6-6 – in the chase for the No. 7 seed by the end of the weekend.

Packers coach Matt LaFleur wasn’t going to take anything for granted, though, after losing to the Lions on the final play.

“Yeah, that’s a long way away,” he said of the possibility of getting a third shot at the Lions. “If we don’t look at what we have right in front of us, then we’re doing ourselves a disservice. You’ve got to keep your eyes down and just continue to work and grind and get better, stay together. All these games from here on out, like I told our team, they’re going to come down to situations like this.

“I think we’re a really good football team. I think we’re going to get everybody’s best shot just like we’re going to give everybody our best shot. It’s just a few plays here and there that really separate these types of games.”

In 2010, the team won its eighth game of the season at home against the San Francisco 49ers. So did the 2024 team; that was the second leg of a three-game winning streak that was snapped on Thursday.

“Any time you’re winning a couple of games and you lose, it’s going to disrupt that momentum,” quarterback Jordan Love said. “So, it’s one of those things that it’s tough. It’s a little bit of adversity but we’ve handled adversity. We’ve been here. Had a tough loss early on, a couple, so it’s not anything that we haven’t seen before.

“We’ll stick together and we’ll handle it like any other week. We’ll get back to the film room, figure out what we got to clean up and find ways to get better to finish the season off. But, obviously, any time that you’re winning and take a tough loss like this, it’s going to disrupt momentum, but we just got to get back to the drawing board and get back to work.”

Of course, some interesting historical parallels don’t mean a thing between the white lines.

However, few considered the Packers to be Super Bowl contenders entering the 2010 playoffs, but that team avenged losses at powerhouse Atlanta and division-winning Chicago on their march to the championship.

This team might have to avenge losses to powerhouse Philadelphia and division-winning Detroit to finally add another Lombardi Trophy to the trophy case.

“We’ll be all right. We’ll see probably see them again,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “I don’t think it’s a psychological thing.

“These two games, you watch these games and it’s right there now. It’s just little things. It’s not even they’re doing things to necessarily beat us. We’re beating ourselves. If you look at these two games that we played them, we had beaten ourselves. We just got to do a better job with that.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.