The Green Bay Packers. Follow them with caution.
Potential side effects include injuries to star players, fourth-quarter meltdowns, the most ridiculous, nauseating, soul-crushing playoff defeats imaginable, and a star quarterback let down by his team at the biggest moments. Sometimes, they all happen at once.
That dizzying feeling of watching a season crash down is familiar to us.
Aaron Rodgers can also relate. He understands how Jordan Love might be feeling on Sunday morning. Love did everything he could, throwing for 323 yards and four touchdown passes, a world-class playoff performance on a national stage in an intimidating environment. Not to mention it was his first game in almost a month due to a concussion he suffered against the same Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.
The Love-Rodgers parallels have continued. We won't get a Year 3 Super Bowl win for Love, but he just suffered the kind of playoff heartbreak his predecessor and mentor knows all too well.
The Packers let Jordan Love down in the playoffs, just as they did Aaron Rodgers
Rodgers gets it. Much of his career was defined by playoff heartbreak, often due to a disappointing defense or comically bad special teams.
Rodgers threw for 423 yards and a touchdown in his playoff debut, helping the Packers score 45 points. They lost. The Packers scored 31 points in San Francisco three years later, but the defense allowed Colin Kaepernick to rush for 181 yards and two touchdowns. Another loss.
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Rodgers experienced a botched onside kick and a myriad of errors around him in Seattle. Loss. He outdueled Tom Brady in 2020, earning a passer rating of 101.6 while Brady threw three interceptions. Loss. His special teams allowed a blocked-punt touchdown and missed a field goal against San Francisco as the No. 1 seed in 2022. Loss.
Now, Love has experienced the same bitter taste Rodgers did for years.
He did everything he could. Love hit four different receivers for touchdowns to earn a 103.8 rating on the night. Even facing a daunting mission on the final drive to score a game-winner with only one timeout, Love had a beautiful pass dropped by Jayden Reed.
It would've given the Packers a first down, at the very worst, on the Chicago 29-yard line with 50 seconds remaining. That's assuming he didn't add any yards after the catch. Reed flat-out dropped it.
With 19 seconds remaining, Love almost hit Christian Watson for a game-winning 23-yard score. The throw looked good, but Watson attempted to catch it with one hand and couldn't quite haul it in. Another missed opportunity.
In an unfortunate moment, Love hit Reed for 20 yards to give the Packers a first down at Chicago's 23-yard line, but Sean Rhyan got hurt on the play, and due to Matt LaFleur's wastefulness with timeouts, it forced a costly 10-second runoff.
It required a last-gasp miracle from Love, and he almost delivered it.
In reality, it never should've gone that far. Love played a near-flawless game despite sitting on the bench for almost a month, first due to a concussion, and then due to the Packers resting their starters in Week 18. He showed no signs of rust, dissecting the Bears' defense and putting his team in position to win.
But due to a fourth-quarter meltdown, three missed Brandon McManus kicks, and multiple mistakes from those around him, he leaves Soldier Field empty-handed.
Rodgers is preparing for his own playoff game this weekend, but he would've watched, slowly nodding along. Rodgers taught Love what it takes to be a star quarterback in Green Bay.
This was Love's final, most painful lesson.