The Packers are oh so close to punching their ticket to the 2024 NFL Playoffs.
The Green Bay Packers have made the playoffs on four out of head coach Matt LaFleur’s first five seasons. They’re now in Week 16 of his sixth season as the head coach in Green Bay, and they’re oh so close to clinching LaFleur’s fifth trip to the playoffs and second straight with Jordan Love as the starting quarterback.
That may not seem like a big deal on surface with a team like the Kansas City Chiefs winning multiple Super Bowls over the past few seasons and currently chasing a three-peat, but take a moment to understand the context of this likely playoff run by the Packers.
The Packers are a legendary franchise that was established in 1919. They won three straight NFL Championships from 1929 to 1931 and won the first-ever Super Bowl in January of 1967 with Vince Lombardi as their head coach. They also won Super Bowl II in January of 1968, which was Lombardi’s last season coaching the team. Speaking of legendary, there’s no NFL coach more legendary than Lombardi. The damn Super Bowl trophy was named after him, after all.
The Packers have been so consistently good for so long that most current NFL fans don’t realize that there have been some really bleak periods in their history, though. They made the playoffs just two times between 1968 and 1992, which was Brett Favre’s first season. Favre flipped the script for the once-legendary Packers. The Favre era led to a Super Bowl XXXI win and an appearance in Super Bowl XXXII, and overall, the Packers made the playoffs in 11 of his 16 seasons in Green Bay.
Favre gave way to Aaron Rodgers, so the Packers went from Hall of Famer to future Hall of Famer at quarterback. Rodgers led the Packers to the playoffs in his second year as the starter, and the Packers won Super Bowl XLV in his third season as starting quarterback. The Packers went to the playoffs in all but four of Rodgers’ seasons as the starting quarterback in Green Bay, and now his successor, Love, is “this” close to being two-for-two as a starting quarterback making the playoffs.
It’s truly incredible when you break it down that way. The Packers have made the playoffs 23 times in the 32 full seasons that have transpired since Favre and they’re about to make in 24 times in 33, which is a 73-percent success rate. The key word in that statement is “about to make it,” though, because this thing isn’t clinched just yet.
Here’s how the Packers can punch their ticket in Week 16.
The Packers clinch the playoffs if they beat the Saints
Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
There’s one easy way for the Packers to clinch their spot, and that’s by beating the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football. On the surface, this seems like a sure bet for the Packers. They’re 10-4 and coming off a convincing 30-13 road win over a playoff-hopeful Seattle Seahawks squad.
The Saints, on the other hand, are 5-9 and they’ve got an interim head coach leading the way in Darren Rizzi. No offense to Rizzi, but it’s usually not a good sign for your squad when an interim coach is in place, but that’s the reality for the Saints after Dennis Allen was fired after Week 9 because of a 2-7 record that featured all seven of those losses in a row.
Not only are the Saints not in a good spot right now, but their starting quarterback, Derek Carr, is likely out for the rest of this season because of a hand injury. Throw in the fact that star running back Alvin Kamara is questionable with a groin injury, and it just doesn’t seem that the Saints will have the juice to hang with what has become a high-powered offense.
Even if Love and the passing game don’t get going, the Packers can rely on Josh Jacobs to ground and pound the Saints into submission. They’re giving up 134.4 yards per game on the ground this season, which means they have the sixth-worst rushing defense in the NFL.
If the Packers beat the Saints, they’ll punch their tickets to the big dance.
The Packers can clinch a playoff spot even with a loss
LaFleur isn’t going to want his team to go down this route, but there would still be a way for the Packers to clinch a playoff spot even if they blew the game against the Saints. In fact, there are two scenarios in which that would happen, though, of course, nothing would be within their control.
That’s not the game you want to play a Super Bowl hopeful, but here’s how it would work.
The Packers can lose and clinch, but the Atlanta Falcons would have to lose to the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Rams would have to lose to the New York Jets. If that exact formula doesn’t happen, the Packers could also lose and clinch with a Falcons loss combined with a loss by the Seahawks against the Minnesota Vikings.
A loss to the Saints would point to a deeper problem within the Packers that would set off all kinds of alarm bells in Green Bay, so LaFleur and his team are going to do everything they can to avoid these contingency plans.