TimesFour

November 7th 2010 – Lambeau Field

One mark of a good team is how it handles an opponent that is desperate and on the ropes. Does it allow that team to stick around and gain confidence? Or does it further perpetuate that teams misery and never, ever give it a chance to gain hope, much less victory?

A month earlier the Packers had been the kind of team that nearly ran itself out of the playoff race before it even really had begun. They allowed the likes of the Redskins, Dolphins and Lions to remain competitive in games in which they had no business being competitive. The result? 2 overtime losses and a close win.

Zombo takes down Barber for a loss

Since that time, the Packers had learned a few lessons about how to start & finish a game. They now knew that once you had a team down, you had to be ruthless and unapologetic. Put the hammer down and move on to the next game. Facing them on a Sunday night national stage at Lambeau field was the prime example of a team spinning out of control–the Dallas Cowboys.

Tabbed as a Super Bowl contender before the season began, Wade Phillips’ team was a mess. They had lost 5 in a row. Their record is at 1-6 & had lost their starting QB, Tony Romo, to a broken collarbone. It was going so badly for the once-proud franchise that rumors were swirling that owner Jerry Jones would fire Wade Phillips if things got much worse.

Things were about to get much worse if you’re a Cowboy fan.

In their most complete display of the season, the Packers, first outplayed, then overwhelmed, and finally embarrassed the Cowboys. It was Green Bay’s 3rd straight win and easily its most complete.

“There’s a lot of confidence in that locker room,” Aaron Rodgers said afterward. “We were 3-3 and coming off 2 straight losses in overtime & there were definitely some doubts creeping in, wondering what the last 10 games would do for us & realizing we had to make a push.”

The Packers never gave the Cowboys a chance to breathe burying them under 28 second-quarter points and making the rest of the game all but irrelevant. The Packers did everything they needed to do: they were dominating on offense & defense, they forced turnovers and once they had the Cowboys down, they made sure they were soon out.

Two Rodgers touchdown passes, a Brandon Jackson run, and a Nick Collins return of a fumble staked the Packers to a 28-0 lead that they extended to 35-7 at the end of the 3rd quarter. In the 4th quarter, Clay Matthews added the final indignity, returning a Jon Kitna interception 62 yards for a touchdown and a 45-7 final score that left the Cowboys dazed & bewildered.

The Packers piled up 415 total yards to Dallas’ 205. The defense forced 4 turnovers, giving it 7 over 2 games. Meanwhile, Rodgers continued to play superbly, completing 27 of 34 passes for 289 yards and 3 scores. As well, he had gone 2 straight games without throwing an interception & was recapturing the form that had made him dangerous the year before.

Even the running game–which had been little more than a suggestion much of the season–was efficient, gaining 139 yards thanks to the trio of Brandon Jackson, John Kuhn & QB Aaron Rodgers, who had started to run when necessary.

Back in the opposing locker room, the Cowboys were lost. “You’re going to keep working, you’re going to keep moving forward.” an ashen Phillips said after the game. “It sounds like a hollow message now, but that’s really the way it is.”

A few fans were prophetic on this evening

The dismantling at the hands of the Packers left Jones nearly speechless afterward though he did admit there were so many problems to solve he was running out of fingers on his hand to count them. Two days later, Jones made the only decision he could really make–he fired Phillips and inserted offensive coordinator Jason Garrett as head coach.

Indirectly, perhaps, the Packers had forced another team to make a drastic midseason decision.

The Green Bay Packers were back in the national conversation, not only as a playoff team, but a dangerous playoff team–one of those clubs no one wants to face in the post season.

The Packers wanted to prove the talk was justified, but they would have to wait to do that in 2 weeks–following a well-deserved bye–by taking care of business in one of their least favorite places on the planet.