The Green Bay Packers Are America's Team

The Green Bay Packers pulled off their biggest playoff upset as they dismantled the Dallas Cowboys on Wild Card Weekend

The most improbable Green Bay Packers season lives on for another week.

The Packers made history in becoming the first 7th-seed in NFL history to win a playoff game and they couldn’t have done it against a bigger foe in their playoff history. Their 48-32 win over the Dallas Cowboys was not just a convincing one. It was as dominant of a performance as the Packers have ever put up historically, at least offensively.

The 48 points the Packers put on the Cowboys tied the most points they have scored in a playoff game, matching the 48 points they put up in their rout on the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons in Green Bay’s last Super Bowl year. Not only that, but the Packers had the 5th-best offensive performance of any team this season, per The Ringer’s Sheil Kapadia.

Green Bay did all that while Aaron Jones continued his dominance over the Cowboys. Finishing with 21 carries, 118 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns, Jones found all of the gaps to run wild on a middling Cowboys run defense to put up his 4th straight 100-yard rushing game.

He may have been playing in his first playoff game, but Jordan Love, as he had shown all throughout the latter half of the regular season, looked comfortable playing under the brightest of lights. He nearly finished with a perfect passer rating (157.2), completed 16 of his 21 passes and threw for 3 touchdowns.

The Packers’ leading receiver on the regular season, Jayden Reed, didn’t even come away with a touch, despite 3 targets on the day. That didn’t matter in the slightest. Romeo Doubs, who left the Packers regular season finale after a hard hit left him coughing up blood, stepped up big with a 6-151-1 stat line. Easily the signature performance in his young NFL career.

Although the offense deserves all the shine for how they dismantled this vaunted Cowboys defense, the truth is Green Bay wouldn’t have been as dominant without their defense coming to play.

For as maligned and underperforming as the Packers defensive unit has been for much of, if not all of this season, they unsettled the best QB-WR duo in the league this season. Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb struggled to find each other for all of the first half, leading to Prescott making aggressive throws that both Jaire Alexander and Darnell Savage pounced on for game-changing interceptions. Savage’s pick-six put the Packers up 27-0 in the second quarter, their biggest lead of the day, and it reinforced just how lopsided this game was, despite the final score.

This was a Packers team that very few thought would be here in the first place, much less win a playoff game. Dallas, who is nearing on three decades since having last reached the NFC Championship Game, had everything to play for. The two teams couldn’t have met the moment more differently when the game kicked off. The fact that the Packers have more playoff wins playing in AT&T Stadium (3) than the Cowboys do (2) speaks volumes to the way that both franchises have operated over the last decade-plus.

Now, the Packers are set to take on another storied playoff opponent next week, with that being the San Francisco 49ers. In their previous nine playoff meetings, the Packers have gone 4-5 against the 49ers, and San Francisco has won the last 4 playoff battles between the two teams. Those playoff losses have certainly left scars that all Packers fans still carry to this day.

The 49ers are an imposing playoff challenge, greater than the Cowboys presented to the Packers. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur, coming off his signature playoff victory of his coaching career, will certainly look to get the better of his mentor, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan.

The Packers have defied the odds to reach the divisional round of the postseason. And everyone loves an underdog. With the way the Packers are playing, it’s not just a matter of what is possible for the future. It’s a matter of what they could still accomplish this year.