Ten Down, Six to Go

The first five weeks of the season we’re pretty shaky.  After last year’s 15-1 blitzkrieg against the rest of the league, three losses before Halloween was a truly disorienting experience. But the last five weeks of this season have been a tremendous improvement.

The Packers are on a five-game win streak now.  For all the hype we had to endure along the way about the Falcons, the Texans, the Bears, and the 49ers, Green Bay and Denver are the teams sporting the longest active winning streaks.

Plus, we have clawed our way back to the top of the NFC North and currently have the third seed in the entire Conference. 

Speaking of our own Division, we’re 2-0 there, which is a great start. 

The Bears, as I predicted, have fallen on hard times.  Everyone was treating them like they were hot stuff, but I knew they had built a misleading record and reputation.  Remember that scene in Rocky III when Mickey breaks the news to Rocky about the quality of his recent opponents?  Well, I knew that the Texans and 49ers were going to be Clubber Lang to the over-inflated Bears.  Houston beat ‘em, and then San Francisco humiliated them.  Beautiful stuff.  Now, perhaps, everyone will stop to consider the combined record of the teams that Chicago had beaten.

Meanwhile, this past Sunday’s gutty win in Detroit was not a thing of beauty, but it was magnificent.  The defense was huge.  And while the offense struggled, the bottom line is that they scored 10 points in the final minutes of the game.  That’s what great teams manage to do when they need to, and the Packers did it against a very tough Detroit D.

I was concerned that the Lions had the recipe on defense for stopping us. Namely, get great pressure with just your front four.  To hurry Aaron on the one end  while covering all his receivers on the other: that seems to be the way to beat us.  The Lions did a nice job of that for much of the game.  But, again, Green Bay moved the ball when they needed to.

Detroit fans (and evidently their coaching staff, too) came unraveled at the end.  And understandably so.  The Lions gave up the lead at home, they completely bungled their own two comeback opportunities, and they lost a game that they frankly needed more than their opponents did.  Now they’re wallowing at 4-6, three games out of first in the Division; they’re 0-4 in the Division; they’ve got a short week; and the Texans are coming to town.  (Oh, and the Tigers got swept, too.)

Finally, the Packers have some problems of their own.  Most significantly, Mason Crosby’s head is an obvious concern coming out of Sunday’s win.  The fact that he didn’t cost us the game in the end should help his mental situation.  But since the Packers’ have outscored their opponents thus far by 56 points – i.e., an average of 5.6 points per game – it’s going to be essential that our kicker is able to come through in the clutch.  By comparison, the Patriots have scored 133 more points than their opponents, the Texans 113 and the 49ers 111.  With those kinds of margins, a missed field goal isn’t fatal.  But the Packers need Crosby to get it together.  Fast.