Packers: What did the Rams do that Green Bay didn’t?
This season was supposed to be the Green Bay Packers‘ last dance.
The season where they pushed all of their chips to the center of the table, gambling away their future in hopes that future Hall-of-Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers could bring home the franchise’s fifth Super Bowl and 14th championship.
We all know how it ended.
The Packers fell again at Lambeau in January, Rodgers’ playoff record at the Packers’ once hallowed home falling to a dismal 5-4. A more physical San Francisco 49ers team shut down a usually high-flying Packers offense, and the Packers’ always-shaky special teams unit again proved to be their Achilles heel, allowing the 49ers’ only touchdown of the game on a blocked punt.
The Packers claim to have gone all-in this season. And in a way, they did. In recent memory, the Packers have never pushed as much salary to the future as they did to bring back this team for one more season, one final run at the trophy whose namesake is a former Packers coach.
The Packers put their future on the line to bring the NFL’s most important title back home one more time, trying to avoid wasting a span of over 30 years of Hall-of-Fame quarterback play with only two championships to show for it.
But they didn’t go all-in.
The Los Angeles Rams lost to the Packers in the Divisional round of the 2020 NFL Playoffs. The Packers were contenders, but they had weaknesses. They lacked a second explosive playmaker at wide receiver, and their run defense was porous. The Rams, on the other hand, were strong defensively, and had elite weapons at receiver in Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods. Their glaring weakness, however, was quarterback.
Despite losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2020 NFC Championship Game, the Packers didn’t make any major moves to improve upon their weakness. Instead, they brought back the same core as the one that had lost in back-to-back NFC Championship Games, hoping that improvements from veterans like wide receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling and defensive end Tyler Lancaster would help to shore up their weaknesses.
The key word? Hope.
To put hope into something is to blindly desire for it to happen, despite having no real control over it. Every championship ever won has always had a little bit of hope involved. However, the teams that leave the least up to fate are typically the ones that win rings.
Valdes-Scantling was hurt for much of the year, and Lancaster never improved. What the Packers hoped would happen never did, and the same weaknesses that plagued them in previous playoff losses again stung them in 2021. The Niners covered Davante Adams, and Rodgers didn’t have anywhere else to throw the ball.
The Rams, on the other hand, left almost nothing up to chance. They could’ve taken a risk on struggling quarterback Jared Goff, hoping that he could regain his 2019 form, when he led the Rams to the Super Bowl. But they didn’t bank on hope. Instead, they did what the Packers refused to do. They did more than pushing salary towards the future. They traded away draft picks.
Championship teams are built through the draft. It’s an old cliche that’s been proven true time after time. Even last year’s champion, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that’s thought by many to be a team built through free agency, acquired many of its key pieces, such as receiver Mike Evans and linebacker Devin White, through the draft.
However, the Rams recognized that they had already built a championship core through the draft, selecting players such as three-time defensive player of the year Aaron Donald and superstar receiver Cooper Kupp. There was no reason to draft more talented rookies, let them develop for a year or two, only to maybe have a short championship window before the older guys, such as Donald and Kupp, exit their prime.
The Rams recognized what the Packers didn’t: they needed a player that could win now. And they were willing to risk everything to get him. That’s going all-in.
The Rams sent two first-round picks, a third-round pick, and Goff to the Detroit Lions for quarterback Matthew Stafford, who many around the NFL thought would turn into a star after he left the career killer that is Detroit.
He took his lumps in LA, notably throwing four pick-sixes this season, most in the NFL. However, he has looked like a star for the Rams, especially in the playoffs, where he’s led multiple clutch drives to seal or win games.
The Rams didn’t stop after trading for Stafford, though. They recognized that they needed an additional pass rusher to take the attention of opposing defenses off of Donald.
Instead of signing a former star like Whitney Mercilus (who was successful in Green Bay, but not the type of player that was going to push them over the edge), they sent a second- and third-round pick to the Denver Broncos in exchange for future Hall-of-Famer Von Miller.
They also aggressively pursued former All-Pro receiver Odell Beckham Jr., and eventually signed him. The Packers, in need of a number two receiver, put in an offer for Beckham, but only offered the veterans minimum, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Instead, they hoped that Valdes-Scantling and Allen Lazard would step up when it mattered most.
Lazard had just one catch for six yards in the Packers’ divisional round loss.
Beckham had 113 yards on nine catches in the Rams’ NFC Championship game win.
Doing what the Rams did is risky. There’s no such thing as guaranteed success in the NFL, and their future depends on hitting middle- and late-round draft picks. In a few years, the Rams might be one of the worst teams in the league, instead of one of the best.
And it’s still possible to make the Super Bowl without making flashy additions through trading draft picks. The AFC’s Super Bowl representative, the Cincinnati Bengals, built a team through the draft, selecting young stars like quarterback Joe Burrow and receiver Ja’Marr Chase to lead them to the Super Bowl. What the Bengals hoped would happen, did.
However, the Packers have experienced postseason heartbreak too many times to continue to rely on hope. This was the year for the Packers to go all-in, and they didn’t.
Now, they’ll be watching the Super Bowl at home for the 11th consecutive year, hoping that their Hall-of-Fame quarterback wants to come back for one more dance. Maybe the Packers would be willing to actually go all-in on the encore.