NFC Championship Sunday!

First, some catch-up:

Packers 33 - Rams 14

I got to watch this one on a widescreen rear-projection TV, but with my in-laws muttering on and constantly razzing me in the background. You know when people know you enjoy something and they deliberately feign interest or condescend with the sole intention of getting a reaction from you? Yeah. Three hours of that. And the first half was enough of a question mark to make each comment cut twice as deep. Luckily, as we've done in several games this year, the Pack came back having made some good adjustments at the half and finished strong. We kept St. Louis scoreless in the 2nd half.

And it was one of Bigby's waxing games. As much as he pisses me off with his missed assignments or cocky attitude or sometimes just being a rookie, I can't throw much hate his way when he has a game like this. Two INTs and several decent tackles made this one of the good games. The interception late in the first half was a momentum-changer that kept the Packers up by three at the half. The other driving force in this game was the special teams play of Koren Robinson and Will Blackmon, who combined for over 100 return yards on just three returns. And if special teams is playing well (OBTW, Crosby was 4-4 kicking field goals), then if either the offense or the defense is playing well, you know the likely outcome. Well, let's leave aside for the moment that on offense we have Brett Favre (after all, even though he passed Marino in total passing yards, he threw two INTs). In this game, the defense stepped up and took over. After two games with no sacks, we got four against the Rams. Nick Barnett had two, and Kampman and Hawk both had one.

Packers 7 - Bears 35

The most remarkable thing about this game was where I was when I watched it -- at the ESPN Club at the Boardwalk at Walt Disney World in Orlando. 50+ high def flat screens, each with a tag underneath them indicating which game would be playing at 1pm. There were a dozen Favre jerseys within my line-of-sight... and two Bears fans.

So we got to commiserate. The weather in Orlando was in the 80s and sunny. Not so in Chi-town, where the winds were whipping and the temps were in the teens. Favre's passes were blowing all over the place. He was 2-of-7 in the first half, so we obviously needed to rely on the running game, which was okay on a couple of plays. The most important one came in the 2nd Quarter, when Dorsey Grant ran 66 yards for a TD. Unlike last week's game, though, the special teams play was HORRID. Jon Ryan ended a not-well-publicized streak of 12 years and 929 punts without a block in the 2nd Quarter... and then followed that up with another one in the 3rd. Not only that, but he dropped a snap and wound up with a 9-yard punt, too.

The most perplexing thing was our defense's lackluster play. The Bears had one offensive play in their playbook: Run up the middle. How could we not adjust and come up with a solution for that one? And how was it that, in the same weather, Orton only had 6 incomplete passes?

I left the Club when Urlacher picked off a deflected Favre pass and ran it back 85 yards to reach what would be the final score of 35-7. 11 minutes remained in the game at that time. They may have beaten us both times this season, but the Bears still suck.

Packers 34 - Lions 13

That's more like it. If the Bears are going to beat us twice, we're sure as hell going to have to own the Lions in both our games against them this season. We rested Double D, the Jennerator, Woody, Kampman, Lee, and Pickett. The last thing we want is injuries going into the Divisional Playoff game two weeks later. (Cut to me worried as both Will Blackmon and Dorsey Grant go out with injuries in this game.) Favre played (the consecutive start streak stays alive at 253), but only for three series... for three touchdowns. He was 9-of-11 for 99 yards and two TD passes, and OBTW a 21-yard run. Then dark horse Craig Nall came in to clean up for the rest of the game. He got to throw a TD pass for the first time in three seasons -- good for him.

The last time the Lions won a game in Wisconsin was in 1991, which means they've never beaten Favre here. Also, our final-game winning percentage is the best in the NFL since 1994 -- we're now 13-1. Right behind us with a record of 11-3 are the Washington Redskins... who beat the Cowboys on this day. Yes, that means if we had beaten the Bears last week we would own home field advantage over Dallas throughout the Playoffs... but I digress.

As we would discover just 14 days later, it wouldn't matter.

13 DAYS LATER...

Packers 42 - Seahawks 20

Holy crap, was this game amazing. It was magical. The snow falling from the sky was the angels spitting their approval down on Lambeau and the Packer Nation -- "cherubim spittle," it was dubbed, willing us to the NFC Championship game. (My video of this trip to follow.) The first four minutes were disquieting, but Brett didn't get desperate -- there was after all plenty of time left on the clock. And he and his young team were deliberate about moving down the field. Young Ryan Grant -- who earned the right to be called by his own name after his performance in this game -- more than made up for his errors in those opening minutes. He ran for 201 yards and scored three TDs, more (on both counts) than anyone in Packers postseason history. Our 42 points were the most ever for us, too. Same for our 25 first downs. It was meant to be.

