Aaron Rodgers can zip fastballs and touch passes with the best quarterbacks in NFL history. Greg Jennings, Jermichael Finley, Jordy Nelson, and James Jones commands consistent double teams from defenses. Charles Woodson and Clay Matthews are amongst the best at their positions. And no one can stop BJ Raji from rumbling it in from a few yards out.
The Pack is awesome.
Armed with the best throwing arm in the world, an opportunistic defense, and strong coaching, the Green Bay Packers have all the ingredients for a shot at the Super Bowl and more beer, dance, and Wisconsin girls than they can handle. They are 11-0, having defeated solid NFC teams in the Saints, Bears, Falcons, and Lions. Each week, they pummel quarterbacks into the ground and put points up on the board at will, outscoring their opponents by an average of 14.1 points per game, 3.7 points higher than the next closest team, the Texans.
The Packers are good enough to win the Super Bowl. However, there is one team that even the Packers cannot defeat: Team Luck. And no, I don’t mean the Stanford Cardinals football team. I mean the type of luck that helps you find a hundred dollar bill on the train or the type of luck that makes your boss have a tummy ache and have to go home for the day.
Having grown up a Patriots fan, 2007 was the year of glory. They put up a record scoring regular season offense behind Tom Brady’s 50 touchdowns and Randy Moss’s 23, outscored opponents by nearly 20 point per game, and had a defense that could stop someone (unlike this year’s version). It was the year the Patriots would rumble over everything and everyone, until someone decided it made for funny television to let an unnamed, benchwarming receiver put sticky glue on his helmet in the fourth quarter.
Now, as a fan of Aaron Rodgers with an appetite for record-breaking football, I would like nothing more than for the Packers to go undefeated throughout the regular season and the playoffs. However, in this day and age, a single bad throw, a single bad bounce, a single bad call, or a single benchwarmer with a penchant for ridiculous catches can derail that goal. We all watched as Calvin Johnson caught a game-winning touchdown that wasn’t a game-winning touchdown. We all watched as Tom Brady dropped a football that wasn’t a fumble and led to a game-winning field goal against the mighty Raiders on their way to the 2001 Super Bowl. And every couple of weeks or so, we watch as backup quarterbacks named Tim Tebow defeat Pro Bowl quarterbacks on 3 yard runs and out-of-work running backs named Kevin Smith churn out 200 yards and 3 touchdowns. The mantra of today’s NFL? Anyone can win.
The good news for the Packers is that they still have plenty of time to take a loss this season. If I was Mike McCarthy, I would hope that my team loses the next game against the Giants by a point, just so I can rest my starters for the last few games of the season without the pressure of having to defeat the 1972 Miami Dolphins. My team would be geared and ready for the playoffs, having been well rested while knowing full well that they aren’t invincible.
If the goal of a team if to go undefeated, their priorities are not in the right place. The goal in the NFL is to win the Super Bowl. If the team performs at a high level for 18 games and 3 quarters, and run out of gas for the last quarter of their 19th game, it would not matter what they’ve done. For these Green Bay Packers, the longer they go without losing, the higher the probability that they will lose the next game. Let them lose, Mike. Let them lose.
Sources: Yahoo! Sports data & Calculations made off Yahoo! Sports data