Watching a relatively ho-hum game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night only served to pour salt into the wide-open wound for Green Bay Packers fans just a few weeks ago. The Rams were the ones to raise the Lombardi Trophy after winning Super Bowl LVI. But as the game wore on, the sting of another missed opportunity for the Packers grew sharper.
It’s one thing to lose to Tom Brady in an NFC Championship game and then watch him topple an incredible talent in Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl a year ago. It’s another thing to watch a one-dimensional Rams offense browbeat a flawed Bengals team that was a year or so too green to really make a name for themselves.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Green Bay played like garbage against the San Francisco 49ers in the playoffs and deserved to lose that game. The Niners were a terrible matchup for the Packers and took advantage of the mismatch just enough to come into Lambeau Field to earn the win. Green Bay had also beat San Francisco earlier in the season (albeit miraculously), just like they earned victories against Cincinnati and the Rams during their 13-4 regular season campaign.
If the Packers had seen the Rams in the playoffs, could Los Angeles have gotten the better of Green Bay in the rematch? Possibly. Would the Bengals be motivated for revenge after the historically fluky end to the Week 5 matchup? Of course. But it was hard, as a semi-objective fan, not to think that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers would have been able to beat either of these teams. It wasn’t an intimidating rematch with Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the hurting that Mahomes, Tyreek Hill, and Travis Kelce could have put on that Green Bay defense.
It was Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow. Stafford strikes zero fear into the heart of the Packers’ fanbase, and Burrow is undoubtedly special. But Kenny Clark and Rashan Gary would have lived on Burrow’s front doorstep all game long. Stafford is usually good for a turnover or two, and he had a fumble and a pick-six when Green Bay won 36-28 in November. He had two picks on Sunday against the Bengals.
The Rams had zero rushing game to speak of, needing to rely on a jet sweep to Cooper Kupp on the biggest play of the game. Joe Barry and the Green Bay defense were able to keep Kupp in front of them in the Week 9 win over the Rams (instead allowing Van Jefferson and Odell Beckham Jr. to get deep). But a healthy Jaire Alexander certainly might have helped the Packers step it up a bit in pass coverage.
Cincinnati is immensely talented and had an inspiring run to the Super Bowl, but they weren’t the whole package just yet. Burrow got sacked seven times, Ja’Marr Chase really only had one above-average play, and the coaching staff couldn’t get Joe Mixon as involved as necessary to really make a difference.
The season that undoubtedly hurts the most is the one where the Packers collapsed against the Seattle Seahawks in 2015, given everything that had to break in Seattle’s favor for them to advance to the Super Bowl. That game in and of itself will take a lifetime to get over. Fans everywhere were robbed of an Aaron Rodgers-Tom Brady Super Bowl showdown that this era of football deserved.
Sometimes, it’s okay to get a little bit lucky along the way. Packers fans who follow the NBA certainly welcomed that luck as the Milwaukee Bucks took advantage of the path presented to them on their way to a title. Were the Bengals a bit like the Phoenix Suns, a team with some incredible talents that was maybe there a year too early? The fact that it was a team like that emerging from the AFC made it hurt that much more that Green Bay wasn’t able to take advantage of this season.
