Looking back on the past 4 years, we have 3 colossal playoff defensive flops, surrounded by the one Holy Super Bowl win of 2010, in my city of Dallas.
In the 2009 playoff season, we made Kurt Warner look better than ever. It was his greatest game of his career, even though he was about to retire. The week after, he was beaten easily, battered. We, on the other hand, barely touched him, and he had more TD passes than incomplete passes that game against us.
2011, we had the record-setting offense, Rodgers as good as any QB ever, and we had the supposed homefield advantage.
But our offense had an off-day, with some rare fumbles by Kuhn & Grant, and an amazing strip-sack on Rodgers on a quick 3-step drop.
But if the defense knew how to tackle, we'd have still had a chance to win.
Of if they knew how to prevent a Hail Mary from becoming a touchdown at the end of the half to turn a 3-point game into a 10-point game.
And then this year, we all know it clearly as it's still a fresh taste in our mouth.
Starting in week one, our D made Alex Smith look like Tom Brady. They also made old Frank Gore look like Adrian Peterson.
Week 5, in the 2nd half, we made Andrew Luck look like 1984 Dan Marino. It was Luck's best game of the year, and was also Reggie Wayne's best game in many years.
We got blown out at the Giants again, losing 31-10 at the half.
And then, of course, we were Adrian Peterson's favorite team ever. We also did the unthinkable, managed to make Christian Ponder look like an MVP candidate in week 17.
Of course, we then made Colin Kaepernick look like a cross between Adrian Peterson and Andrew Luck against us.
But what about 2010?
I've always said we owe an awful lot to David Akers for missing not one but two FGs that are normally automatic for him. He had beaten us in the 4th & 26 failure with 2 longer kicks. This year, of course, he nailed a 63-yarder against us. But that day in Philly, he missed 2 easy ones. Had he made just 1 of those 2, they could have kicked a FG at the end to beat us. Instead they were down by 5 and had to go for the TD, which they almost had.
But that was Philadelphia, not the Giants. Philly is terrible as we have seen since that game. They were 8-8 last year and 4-12 this year. They were frauds as it turns out.
The next week we went to Atlanta, a team with a terrible defense and a team who had never won a playoff game under that coach and QB, until this week. How good was Atlanta really? Well the next year, which was 2011, they lost their first playoff game again, scoring 2 points total. Matty Ice, Roddy White, Julio Jones, Tony Gonzalez, were shutout in the playoff loss last year round one.
What if we had to play at New Orleans instead, who always scores 31+ on us?
Then we of course beat the Chicago Bears with Jay Cutler and Caleb Hanie. No Eli or Brees, or even Kaepernick there. Was that a great team? The Bears? That was the only season in the last 6 where they even made the playoffs, hence Lovie Smith being fired.
I would say we had as good of 3 favorable matchups as we could have gotten.
Then the Super Bowl and the Steelers. A great game, our defense made some big plays, and we hung on to win.
But how great were the Steelers really? They were getting old, and they have not won a playoff game since then.
Neither have we except the bye win against Joe Webb.
And all this during an unpresidented 5-year stretch of brilliant QB play from Aaron Rodgers.
We all know that the defense probably is about 95% to blame for there just being one season of playoff wins. As great as Rodgers has been with the Jennings, Driver WR core, that's it. Isn't it fair to assume that Rodgers peaked in the 2010 playoffs-2011 regular season?
He can't get/do better than that. And despite that, just the 2010 playoff run against 3 teams who have not won a playoff game since that magic carpet ride. As great as he's been, he can't do it all himself.
The 2010-11 off-season talk of a potential dynasty is long gone. Sadly.
Here's my first question to you:
Do you think that Rodgers will be a one-time Super Bowl winner like Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and Brett Favre?
This will be one we can look back on every year at this time and see who was right.
I see 2 teams in particular getting better in San Francisco and Seattle.
I also see Washington, if RG3 can stay healthy, getting better. We still matchup badly with Eli and the Giants, and Eli is only a year older than Rodgers I think.
Atlanta appears to have gotten the monkey off their back. Watch how much better they do against Kaepernick this week compared to us.
Even though Vandermause defended Capers this week, he wrote that the days of the Packers being an NFC Elite team are over.
Don't you agree it will take drastic changes -of some kind or another- to get this defense to become a strength instead of a fatal weakness every post-season?