To everything there is a season, and in every season there is a bye week – a time to heal, reflect and prepare.
But mostly heal.
Barring the rare instance when your team is injury-free and on fire, anytime is a good time for bye week. Ask the guys who clobber each other every week. For the Green Bay Packers, the 13 days of rest couldn’t have come at a better time for their best player.
Of the highest importance to the Green Bay Packers over their remaining 10 regular-season games is the health of quarterback Aaron Rodgers — specifically, healing the left knee injury he suffered on opening day. Rodgers had been operating at less than full strength through the first six weeks but has shown flashes of the greatness that makes him the team’s single best hope to make any sort of serious run.
In the aftermath of their previous outing, Rodgers noted the upcoming five-game stretch awaiting his club after the bye, saying it would provide answers to what kind of team the Packers are.
This was no rah-rah hyperbole. The Packers go on the road to meet the undefeated Los Angeles Rams this Sunday, followed by a trip to New England, a home game against Miami and away games at Seattle and Minnesota.
A killer stretch, for sure, but as the league-wide parity has demonstrated this season, the biggest game is always the one coming up next. The Packers definitely won’t be looking past Los Angeles. The talent-stacked Rams have dominated with such efficiency that some have wondered if any team in the league is capable of beating them.
Now, that’s hyperbole. The Rams are certainly tough – seven straight wins is proof enough – but to crown them as untouchable at this stage is premature. They’ve only beaten two teams (Vikings and Chargers) with winning records, with the others coming against the Raiders (1-5), Cardinals, (1-6), Seahawks (3-3), Broncos (3-4) and 49ers (1-6).
An interesting aspect of the bye week is that two opponents can have played the same team in their last game. Both the Packers and Rams are coming off wins over San Francisco, although the disparity in the two outcomes may be what moved the odds-makers to install the Rams as a nine-point favorite.
The Packers labored to pull out a 33-30 squeaker at home over the ‘Niners, while the Rams went to San Francisco and sailed, 39-10.
Given the Packers’ unremarkable pass rush, and a run defense that got chewed up by the 49ers, it’s a fair question to wonder how they hold any hope of repelling the Rams and All-Pro running back Todd Gurley.
The answer is they probably won’t. Apart from a 23-20 win at Denver, the Rams have scored at least 33 points in every game this season.
But just because the Packers don’t shut them down doesn’t mean they can’t outscore them. Rodgers is among the tiny subset of QBs in the league with that potential. A Packers win on Sunday isn’t that farfetched, but they’ll have to step out of character and play as near mistake-free as possible. Dropped passes, stupid penalties and missed kicks won’t get it done in the City of Angels.
The Rams’ defense is seventh in the league in fewest yards allowed per game, but the Packers are just behind, at eighth. Meanwhile, the 6-1 Kansas City Chiefs — who are regarded as the league’s second- or third-best team — rank dead last. Stats have rarely been more misleading.
Nobody’s really stopping anybody cold this season, anyway, to a great extent due to the new safety-oriented rules that have helped offenses flourish. More often than not, outcomes have boiled down to basics like who’s hanging onto the ball and who’s not.
There could be no better start of this five-week barefoot walk over hot coals than to pull off a huge upset, which, to a team in search of its identity, can reveal that it really wasn’t that much of an upset at all.