Week 14 Preview

It wasn’t always pretty, or even hopeful, but Week 13 couldn’t have worked out much better for the Packers than it did. 

First, we won our own game.  That is the essential business, and we managed to accomplish it in spite of Adrian Peterson’s ridiculous performance.  I hate to think what could have happened if Percy Harvin and a competent quarterback had also been on the field.  No matter, though.  We got the job done.  It is a win, and a Division win, at that. 

Then, elsewhere, the Lions lost.  They shouldn’t have, but they did.  And not just lost – they got their hearts ripped out at the very end of the game.  While they were hardly right on our heels, their loss is important to us because they come into Lambeau tonight with so much less to play for. 

And then, lo and behold, the Bears, 49ers, and Giants also all lost.  Amazing!  What an unlikely alignment of the stars on our behalf!  And so we go into Week 14, not only atop the NFC North, but also the third seed in the NFC altogether.  Ahead of the Bears.  Ahead of the Seahawks.  Ahead of the Giants.  And only a half-game behind the 49ers!  It’s quite remarkable, really, when you think back to that 2-3 start or that shellacking in New York a couple of weeks ago.

So, now, we are in the happy position of rooting against certain other teams only out of reflex, but not out of necessity.  The Packers’ fate is in their own hands.  All they have to do is keep winning their own games, and they’ll be sitting pretty in January.

It would be nice, of course, if the Bears would give us some breathing room by losing to the Vikings.  That is not beyond the realm of possibility, in my judgment.  The game is in Minnesota, and if the Vikings just keep handing the ball to Peterson, I think they could pull it off.  I don’t think they’re the better team, but they are 6-6, which is right on the cusp of the watershed for the Bears this year.

It would also be delightful if the Dolphins won in San Francisco.  I’m not holding my breath for that one, though.  I think the 49ers are going to demolish Miami.

The Giants, meanwhile, may well lose to the Saints.  New Orleans took a real hit last week in their failure against the Falcons.  But they’ve been proud enough to keep fighting all season against the odds, and so they may do us a favor in New York.

But, of course, we don’t really need anyone else to do us a favor.  We just need to beat the Lions.  We already did it once this year up in Detroit, and now the Lions have less to play for, and they’ll be doing it in the cold and amidst a really energized crowd at Lambeau Field.  If we can just keep Rodgers clean, I really like our chances tonight.

Finally, the game of the week is, admittedly, not our Sunday Night game, but the Monday Night event in Foxboro.  The 11-1 Texans visit the 9-3 Patriots in a possible preview of the AFC Championship game.  That should be a great match-up, though, of course, it has nothing to do with us… until February 3rd!