Slumping Packers Chasing Lombardi Legends in Quest for Super Bowl History

The Green Bay Packers will take no momentum into Sunday’s playoff game at the Philadelphia Eagles following a couple of losses to end the regular season. Can they rebound and win the Super Bowl on a losing streak?
Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur questions a call by the officials during the game against the Chicago Bears.
Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur questions a call by the officials during the game against the Chicago Bears. / Dan Powers/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers are limping into the playoffs with back-to-back losses. They will take no momentum into Sunday’s wild-card playoff game at the powerful Philadelphia Eagles.

Does it matter that the Packers lost at the Vikings in Week 17 and at home against the Bears in Week 18?

“Does not concern me at all,” quarterback Jordan Love said on Wednesday. “We’ve got to go out there and play our best ball Sunday. You could be undefeated going into the playoffs and lose your first game. So, we’ve got to be able to go out there and execute and be at our best.”

According to Stathead, five teams in NFL history lost their final two games of the regular season and reached the Super Bowl.

In 2009, Drew Brees and the Saints started 13-0 but lost their final three games of the regular season. They rebounded, though, and swept their way past the Cardinals, Vikings and Colts to win the Super Bowl.

In 1967, Vince Lombardi’s Packers lost their final two games of the regular season but routed the Rams in the divisional round, survived the Cowboys in the Ice Bowl and hammered the Raiders in the Super Bowl.

Interestingly, the 2009 Colts also entered the playoffs with a two-game losing streak but at least reached the Super Bowl, as did the Eagles in 2004 and Washington in 1972.

On the other hand, this year’s Steelers lost their last four regular-season games, then got manhandled by the Ravens on Saturday night. The two teams that entered the 2023 playoffs on two-game skids, the Dolphins and Eagles, lost by a combined 44 points.

Packers coach Matt LaFleur played his starters against the Bears last week in order to eliminate the “sour” taste from the loss to the Vikings and build momentum toward the playoffs.

So much for that.

Pivoting, LaFleur on Monday said game-to-game momentum is more media creation than reality.

“I think that’s more for you guys,” he said. “Obviously, you would like to win every game, especially going into the playoffs (but) it’s on to Philly.

“And that’s just life in this league because, if you’re living in the past, you’re probably not going to have a very good future. So, you’ve got to learn from everything, whether it’s positive or negative and, unfortunately, a lot of times you learn more from the tough lessons than you do from your successes. But you got to be resilient, you got to keep turning the page and just get back to work.”

The page was turned.

Immediately after the loss to the Bears, safety Xavier McKinney and defensive end Rashan Gary led the players’ message. By the time the media period began, the Lambeau Field locker room was incredibly quiet.

McKinney, who win or lose is almost instantly onto the next game, sounded especially dejected.

By the end of the week, though, things were back to normal.

Players, trained from a young age to turn the page and live in the moment rather than dwell in the past, looked ahead to the playoffs with anticipation about the possibilities that are at hand.

“We good,” McKinney said on Thursday. “Like I said, we watched the film and we know what we need to do better from that game and we talked about and we went through corrections, and then we wiped it by.

“I think in this league, you can’t really dwell too much on the past because, if you do, it’s going to keep carrying over. So, for us, we put it in the past. That was a part of the regular season. Now it’s a new season. We’re in the playoffs and now it’s time to refocus. We didn’t really have a problem with bouncing back. We knew that after that game was over, we watch the film, we good. We on to the next.”

Last year, the Packers had that momentum that this year’s team lacks. Green Bay won its final three games to get into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed, then crushed the heavily favored and second-seeded Cowboys on the road in the wild-card round.

This year, Green Bay improved its win total from nine to 11 but stumbled into the playoffs. On Sunday, the Packers – once again the No. 7 seed – will face the powerful Eagles in a wild-card game.

The Packers will need big performances from Love, just as the Saints got from Brees in 2009 and the Packers got from Bart Starr in 1967 en route to winning the Super Bowl, and the Colts got from Peyton Manning in 2009 and the Eagles got from Donovan McNabb in 2004 to win conference championships. 

“It’s not different at all,” Love said of the team’s playoff mindset compared to last year. “That was the message we talked about today, as well. You can’t really change much. You’ve got to treat it like another day. If you make it a big thing, guys will feel that pressure. So, you’ve got to go out there and just handle business, prepare.

“Like I said [to the team], we’ve got five days guaranteed, so prepare like this is all we got. We’ve got one shot at this thing so go out there and make plays. But we’re confident and we won’t really be changing much in our preparation.”

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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.