Quite a few upsets occurred this past week as the NFL divisional championships were decided.  But who cares?  The biggest news is coming out of Green Bay and it’s bad–very bad.  Despite achieving a near perfect 15-1 win-loss record, the team lost a Divisional Round game against the New York Giants in a rather brutal 37-20 defeat.  

And now, they’re out!  Their season is officially over, and apparently being the best team in the sport means nothing.  No, not when the Packers lost one Divisional Game, in their own home field, and against a familiar competitor.  Yes, by all logic, Green Bay blew it big time, and it just so happens that everything that was absent throughout the whole season was present during the most significant game.  We’re talking missed tackles, missed assignments, turnovers and so on. 

Of course, the most cynical of Green Bay fans and experts are having a field day, explaining that gaps in Green Bay’s defense have been apparent all season.  In fact, fans were booing the Packers by the halfway point, and that says a lot considering they were playing at home field.  It’s hard to fathom what the front offices think of coach Mike McCarthy, as he brought the Packers to an amazing 15-1 season, and yet fumbled the most important game of the year.  Of course, one could give credit to the phenomenal Eli Manning who threw three touchdowns, which arguably won the game for the Giants. 

And short of defense problems, there’s not much to fault about the Packers in terms of total ability.  In fact, the statistics site “Football Outsiders” stated that the Packers were, play for play, the best team in the entire NFL for the year.  Nevertheless, the game was hard to watch and Aaron Rodgers and Jermichael Finley hardly lived up to their hype.  And though defense may be the key issue here, somehow fans expected the Packers best-of-league offense to redeem the team in the end.  That didn’t happen.

However, we do read in the news that offensive coordinator Joe Philbin’s 21-year-old son died a few days earlier, and you have to figure that affected Philbin immensely; he was actually away from the team for most of the week, despite bravely deciding to attend the game.  Perhaps the Packers just suffered a case of very bad timing. 

There’s always next year…and hopefully next year extra attention will be paid to the all-important Divisional Game!