The Agony of Defeat

For a few weeks, the football world thought that they could pull it off.

From their epic Super Bowl performance against the decorated Pittsburgh Steelers, to an opening day shootout with the New Orleans Saints that had everyone predicting a rematch in the NFC conference championship game, to narrowly escaping the New York Giants by the exact same score as the 2007 New England Patriots, the Green Bay Packers put the idea in our collective heads that they would be the team that kept the 1972 Dolphins' champagne on ice. 19-0 seemed like a very realistic goal for the Packers. Trying to stop the Packers offense was like trying not to get hurt during the running of the Bulls. Their defense bent often, but they got key turnovers and lead the NFL in interceptions for the first thirteen weeks of the season. The coaching staff kept the Pack humble and hungry. And the media was too focused on the man who's name became a verb to pay attention to a team gunning for football immortality. This Green Bay Packers team was the humble, yet confident Goliath of the NFL that appeared hell-bent on football supremacy and legend.

But then David showed up in the form of the Kansas City Chiefs, and struck down the mighty Goliath with a slingshot in the form of a 19-14 win.

The Chiefs cooked up the perfect recipe for stopping the Packers in their tracks. Kansas City ran for 139 yards over the course of the entire game. The Chiefs utilized five running backs to keep in fresh legs on the field and wear down the Packers defense. Since they ran the ball so well, Kansas City had the ball for thirty six minutes and eleven seconds. The Chiefs controlled the clock and maximized the only defender that could stop Aaron Rodgers and the Packers offense all season: the sidelines. 

Even when the Packers did hit the field against the Chiefs underrated defense, they looked like first time car buyers at their local car dealership: confused and frustrated. Aaron Rodgers, who had picked apart defenses like the NFL's surgeon general, looked like just another NFL quarterback on Sunday. The thirteen different Packers receivers that torched defenses on a weekly basis, did not have one guy who caught more than five passes last Sunday. And the virtually invisible running game of the Pack attack, remained just that on Sunday. 

The Packers looked like just another NFL team last Sunday instead of the unstoppable force that we had seen all season long. And any NFL team can loose on a given week, even to a 5-8 team that was all but dead in the playoff picture. Still, there are two important things to take away from the Packers defeat on Sunday.

There is parody in the NFL again.

It is inevitable that after an undefeated team goes down in football, the team that will hold the Lombardi Trophy in February is no longer a foregone conclusion. And since the NFL's only unbeaten has gone down , the other nine teams fighting for a playoff spot in the NFC should all feel like they have a chance again; even though the NFC playoffs will run through Wisconsin. The veil of invincibility surrounding the Packers is gone, and the Kansas City Chiefs wrote up the blueprint other teams hope to pirate for themselves. There are two primary candidates in the NFL who can copy the Chiefs recipe for success against the Packers, the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers. Others, like the New Orleans Saints or Detroit Lions, may not be as well built to take on the Packers, but that does not mean that they can't win. And parody always makes for the most compelling games in sports.

And the second thing that we can take from the Packers defeat is that you can't go undefeated in the NFL with an unstoppable offense alone.

The biggest difference between the 2007 Patriots and the 2011 Packers was the defense. The 07 Patriots not only averaged a trillion points per game, but they also had the NFL's second ranked defense behind the New York Giants. The Pack attack in 2011 was a terminator that destroyed everything in its path; that being said, the defense was ranked 31st in yards allowed per game, 31st in passing yards per game, 12th in rushing yards allowed per game, and 26th in the league in sacks. The 2011 Packers compare far better with the 2009 New Orleans Saints than the 2007 Patriots. The Pack and Saints both had great offenses that nobody could stop. Both had defenses that created turnovers, but were not top five in the NFL by any means of the imagination. And both went 13-0 before loosing in week 14 to teams that  many believe should not have beaten them. The 09 Saints were impressive and very fun to watch, but like the Packers this season, they were not properly built to go 19-0 due to their questionable defenses. 

Now the members of the 1972 Dolphins get yet another year to hold onto the bane of their collective existence. Champagne bottles have been taken off ice and enjoyed by the members of a team that played during a completely different time during the NFL. The 72 fins played two quarterbacks at different points of the regular season as opposed to having a Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, or Tom Brady. The Dolphins leading rusher had 1,117 yards as opposed to today when between fifteen and seventeen guys are expected to rush for 1,000 yards this season. But the biggest difference between the 72 Dolphins and the teams that tried for perfection this decade is that the Dolphins had fewer games to play: 17 was the magic number of games back when the 72 Dolphins played as opposed to 19 games today. Going undefeated is simply harder today to do than it was in the times of Led Zeppelin and the Eagles. That all being said, the 1972 Dolphins are still the only team ever to go undefeated in NFL history, so they will still have that until somebody eventually does it.

Now, with the Green Bay Packers 13-1 and the quest to perfection over, the entire NFL can focus back on the playoff races. And with nine teams fighting for four spots in the NFC, there are plenty of other story lines to pay attention to as the season comes to ahead.