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FROZEN CHOSEN PACKERS!
Like the Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Green Bay Packers showed up in Arlington, Texas for the first game of the playoffs, prouder to have made it there at all than ready to win against the second-seeded team in the NFL. The Packers opened up in the first quarter like the Confederates firing cannon balls over Fort Sumter. Former Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy, the man who days before said he had nothing to say about his former team, got plenty to talk about following the devastating results of the game. Green Bay snapped the Dallas Cowboys’ 16-game home-winning streak like it was a bothersome twig among many on the team’s ‘field of broken dreams.’ The Packers won, with a 48–32 victory in the NFC wild-card round.
The score would have been higher except for the fact that, and this is unheard of in playoff games, Lafluer sent in the rookies to keep from further embarrassing the Cowboys in front of the home crowd during the fourth quarter. Dallas subsequently became the first No. 2 seed to ever lose in the first wild-card round. The Cowboys, who finished the regulation season among the NFC’s finest were predicted to defeat the Packers by 7.5 points and continue their streak of 16 straight home wins. The Packers, however, came out of the locker room and went straight at them to build a 27-0 lead before the Cowboys could figure out what was going on.
Even though Dallas scored a touchdown in the last minute of that first half it wasn’t able to bounce back in the second, with the Packers extending their lead to as much as 32 when an Aaron Jones touchdown made it 48-16. The Cowboys added two late touchdowns but it wasn’t enough, and those were only allowed to be put up on the board because of Matt LaFluer’s generosity. Jordon Love was prolific in his playoff debut while running back Jones set the tone on the ground, recording 118 yards and three touchdowns against a highly vaunted Dallas defense, and Love’s 85 percent pass completion rate for his last two games remains remarkable.
The Packers went into Dallas and dominated throughout. Love was spectacular, with 272 passing yards and three touchdowns, while the defense picked off Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott twice, including a ‘pick-six’ (intercepting and running the ball back for a touchdown) by Darnell Savage. The Packers will now face the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers next Saturday evening in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs. The Packers are ten-point underdogs, even after blowing the Cowboys back to mending fences and driving cattle. The game will be played at the Levi Strauss Stadium in Santa Clara, California. The stadium isn’t named after the managing editor of this newspaper, although he’s rumored to have said that a time or two. The 49ers might consider themselves lucky that the stadium is located fifty-four miles from San Francisco if Green Bay continues to become what it’s now likely to become. Will the Green Bay Packers play with heat borrowed from California he’ll be able to overcome the tremendous inertia of a 49ers team that has also been on fire throughout the 2023 season.
If Green Bay wins, then it can also avoid going back to a frozen wonderland of stored firewood, sub-zero salt concoctions, and cars that are left running all night long…but so well supported by a public that’s been lit on fire with the unexpected attitude, coaching, and playing display these ‘youngest players in the NFL’ team are displaying. Five times in a row the Packers have faced the San Francisco team, and in all five competitions the Packers have gone home with heads bowed. Is this a time of the kind of change that has never happened before, since no upstart, terminally seeded, and underaged team has ever been close to winning a Super Bowl?
No matter what, and it’ll be a game to remember, Wisconsin’s grandly supportive population will welcome them back home into loving arms.
