Signature statement

Sporting News, The, Dec 1, 1997 by Paul Attner

Maybe, just maybe, the Packers have decided it is time to begin playing the kind of football that can earn a second straight championship. But before we jump to any rash conclusions, we take you to the world of safety LeRoy Butler, noted Green Bay football philosopher. "We apologize," he says, "for our inconsistencies this season. But, I am sorry to say, that is football."

For much of this season, the Packers haven't produced the standard of performance they want or can achieve. They are more capable than their 9-3 record indicates but they spent the first 11 games practicing the embarrassing art of faring short of their potential. It is a leaguewide malady--just check out the latest weekly list of upsets such as the Bears beating the Buccaneers or the Eagles downing the Steelers--but the Packers should be above such pedestrian results. They are too talented--and most of the rest of the NFL is too blah--for them to fad prey to lackluster efforts.

But maybe that has all changed. For evidence, we present a thoroughly impressive 45-17 thumping of the Cowboys last Sunday. OK, so it was at Lambeau Field, where the Packers have now won 22 straight. And it was on grass, which is not a Cowboys favorite and it was played in minus-4 degree windchill conditions, which the Packers accept and the Cowboys hate. So the Packers should have won, even if it was against an opponent that had beaten them seven straight times, an in Dallas, since Mike Holmgren became coach in January 1992.

But just to jar anyone with a short memory, just the previous week these same Packers had lost to the woeful Colts, who had not won a game before encountering the defending champions. "You have to give the Colts credit, but if you are a championship caliber team, you cannot lose that game," general manager Ron Wolf said a day before the Dallas game. "We will see how devastating it is. But we are not playing with the same verve we did last year; we are not as good a team as we were last year. But it could be our team will play up to its capabilities against Dallas and we'll do what we are supposed to do."

So this became one of those cliche-esque statement games that quality teams sometimes bring upon themselves. And this time, it was the most accurate word to describe what the contest meant to the Packers. They had been able to shrug off the jumbled results of the first 10 contests, but to fall to the Colts, for God's sake, well, maybe last year was a one-time shot and now they were playing down to their real talents. Why not find out against the Cowboys, who still represent a test, even as they sink to the middle of the NFL pack? Surely, Holmgren didn't have to reach deeply into his bag of inspirational tricks. You would have thought the fate of the universe was at stake in this one--the way Packers fans lusted for Cowboy hides. They had waited six seasons during the Holmgren regime to get Dallas into Lambeau. This was the start of hunting Cowboys might as well have shown up wearing bull's-eyes on their jerseys.

But as much as the Packers' organization wanted to win this one just to get rid of the Cowboys' jinx stuff, there was much more than visions of Troy Aikman dancing in everyone's minds.

"Are we pretenders?" asked Wolf, "or are we capable of challenging for another title? That is what this is all about."

And this is what we can now conclude, keeping in mind Butler's warning about the consistency of this season's inconsistencies:

If the Packers, who had the exact same record at this point in 1996, play through the end of January like they did against Dallas, they will win a second Super Bowl. "The rest of the league should take a look at what we did in this one," says linebacker Seth Joyner, a newcomer this season. "If we keep rolling like we did in this one, the rest is history." The "rest" being the run to a championship.

If the Packers think they've got everything under control, let me remind them on Sunday, they play at Minnesota, where Holmgren has never won. "I have erased one demon," he says, "now next week I have another."

If the Packers get by the Vikings, who now have lost two straight, then it won't matter if the 49ers have home-field advantage in the playoffs. Green Bay, which matches up well with San Francisco, will win any playoff contest between the two. If Green Bay falls to the Vikings (see Butler's theory), the Packers will be back playing this precarious game of let's-see-if-we can-win-when-things-get-desperate. If you try doing that too many times, the chances are you will come up short.

If nothing else, the Packers have reminded us that they remain the best team in football, just not always the most inspired. They have caused continual frustration for Holmgren and Wolf with their performances, mostly because they haven't been able to put together a signature game that said, hey, here is how good we are and just try to knock us off. The unfortunate Cowboys provided the needed inspiration and, wow, what a statement the Packers produced.