Never in all of my games at Lambeau have I seen it, heard it, or felt it quite like that. The game a week before that last glorious Seahawks playoff game four years ago -- when we played the Broncos -- was close on the eerie-feel scale. That was the game in the trailing minutes of which the Cardinals had scored against the Vikings to pull within 5 and then gotten the on-side kick with under 2:00 left to play in Arizona. People in the stands were listening to that game on their radios, and you could tell who had a radio by these 'pockets' of activity throughout the stadium. When the Cards would get a first down, little concentric circles of excitement would erupt. We spent quite a bit of time near the end of the 4th quarter turning around behind us to see what the folks in the luxury boxes were seeing on TV. When Arizona got that TD that was ruled a forceout to pull them up by one point against Minnesota, the place went nuts. Then we heard it was being challenged, and it was eerily silent as we awaited word from the radio- and TV-clad fans among us. Once the TD was verified -- I think it was right at the 2:00 warning of our game -- the lid came off and everyone was celebrating the fact that we’d backed our way into the Playoffs and would be hosting another game the next week.

Best of all, check out the sky earlier that evening. We were being smiled upon in that game much like we were in the snow last Saturday. It happened to be 11 years to the day after the last NFC Championship game we’d hosted against Carolina before SB XXXI. The difference in last Saturday’s game vs. that Broncos game was that the feeling was there almost the whole time last week… I mean, minus the first four minutes. I don’t remember sitting down for more than two or three minutes the entire game. Amazing. Almost unbelievable. We said that many times during the game: "Unbelievable." But we do believe. Boy, do we believe.

So today, thanks to the Giants beating the Cowboys, we're mere hours away from hosting one more home playoff game at Lambeau. And it's time for the Packers' Prayer:

Our Favre, who art at Lambeau,
Hallowed be thine arm.
The Bowl will come.
It will be won,
In Phoenix as it was in New Orleans.
Give us this Sunday our weekly win.
And give us many touchdown passes,
But do not let others pass against us.
And lead us not into frustration,
But deliver us to the valley of the sun.
For thine is the MVP,
The best of the NFC, and the glory of the Cheeseheads,
For ever and ever.
AMEN!!!

Go Pack Go!

Carving Up the Thanksgiving Lions

Packers 37 - Lions 26

"I threw it. They caught it. Nothing spectacular."

You've gotta' love Brett Favre's humility this year. A year in which he's not only breaking Packers team records and NFL records, but one in which he's breaking personal records he set in his MVP years. At this point in the season, it's unfortunate that the Patriots are undefeated because it makes everyone take notice of a pretty regular QB in Tom Brady and naturally assume he's a shoo-in for this year's MVP. As a team, sure, the Pats are playing some amazingly consistent football. But is Tom Brady better than Brett Favre this year? No way. Not by a long shot. Again: He's playing better this year than in any of his previous years, and he has already been the NFL's MVP more times than any other player. If you improve on that greatness, how could you not be considered the MVP?

Of course, having said all that, the first play snapped to Favre in this game probably isn't exactly the representative play you want to put on your reel to make your case. He tripped as he pitched the ball back to "Dorsey" Grant and the Lions recovered with excellent field position. Then the D really tightened, though, and we held them to just a field goal. Kampman didn't have quite as many sacks as I had expected he would (just two), but his presence was definitely felt. KGB and Williams both got a sack in, too.

The excitement started just after we said our Thanksgiving dinner prayer (I say it much differently than most, especially when the Packers are playing). Aaron Rouse got a pick early in the second quarter and ran it back 34 yards to the 11. One play later, Favre and the Jennerator had chalked up another TD and we were up 7-6. We didn't really turn it off again after that until the fourth quarter. More on that in a moment.

The most remarkable thing about this game was probably the passing streak that Favre set up. In the two-minute drill at the end of the first half, he had seven straight. In the third quarter, he did not have an incompletion. By the beginning of the fourth, he had broken the Packers team record and the league's record was in sight. Two straight incomplete passes in the end zone meant that he stopped at an amazing 20 straight passes... and we had to settle for just 3 points on that drive. Meanwhile, though, the Lions had done nothing of consequence -- one field goal to our 20 points.

But the rest of the fourth quarter was a little unnerving. Perhaps the tryptophan of hundreds of thousands of fans on one side of the TV screen somehow reached the defense on the other, because all of a sudden, they had allowed Detroit to score touchdowns instead of field goals, and the lead was down to just 8 points. Same thing happened last week. I don't want that to become a habit. I don't know what's more stressful: Having to come from behind to win it or being up and going all conservative and having to hold on by the skin of our teeth. Now, an 11-point victory isn't skin-of-our-teeth close, but it should have been more like 20. We need to have that Patriots don't-just-plunge-the-dagger-into-their-hearts-but-twist-that-sucker-a-few-times-too mentality and just own these games. That's what I want to see happen tonight, anyway.

