Aaron Rodgers can finally fulfill his wish: an NFC championship game at Lambeau Field.
All the Green Bay Packers need to do is win one more game and that comes true.
Rodgers made sure of that at the end of Sunday’s regular season, in part thanks to a perfect first half on the way to a 35-16 victory over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.
This gave Packers (13-3) the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. With that, goodbye comes in the first round – the only one in the conference thanks to the expanded playoff field – and home games between now and the Super Bowl. While the other six NFC playoff teams play next weekend, the Packers are off duty until the divisional round on 16 or 17 January.
Rodgers played four NFC championship games, winning just one – 10 years ago at Soldier Field. After the defeat in the NFC title game last year at the 49ers, the Packers’ third straight loss in the conference title game after the 2014 conference championship game in Seattle and the 2016 game in Atlanta, Rodgers spoke anxiously about want one in Lambeau.
“I’ve said it before: we have to get one of these at home,” said Rodgers after the 37-20 loss to the 49ers last January. “It is a different ball game. It is different to play in 20 degree weather and snow. Cold and wind is a different type of game than playing here.”
The Week 16 game against the Titans showed that. The Packers blew Tennessee by 40-14 in a snow-covered field and stood out on a 32-degree afternoon in Chicago on Sunday.
The Packers took first place after the regular 15-1 season in 2011, but lost to the Giants 37-20 in an NFC playoff game at Lambeau Field.
The Packers made 21 moves in the first half and scored 21 points. Rodgers completed his first 11 passes, including 10 to 10 for 155 yards and three touchdowns, including a 72 yard for Marquez Valdes-Scantling in the second quarter. It should have been his first 12 and with four touchdowns, but Valdes-Scantling dropped a 53-yard touchdown on the initial launch of the third quarter.
After a slow start to the second half, the Packers sealed things when Aaron Jones scored in a 4-yard touchdown with 3:47 left. On the same trip, Davante Adams broke the record for the Sterling Sharpe franchise for receptions in one season (112). In the next race, he matched Sharpe’s one-season franchise record for touchdowns too, with his 18th. This also tied for third place in a season in NFL history. Only Randy Moss (23 in 2007) and Jerry Rice (22 in 1987) took more. And Adams lost two whole games – and half the other – because of a hamstring injury earlier in the season.
The touchdown for Adams was Rodgers’ fourth game, giving him the best of his career and a record 48-season touchdown pass franchise (and just five interceptions), ending his case for a third MVP.
The victory in Chicago came just three days after the Packers lost the All-Pro and left David Bakhtiari with a knee injury at the end of the season. Billy Turner moved from the right to replace Bakhtiari and Rick Wagner entered the right. Rodgers was fired only once.
What’s more, the Packers feel better with their defense, which was run over by the 49ers in the league game last season.