Four Downs: Packers-Bears season finale preview
Four Downs concludes the regular season with great news and a necessary tribute heading into the regular season finale on Sunday. We have, somehow, made it to this spot with the Packers who will, again, somehow, play for the division championship against the Bears. We’ll take it. ‘Like’ us on Facebook right here.
1. Winter was bearing down on the Packers’ 2013 season, the white and gray stillness of the offseason around the next corner. In April, Aaron Rodgers tweeted after the schedule was released that, in Week 17, winter was coming. If you don’t watch HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” the phrase essentially runs along the same lines as you might use when fall air begins developing that extra bite of cold in Wisconsin. Winter is coming means all the tensions of an entire season encapsulating in Week 17 in Chicago, all the punishments and ups-and-downs of 16 weeks bundling up into one last game between old rivals. Pack your parkas and dragonglass.
That was, of course, before the season’s icy death grip failed to grasp this crazy Green Bay team for one more week. The Lions and Bears and the overall dead-fish-flopping-on-a-beach that is the entire NFC North division this year are the reasons we have to thank for this stay of life, for making Week 17’s regular season finale a win-or-go-home scenario that essentially erases every result that came before.
After everything that’s happened to the Packers this season – seriously, try to remember everything, it’s like trying to memorize a Christmas shopping list for every five-year-old in the state – it’s all on this one contest now. Winter was coming, then the Packers escaped it yet again, but now it’s definitely here. It will be in attendance this Sunday in Chicago, waiting to suck the losing team into the cold abyss.
2. The Bears were boat-raced off the field last Sunday night by the Philadelphia Eagles at the height of their Chip Kelly-ness, which followed up a beautiful capstone to the Jim Schwartz Era in Detroit, where the Lions lost to one of the only teams possibly more maddening than themselves, the New York Giants. (We hope Schwartz sticks around because this is like slamming a concrete ceiling on the Lions for a few more seasons, but alas, we don’t have high hopes.)
But, just like the Packers’ last-minute home loss to the Steelers – losses at Lambeau were far too frequent this season – the Bears’ result doesn’t matter. Jay Cutler has been *shoulder shrug* since his return from injury, and while Green Bay usually has success against him, we still live in a strange sort of fear for the day when that changes, if only for a day.
Where Chicago has been especially brutal, however, is defensively, and even more specifically they’ve been gashed by opponents’ running games. They are not the same Bears we got to know over the Brian Urlacher years, but they’re still the Bears in the broader rivalry context, something we can’t help but count as a real attribute. They’re also stupidly unpredictable, putting them in the same class as our own favorite team. It’s definitely going to be cold and windy in Chicago, so it’s probably going to get weird.
3. Yes, A.J. Hawk’s snatch of an interception against the Steelers did remind us of his days as an Ohio State Buckeye, those playmaking abilities in the middle of the field one of the areas on his resume that led him to being drafted fifth overall by the Packers in 2006.
And because you can Google “A.J. Hawk” or walk up to someone on the street or, worse yet, pose the question on a social media platform, you know how many believe he hasn’t lived up to his draft position or the potential we saw at THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY (We think that’s the proper spelling). We are guilty of this ourselves, because we are merely a weak and passionate football fan, and because sometimes things can be too glaring to ignore.
There’s truth in there, in matching up what we as fans wanted out of Hawk versus what the Packers have gotten thus far, but while it’s easy to chastise a middle linebacker with not crazy fast speed and not exactly the coverage abilities for matching up against some of the NFL’s more dynamic offenses and offensive players – while it’s easy to see the times he’s not-quite-covering the latest tight end to go off on Green Bay – it’s seemingly easier yet to gloss over this season, which has been his best yet for the Packers. His shortcomings, always so neon-bright and highlighted, should be dulled when we’ve got the chance because otherwise who are we cheering for?
