5 NFL teams who won’t be as good as you think in 2020
By John Buhler
Pick Analysis. North. Green Bay Packers. player. Scouting Report. NFC. 3. 49
We’ll stay in the NFC North, as the Packers aren’t going 13-3 again next year. It was an empty calorie record and everybody knows it. They may have played in the NFC Championship Game, but Green Bay could not have been more of a punching bag for the San Francisco 49ers to wail on. It was a worse beating than the one they took from the Atlanta Falcons in 2016.
While having Matt LaFleur back in his second year as head coach will help in a chaotic offseason, it’s not like Aaron Rodgers is getting any younger. He’s still a great player, but he’s been replaced by Patrick Mahomes as the most captivating signal-caller in the sport. No longer is Rodgers a tractor at quarterback. He’s a trailer just like everybody not named Mahomes or Russell Wilson.
Though ruling them out as a potential No. 1 seed in the NFC entirely would be foolish, we should expect better competition out of the Bears and Lions in divisional play this year. That might knock Green Bay down to somewhere in the 11-5 or 10-6 range. That mark is still good enough to win the division, but either of those records will have the Packers playing on Wild Card Weekend.
Is it safe to say the Packers aren’t getting to the Super Bowl? They’ve only been once in the 21st Century. They may have won a lot of road playoff games that year, but 2010 was a decade ago. Even if the Packers do reach the conference title bout again, Rodgers will end up with a 1-4 record in that big game, as someone will give him the Seattle Seahawks, Falcons and 49ers treatment.