In an upside-down season, a win can feel like a loss — and not in the way the Minnesota Vikings’ wobbly victory over the New York Jets felt like a big ol’ L.
The Green Bay Packers’ season has certainly been upside down — and inside out, full of swallowed doubt, with tender hearts in blenders (apologies to Eve 6). The losing skid that followed their 3-1 start shocked not just Titletown but the football world at large.
Then something cool finally happened. Several things, actually. Most notably, second-round rookie wide receiver Christian Watson started to look like a bona fide star en route to Green Bay winning a divisional game that officially bounced a rival from the playoffs while simultaneously making Green Bay the winningest team in all of football history, edging out those very same rivals for that honor. That is, to quote the un-killable Charlie Sheen, a lot of winning.
But all that (duh!) winning last week has put the Packers in a near-impossible position. I wrote last week that, much as most dedicated fans hate to drop a game under any circumstances, a loss to the Chicago Bears would be enormously clarifying for the reason of Green Bay’s season and perhaps their somewhat distant future. Well, they failed to lose — by succeeding and winning — and now they’re in an almost impossible scenario, tangled in a twisty set of circumstances.
Let’s side aside the Jordan Love of it all for a moment. Forget about the potential of getting a bye week to work him into the starting lineup and five full regular-season games to see just how good he’s gotten during his long ride on the bench.
The other long-term consequence of this (perhaps brief) Packers resurgence will come in next year’s draft, and they’re on a razor’s edge right now between finding a first-round pick who can dramatically raise their profile and one who…might be good.
First, let’s consider Green Bay’s playoff scenario, which will absolutely not be sorted out this weekend and likely will remain uncertain as long as they keep winning — even though their fate is partly out of their own hands.
The reality is, however unlikely, that they can make it. And as long as they can conceivably sneak into the wild card round, it’s hard to argue against starting last year’s league MVP, not that he’d likely acquiesce to anyone who did argue. And further, you cannot say that a win-out-into-the-playoffs scenario is impossible because Aaron Rodgers has proved that is, even if they have absolutely no time left to R-E-L-A-X this season.
But the path to the playoffs is especially fraught because one slip could do them long-term damage down the road. Even if they win out, they need a lot of help from unlikely sources — it’s never great when you really need the Carolina Sam Darnolds to win a game. The Packers could bump off the lowly Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams and win two out of three against the Miami Dolphins, Detroit Lions, and Minnesota Vikings, which would be impressive. It still wouldn’t be enough.
Meanwhile, they fall farther down the 2023 draft board with every win. Had they lost last week to the Bears, they would have been knocking on the door of a top-five pick. Another couple of wins might well push them out of the top 10 and into the back half of the draft order.
It’s cynical to the point of obnoxiousness to root against your team with draft dreams in mind, and there’s never a guarantee that even a flashy Thursday-night round-one draftee will live up to the attendant hype. But if we’re talking about game-breaking stars, you’re much more likely to land one in that coveted first group of ten than finding a superstar in the latter half.
And as the second half of the season reveals, the Packers, though frustrating, are not far from being good. Romeo Doubs is a pleasant surprise, eclipsed by Watson emerging as the beast fans all hoped he would be, while new acquisitions like left tackle Zach Tom and free-agent pickup Keisean Nixon look like they could be key contributors for years to come. Assuming Green Bay cleans up some of their staffing problems — *cough* fireJoeBarry *cough* — one more first-round stud in the 2023 draft could make them awfully formidable. As frustrated as fans were for much of the season, they’re much closer to good than their record, and their current projected draft status would indicate. Every victory makes that a little less likely, though, and tilts the path to 2023 glory at a slightly steeper incline.
You can’t fault the team for trying to win out into the playoffs when it is legitimately possible, but now the team formerly described as “all-in” is betting big on a bad hand. Because unless they actually make the playoffs, every win between now and January could look like a loss in retrospect.
