GREEN BAY, Wis. — Lambeau Field on Sunday was to be the jumping-off point for another glorious playoff run for what the loyalists like to call the real America’s Team.
With 3 minutes left, more than half the crowd of 72,080 had headed for home, rats escaping the sinking ship known as the Invincible Green Bay Packers.
“Yes, that was disappointing. I’ve never seen that,” defensive end Ryan Pickett said of the early-to-exit fan base when the debacle was done. “But we were playing pretty sloppy football.”
Did the Packers ever.
Down went visions of another Super Bowl and second straight National Football League championship. Kaput went hopes for a pro football dynasty.
The Road to Indianapolis will have to do without the Packers. They won’t join the eight other teams in the Super Bowl era with the resolve and poise necessary to repeat.
It was one-and-done against the New York Giants, who flexed their muscles on both sides of the ball to pound the Packers, 37-20, in a divisional game. Four times in 10 years the Packers have now been ushered out of the playoffs on home turf.
The fourth-seeded Giants (11-7) advanced to meet the 49ers (14-3) Sunday in San Francisco for the right to play in the 46th Super Bowl at Lucas Oil Stadium. Finishing 15-2, the Packers will be left to pick over the cadaver in the weeks and months to come.
“Obviously, very disappointing,” Packers President Mark Murphy said. “It’s the reality of the NFL. The difference between winning and losing isn’t much. You learn from things like this. The future is very bright.”
In the 22 years that the NFL has been seeding playoff teams, the Packers became the 13th of the 44 top-seeded clubs to lose their first game. No No. 1 seed in the NFC from 1990-2006 had taken a 0-1 powder before Dallas (13-3) lost its opener in 2007, the Giants (12-4) did the same in ‘08 and Atlanta (13-3) was crushed by the scalding-hot Packers one year ago.
But that was then, when the Packers caught fire at just the right time to win three road games and then the Super Bowl.
“I mean, it happens in football,” safety Charlie Peprah said. “For whatever reason, it’s hard to do the same thing back-to-back. Teams know what you’re doing. Everybody’s gunning for you.”
Favored by 7{ points, Green Bay also became the first team to win as many as 15 games in the regular season and then bow out in its postseason opener.
“It’s a failed season,” said Pickett. “The reason we played was the Super Bowl.”
Almost everything that Mike McCarthy has held near and dear during his six-year tenure fell apart on a windy but otherwise temperate late afternoon against the same team that KO’d them as a heavy underdog four years ago on the same tundra in the NFC Championship Game.
Once again, the defense was its usual porous self. Ranked 32nd and last in the first 16 games, the Packers yielded 420 yards _ 8.4 more on average than during the regular season _ to an offense that picked apart a secondary laid bare by a pathetic pass rush.
Eli Manning, who outplayed Aaron Rodgers just as he outplayed Brett Favre in the crushing ‘07 title go, converted five third downs with 8 or more yards to go on completions of 19, 11, 15, 17 and 17 yards.
“It kills you. It kills you,” said Charles Woodson, one of many defenders who was exposed. “We had a lot of good plays on first and second downs. But that was kind of deflating when you have third and long.”
The Packers had dominated all season largely because Aaron Rodgers and their offense had been virtually unstoppable. When they weren’t Sunday, the jig was up.
It figured that the team to eliminate the Packers would be one with a formidable four-man rush. That would be the Giants, but it really wasn’t the pass rush that won the game.
“Tonight, our guys covered great,” middle linebacker Chase Blackburn said. “Usually, it’s the other way around. We didn’t try to take anyone away. We singled them up on the outside with the safeties playing over the top. The secondary gave the rush time to get there.”
After moving right down the field on the opening possession, the Packers had to settle for a field goal when Jermichael Finley had the first of the team’s half a dozen dropped passes and Rodgers overthrew a wide-open Greg Jennings for what nine times out of 10 would have been a 29-yard touchdown.
Despite the matchups, the Giants got away with extensive man-to-man coverage because the timing of the passing game was astonishingly bad.
“It was the worst I’ve seen,” said Finley.
Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul had neither a sack nor quarterback hit. Still, he contributed in a subtle way, repeatedly chucking Finley at the line of scrimmage before redirecting into his rush.
“Pierre-Paul was pushing me and our offense is timing,” Finley said. “Then he’d go rush. I’d say a dozen times. I got pushed on the ground two or three times.”
Remarkably, Perry Fewell’s defense didn’t yield a completion for more than 21 yards. Save for James Starks on a few second-half toss plays, the Giants contained the run, too.
Not only didn’t the Packers move the ball, they turned it over four times. Having lost just six fumbles in 16 games, some of the most secure handlers of the ball in the NFL _ John Kuhn, Ryan Grant and Rodgers _ all lost fumbles to set up 10 of the Giants’ points.
“Frankly, the turnover ratio is something we take a lot of pride, something we spend a lot of time on,” said McCarthy. “Turnover ratio is something we don’t lose very often. We did not play to our identity.”
McCarthy said much the same thing in January 2010 when turnovers early and late in Arizona resulted in a first-game exit when some in the organization felt the club had the personnel and momentum to win the Super Bowl.
With no capable rushers, Dom Capers apparently figured he might as well rush just four and often times just three in hopes Manning would become impatient and throw into crowds. But given time to pat and then pat the ball on dropback after dropback, he drilled accurate shots to gifted, sure-handed wide receivers.
The problem was that after the receivers caught the ball, the Packers proved true to form and were the lousy tacklers that they had been all year long.
Hakeem Nicks’ 66-yard touchdown pass is a 20-yard gain if Peprah wraps up.
Nicks’ 29-yard sideline catch that set up a field goal is a 13-yard gain if Sam Shields ges him down.
The game-changing 37-yard Hail Mary touchdown to Nicks at the end of the half occurred when Woodson and Peprah had him surrounded in the end zone.
Brandon Jacobs’ clinching 14-yard run doesn’t happen if Woodson displays even a touch of discipline on the back side.
“Coach Capers put us in position to be successful,” Pickett said. “To give up the easy, easy, easy plays … that’s not us. I can’t accept that. That’s what the difference was from last year.”
Linebacker Desmond Bishop suggested that too many players seemed to be looking past New York.
“They were a lot better team than we gave them credit for, I think,” said Bishop. “They just beat us, man. They played to all their strengths.”
At halftime, Marc Ross, the Giants’ director of college scouting, said, “I think this is the Super Bowl right here.”
Maybe it will turn out to be. The Giants look to be just as good as the ‘07 team that won it all.
As for the Packers, they’re too young and too talented not to be a major contender into the foreseeable future. All they were Sunday, however, was one gigantic flop.
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