Every season-ending loss is brutal, but something about the way the Green Bay Packers crashed out of the playoffs on Sunday afternoon felt especially painful.
On the heels of an 11-win season, Green Bay lost the last three games of the year, somehow ending up with the same in-division W-L record as the five-win Chicago Bears. They didn't look anything like a team with double-digit wins over the last month of the season, and even their 22-10 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles probably doesn't accurately reflect how not-close it was.
And just in case there was any doubt about how bitter Packers players and coaches were about the lost potential of this year, the postgame quotes from Green Bay's locker room on Sunday night cleared all that up.
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Whether it was Matt LaFleur, Josh Jacobs, or Rashan Gary, the message was pretty standard across the board: there's no excuse for coming up this short. Gary's message (H/T to Ryan Wood of the Green Bay Press-Gazette for getting it), in particular, offers the perfect insight into how the team's viewing this offseason.
Rashan Gary's message to Packers teammates absolutely sets the tone for the offseason
"Sick. Mad. Every emotion you could feel," Gary said. "We worked for this all offseason, all OTAs, and all camp to punch a ticket to the postseason, and to come up short. Everybody that's on the second half of the season wants to hold up that Lombardi Trophy. We came up short this year. So the message is hold onto that feeling. You go into training, you're about three months in just grinding, and you get tired. Think about this moment. And I promise you, if you think about this moment, it's going to light a fuel underneath your butt and you're going to get back to working. So that's the message from coach, man. And I'm reemphasizing it."
This gets me fired up? I am not a Packers player (sorry, it's true) and not even really a Packers fan, but this gets me fired up.
When I'm working out this summer, I'm going to think about this moment. The Packers' Wild Card loss is going to get me to finish that fourth mile in my four-mile run; the Packers' Wild Card loss is going to motivate me to take stretching way more seriously.
The Packers just got all their fans to re-commit to their fitness goals during a time when most people are losing New Year's Resolution momentum. Maybe they lost on purpose, for us? That's gotta be it.