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| Was Sunday's thrashing of the Texans a coming out party for the Pack? |
The Green Bay Packers have set the bar for the NFL since their Super Bowl-winning season in 2010. They've had the league's most explosive offense, led by arguably the league's best quarterback. On defense they've had a playmaking unit that gets its energy off of game-changing plays instead of suffocating run defense or a shutdown pass defense. Their squad is laden with some of the NFL's best leaders in Rodgers, Charles Woodson, Clay Matthews, Donald Driver and Jeff Saturday. All of this has translated to 36 wins in the past three seasons, but hasn't exactly added up to that this season. Yet, Sunday night's thrashing of what we thought was the "best team in the league" might have signaled a return to form for the Packers.
Or has it? We're still looking a painstakingly mediocre team here. Yes, they're still led by one of the top three QBs in the game, but before Sunday's game he wasn't playing up to his potential. They're 3-3, rank 14th in passing, 23rd in rushing, 18th in pass D, 17th in rush D, 7th in turnover differential in the NFC and have tended to play up or down depending on their competition. They fit the exact mold of an 8-8 team at this point, yet they still possess 13-3 talent. For every time something goes right for the Pack, something goes wrong. Honestly, beyond the numbers they just haven't looked dominating. Their offense before Sunday seemed so disorganized that it looked like they had a whole new corp of wideouts and offensive lineman. The Pack simply weren't the Pack before Sunday night.
I mentioned to a few people that this game would serve as a coming out game for the Packers. A coming out game for those of you that don't know is a game that serves as a team's revival or when a budding team makes a leap (Oklahoma City beating the Spurs in Game 5 of the WCF last year). And boy, did Green Bay come out swinging. Not only did Rodgers and co. look as alive as they did during their 13-game winning streak last season, but their defense basically rendered the powerful Texans offense useless. The Packers had so badly sucked the life out Houston, that they just looked shocked, in their own building nonetheless. Schaub tossed third picks, was sacked three times and even though they were only down 11 at halftime, there was no way Green Bay was letting them come back. It was the sort of slaughtering we've come accustomed with Aaron Rodgers looking like Tom Brady circa 2007 and they did it against the league's best team.
Is it fair for us to jump out of our seats over this game? I say yes, and no. Yes in the fact that we watched a vintage Packers team throw a party in another team's building (a damn good team at that). And no, because it's only part 1. The strange, last minute losses to the Seahawks (Don't blame it on the crappy officiating, they never should have been in that position) and the Colts have me concerned over the legitimacy of this squad. To say this was their coming out party might be jumping the gun, but when you have 12-win-a-season kind of talent, the benefit of the doubt is always on your side.
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