Marketplace of Ideas Blog

The Packers' four-game winning streak suddenly has made them a popular Super Bowl pick, or one of them, anyway.

No less an authority than Sports Illustrated sees good things with the Packers, for, of all reasons, underperformance to date:

Green Bay has been one of the great statistical anomalies all season — it has put up great performances in many of our Quality Stats, normally reliable indicators of onfield success.

Yet the Packers have struggled on the border of mediocrity for much of the season. Exactly one month ago, Green Bay was just 4–4 after suffering a humiliating 38–28 loss in Tampa, the only victory of the year for the Buccaneers.

But the loss appears to have been a wake-up call as bracing as the icy waters of the upper Michigan. Green Bay rolled over the Cowboys the following week and has won four straight. The Packers finish the season with three of their final four games on the road, including trips to face each of last year's Super Bowl contenders. So the road ahead is not easy. But an 11-5 record and a playoff appearance is well within reach.

SI likes the Packers for five reasons — the play of quarterback Aaron Rodgers, "one of the most effective passers in the NFL all year"; the Packers' winning the passing battle (that is, the Packers' pass offense vs. opponents' pass defense and the Packers' pass defense vs. opponents' pass offense); the fact that, contrary to conventional wisdom, teams that aren't a first or second seed — in other words, teams that have to play all weekends of the playoffs — are recently as likely to get to the Super Bowl (including both of last year's teams, Pittsburgh and Arizona, plus the previous two champions, the New York Giants and Indianapolis) as the teams that get first-week byes; and their Defensive Hog Index that "looks built for the playoffs: it's number three against the run, number three at forcing opponents into Negative Pass Plays (11.3 percent of dropbacks end in a sack or INT) and number six in third down (stopping opponents on 65.6% of attempts)."

Three months ago I predicted that the Packers would win no more than eight games. They have now won eight games with four weeks left in the season, and the likelihood of their going 0–4 is very unlikely given that they face Seattle at home. A playoff berth is thus at least possible, and if you get in the playoffs, obviously you have a shot of getting to the Super Bowl.

The argument against the Packers' going far in the playoffs is that they will have to go far in the playoffs on the road, an argument that, as previously mentioned, SI doesn't buy. Barring an absolute collapse by Minnesota — as in the Vikings' losing three of their last four games while the Packers sweep their last four — the Packers will be at best the number one wild card team, the fifth of the NFC's six seeds. That would mean a trip to the fourth-seeded team (the NFC division champion with the worst record) in the first weekend of the playoffs.

This weekend, the Packers go to Chicago to face the Bears, which rank as one of the great disappointments of this season after their expensive trade for quarterback Jay Cutler, who threw four interceptions in the first Bears–Packers game. Fox Sports' Brian Billick claims that the Bears' problems will not be fixed by a new offensive system:

"Once someone is successful with something, whatever it is within your system, we coaches look at it, analyze it, tear it apart, re-build it in our way and take credit for it. To just simply say Jay Cutler is not in the right system, that's not what I'm saying. I don't think it will make a difference to say just bring in a different set of coaches. It's having the right balance of players, offensively, defensively and the way it all comes together."

Billick, who will provide color commentary for the Bears-Packers game Sunday on Fox, points to the balance quarterback Aaron Rodgers has in Green Bay. With the NFL's top-ranked defense, a dependable receiving corps and emerging offensive line, Rodgers has plenty of help.

Unlike Cutler, Billick said.

"The circumstances surrounding Aaron Rodgers are a little bit different than those surrounding Jay Cutler," Billick said. "I'm not here to make excuses for Jay Cutler. He has to play better. But what I see in Jay Cutler is someone who is trying to force the ball and make all the plays to try to overcome some of the things that have gone wrong for the Bears on both sides of the ball."

The Bears were traditionally a team focused on running the ball and defense under their previous parade of quarterbacks, but appear to have tried to become a passing team without necessarily having the personnel to do so beyond Cutler. (Or, as the Chicago Tribune puts it, "The Bears stink as much as you think they do.") Their receivers are below average with the exception of tight end Greg Olson; they've tried to turn kick returner Devin Hester into a wide receiver with the similar results the Packers got from trying to make kick returner Desmond Howard a wide receiver. Moreover, their offensive line is somewhere between "poor" and "too old," and their running game has significantly degenerated, as has their defense.

If things go well Sunday, the Chicago media that cover the Bears will, as usual, tear apart the hometown team. I'm not necessarily convinced they will, but given how they've played in their previous four games, their last four — at Chicago, at Pittsburgh (which lost to awful Cleveland last night), Seattle and at Arizona — suddenly don't seem as formidable.