Hawk leads the team in tackles with 116 total (22 more than Morgan Burnett’s second-most 94 through 16 games), has five sacks and seven tackles for loss (tied for most on the team with Brad Jones), four passes defensed, a forced fumble and his lone interception of the year from last week.
Hawk’s 2013 season has been varied and impressive by most any standards, especially on an injury-ravaged defense that needed every bit of consistency it could hang on to. Hawk attacked in spurts, striking at quarterbacks from the middle with quick force. Either the delayed blitzes were better timed or not as delayed — probably a mix of the two — but Hawk was in the face of the quarterback faster this season, going from getting there the second after the pass to those small, crucial moments before. He read and hunted down running backs at the line of scrimmage, tackled with viciousness and, yes, did make a few pass breakups down the field, just when you least expected it. (Which might be always but still, a gift is a gift.)
Hawk may never be able to live up to the No. 5 overall expectations put on him because a team decided to draft him in that spot, but this season was Hawk improving while staying healthy (both good things in his eighth season), making more disruptive plays but, simply put, just being there, being on the field stabilizing at least one part of the Packers’ defense.
He was out there doing A.J. Hawk things, both the things he’s become known for in Green Bay that people anger-analyze when assessing poor defensive play, and also, more than ever, doing the other stuff too – the sort of plays that made up his legend as a Buckeye. This season he played his usual role, but a more explosive and better version of it. The Packers defense was a tattered mess on many occasions, but it’s hard to say Hawk was a problem, even when that’s the simplest and laziest thing to go back to when talking about him. When you remember how he got here, and who he has been as a player, it’s hard to say he ever was.
It’s hard to say he was ever anything but what he could be – it’s just that this was the year Hawk was closer to the version everyone imagined he would be, rather than the consistent, productive, not-quite-speedy-yet-smart, starchy meat-and-potatoes non-flash player he actually is. Take him for what he is and there’s nothing wrong with a quieter career year, as 2013 was for Hawk, even if it isn’t the one you wanted or expected.
4. And now a moment on Thursday’s gigantic news: Aaron Rodgers is playing, and maybe it’s because we were so hesitant to believe it’d actually happen, but the news truly erased every emotion but pure excitement for us heading into the weekend. That’s a long way from being resigned to missing the playoffs less than six days ago.
Having him back not only makes a team missing many parts that much more stable, it also clears our sinuses of all the stuffy disappointments that have come before. It’s not exactly clear-eyed – Rodgers does not solve all problems – but it’s the best we’ve felt about the team since the MVP quarterback was last seen on the field.
In short, there’s still plenty to worry about, but it’s harder to worry when this sort of good news is flooding our senses. That’s what Rodgers’ presence does, and that’s what only a long-term injury or some other extended absence – like if he took an eight-week vacation to Thailand in the middle of the season, we guess – can do. His return has restocked a happy well of sky’s-the-limit energy that we thought had already been beaten out of us this far into 2013.
So sure, there’s plenty of problems with the Packers, plenty of reasons other than Rodgers’ missed time to explain why they’re sitting at 7-7-1 with a game left. (A final reminder that this is the current record of a team playing for a home playoff game, and that the NFL will never make sense at any level from the top on down.)
And all those factors we already know so well will play their usual important roles. But Rodgers changes everything, makes more seem possible. Against the Bears, we’ll see if Green Bay can make it through another week of winter. For now and for the first time in awhile, despite the path of most resistance we’ve been on, there’s more to see on the closing in horizon, and it starts with a spaceship-looking bowl in Chicago. Even that looks a little bit better than it did a few days ago, right?
Pick: Packers.
(On the following scale: Ted Thompson is a tough guy to read. In an attempt to pay homage to his flat style of delivery, we will couple our pick with a 1-5 rating scale of our confidence translated into Thompson Confidence, which, we feel, is just as ultimately silly and tough to derive meaning from as choosing a score.)
Honorary Ted Thompson ‘I feel confident’ scale of confidence: 12 ‘I feel confident’-s out of 5.