Packers’ Victory Exposed Vulnerable Spot

The Green Bay Packers have lacked few things this season - there have been bunches of passing records, 12 victories, piles of points. What it has not had is a stirring comeback. The Packers have never trailed in the fourth quarter this season, a remarkable testament to Aaron Rodgers’s ability to bury opponents behind the league’s top scoring offense and remove most of the suspense from Packers games.

Their smallest margin of victory until Sunday was 6 points.

The Packers may have gotten as close to a reasonable facsimile of a rally as they will this season on Sunday, when Rodgers - in just four plays with 58 seconds remaining - drove the Packers into field-goal range to break a tie and win the game, 38-35, with no time left on the clock.

The victory preserves the Packers’ perfect record at 12-0 (they clinched a playoff spot when the Chicago Bears Green Bay Packers Jerseys lost to the Kansas City Chiefs earlier Sunday), and sets them on a course that the Patriots and Colts have recently trod. Those teams each lost their shots at an unbeaten season - the Colts willingly ceded it in Week 16 of the 2009 season, the Patriots fought to the final minute of loss to the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl.

But just as they did in their 2007 regular season-ending loss to the Patriots - that also a 38-35 final - the Giants may have exposed flaws that could bedevil the Packers as they go deeper into their season. Rodgers, though, remains masterful - he was 28 of 46 for 369 yards, with four touchdowns and one interception against the Giants, throwing on the run as deftly as he does from the pocket. His cool on the last-minute drive was merely a microcosm of his season, a clinical dissecting of a defense that did nearly everything right and still had no chance of closing the narrow windows to which Rodgers is able to deliver his passes. The Packers have won 18 games in a row dating to last season and including the playoffs. During that stretch, Rodgers has thrown 51 touchdown passes and 8 interceptions.

“Fifty-eight seconds is way too much time,” Packers tight end Jermichael Finley said of the final drive.

If the Packers go undefeated, and win a second straight Super Bowl, it will be Rodgers’s brilliance that defines the season. He will have to continue to play at that level if the Packers are to go that far, though, because their passing defense proved vulnerable to deep Giants strikes.

That wasn’t much of a surprise. The Packers entered the game ranked 31st in passing yards allowed, but the scouting jerseys usa report on them was that it was acceptable to yield all those yards, because the Packers were leading the league in interceptions (they have 23, after Clay Matthews intercepted Eli Manning and returned it 38 yards for a touchdown).

What was a shock is that the Packers never seemed to adjust to the Giants’ attack. Over and over, the safeties were scorched downfield. On the Giants’ first drive of the game, there was a 67-yard touchdown pass down the deep right side. That was followed by a 42-yard pass to the middle of the field, a 51-yarder down the middle, and on a fourth-quarter field-goal drive, a 17-yard pass on third-and-7 to the deep left of the field. In all, Manning completed 23 of 40 passes for 347 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. It was the second most points the Packers allowed, but just the fourth most yards this season.

“We have got to get better,” Coach Mike McCarthy said.

That is not how the Packers played last season, when the defense was ranked fifth in passing yards allowed in a run to the Super Bowl title. The falling off in yardage can be absorbed as long they continue to cause turnovers (last year, the Packers had 24 interceptions). The risk to the Packers could come if they have a game in which the turnovers stop - say in the playoffs - against a team with top scoring ability, like the New Orleans Saints. Even the yawning margins that Rodgers creates may not be wide enough to make up for that.
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The Packers credited the Giants with giving them their toughest game of the season so far, and, given the rest of their schedule, it may be the toughest they face before the playoffs. The Packers can only hope that they learn more from what the Giants showed them than their opponents do.

“I think this was just what we needed,” Matthews said. “They fought hard. They took us to the last play.”