I have not been this giddy about a game in a loooooong time. Two 10-1 teams meeting on a national stage, both in the NFC, playing for what could end up meaning home-field advantage in the Playoffs. Holy fucking shit.

Here's hoping Romo's too distracted by Jessica Simpson's boobs to play well in the spotlight.

Wait, what was I saying?

A W's a W

Packers 17 - Lions 9

The streak continues. I was doing some math on the way back from Lambeau. I'm pretty sure this was my 13th Packers game (lucky #13!), and I have only ever witnessed one loss in person up at the Tundra. And that loss was eased by the fact that we actually backed into the playoffs on the same day. This win was tempered by the fact that it was only our third home victory in over a year. How times have changed.

And I mean changed. Brett Favre's QB rating was below the game-time temperature, which was 40°. He also turned the ball over twice inside the 20; we've now done that ten times this season. And while he didn't have any TD passes (Vernand Morency had two rushing TDs -- one right in front of us with a Lambeau Leap in the 4th quarter -- but dammit), he did complete his 4,968th pass, surpassing Dan Marino's record with a 21-yard pass to Carlyle Holiday* near the end of the first half. Later in the game (during one of the sixty-seven TV time outs), I saw him talking with Ed Hochuli for a bit and we wondered what they were saying. Later, in his post-game press conference, Brett said this:

Ed Hochuli congratulated me out there, and I told him, 'I have no idea what you're congratulating me for, but thank you.'

I was hoping he was giving Hochuli shit for his poor instant replay call which negated a long completion to Donald Driver on a crucial third down play. Guess not. And so much for keeping the penalties to a minimum like last week, when we had just two for 10 yards. This time, we had nine for 69. Yeesh.

Favre didn't play all that well, of course, but his receivers weren't exactly looking the ball into their hands much, either. I counted about ten incomplete passes that were all on the receivers. One was a sure TD to David Martin on the goal line when we were down 3-0. That one lost us four points. Luckily, despite turning the ball over four times, we only allowed the Lions to score a total of 3 points off of them. That's a pretty good average.

There was other stuff that falls under the Pretty Good category. Our defense was really quite stellar (albeit against a pretty stagnant team). I isoed on Cullen Jenkins at several points during the game, and he was amazing. Easily the MVP of the game. (Morency was worthy, but, for this game, I couldn't give it to an offensive player and feel good about myself.) He tallied up three sacks (we had six total, which is two more than what we've had in the last four games combined) and got a fumble recovery. KGB missed a start for him, and I'd say Jenkins earned it. Al Harris did a good job keeping Roy Williams quiet, too. And whenever we can keep a team entirely out of the end zone, that's certainly a good thing. The last defensive series had the Lions backed up in our end zone, and we got loud. The 'D' really stepped up. That was pretty amazing.

Finally, expanding on what I wrote at the end of my post on the 49ers game, we are indeed still officially in the playoff picture. On the way home, Jay Sorgi ran through the scenarios on the Packers Radio Network. It's a shitload of 'if's, but here's the result of his detailed research:

Part one: The Packers win out.

They have games against Minnesota Thursday and at Chicago on New Years' Eve. Since the Bears have no playoff positioning to play for, two wins are possible.

Part two: The Falcons and either the Giants or Eagles each suffer some losses, and go 8-8.

If those things happen, there's a possibility that as many as seven teams could finish 8-8. Those are [the Falcons, Panthers, Giants, Eagles, Rams, and 49ers].

If all that happens, it then goes to the NFL tiebreaking computer for the final wildcard spots.

What the NFL does is first eliminate teams from the same division... so you only have one team from each of the four divisions. If that happens, and the four teams turn out to be the Packers, [Panthers, Eagles, and 49ers], the Eagles get the final spot.

If that doesn't occur, then the NFL uses conference record to break the tie.

[The Falcons, Panthers, Rams, and 49ers] would each finish 6-6 in the conference.

The Packers would end up 7-5, and so would the Eagles and Giants.

So then it could again be up to seven teams with it coming down to common opponents or even strength of victory... and with the Packers defeating the Bears, there's a really good chance they'd win the final wildcard slot.

Now let me add this to it.... Say it's just a couple teams tied at 8-8... the Packers and any one of those other six teams. It comes down to head to head. If it's the Rams or Eagles, it's not so good, because the Packers lost to them.

If it's [the 49ers], we like the news... as the Packers beat them earlier this year.

So, yeah. We'll see. Vikings game tomorrow night. At Lambeau. I won't be there. Let's hope it's soon enough after my last visit that some of my magic is left in the bleachers.

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*Yes, the same Carlyle Holiday who was playing as a Cardinals receiver the last time I was there. He caught a 12-yard pass on 3rd-and-six that was negated because of a holding call.