Rodgers shakes off the rust in time to beat the Bears, while Manning pads his stats

I confess that I preferred to see Matt Flynn start for the Green Bay Packers against the Chicago Bears, partly because I thought that Aaron Rodgers would be too rusty after his long lay-off, and because I suspect that Flynn will never again have an opportunity to put in this kind of significant playing time. He was 2-2-1 for the Packers, and could easily have been 4-1 despite a “lay-off” of nearly two years. Of course, Flynn probably feels he is fortunate to be alive, after his near decapitation last week by Steelers linebacker Lawrence Timmons while he was sliding (even the Steelers’ Jason Worilds appeared disturbed at what Timmons almost did); last season Timmons was fined $21,000 for a helmet-to-helmet hit on Mark Sanchez, but wasn’t fined or even penalized for the potentially more career-ending attempt on Flynn.

In any case, for a while against the Bears, my suspicions about Rodgers seemed well-founded; although he completed a high percentage of passes, most of them didn’t go further than five yards downfield, and two early interceptions were more than Flynn had thrown in any one game. A bizarre fumble return for a touchdown by Jarrett Boykin, after Rodgers lost the ball on a sack and other players were standing around waiting for the whistle to blow, and then a Bears’ fumble deep in its territory bailed Rodgers out again and staked the Packers to a 13-7 halftime lead. 

Most of the game Rodgers seemed to be wanting to feed Jordy Nelson, who was snubbed like all the rest of the Packers by the Pro Bowl selection process; Nelson was targeted 16 times by Rodgers. Randall Cobb was targeted but twice, but they were huge plays; the first for a 7-yard touchdown catch that allowed the Packers to retake the lead 20-14, and then a dramatic 48-yard touchdown catch on 4^th-and-8 with 38 seconds to play that gave the Packers the victory and the NFC North title despite posting only an 8-7-1 record.

On that final drive Rodgers finally was “himself,” dramatically converting on 3 fourth down plays, the last the touchdown strike to Cobb. Next week the Packers play the San Francisco 49ers, who were a Seattle Seahawks loss away from being the #1 seed in the NFC. Here is to hoping the temperatures in Green Bay are in the teens; that might give them a fighting chance this time.

The Bears, in finishing the season 8-8, didn't seem to have improved much over last season's 10-6 record under the still unemployed Lovie Smith, despite a lot of hype over the "improved" offensive scheme under new coach Marc Trestman.

The other game of interest to me was the Denver-Oakland game, not because I thought it would be competitive, but to see what Peyton Manning would do to pad his statistics. The Raiders were about as listless as the Miami Dolphins were the past two weeks, who lost again when they need one win to clinch a playoff berth (today they wilted under the 80 degree Miami heat, which only seemed to swell-up the Jets’ Geno Smith into his best game of the season—a relative thing to be certain). The Raiders defense was very obliging in accommodating Manning’s needs, in this case throwing for enough yards to pass Drew Brees’ single season passing yardage record. 

Admittedly Manning had to work at it; going into it, 59 percent of the Broncos’ designed plays were running plays; in this game, nearly 75 percent of the plays—31 out of 43 in the first half—were designed pass plays. His five-yard touchdown pass in the waning seconds of the first half allowed Manning to best Brees’ mark by one yard—5477 to 5476; but with the score 31-0 and Terrell Pryor doing his best to leave the field for his counterpart, it would have seemed a little too egoistical even for Manning to go out in the second half. I frankly would like a recount; although the NFL cannot invalidate the Manning touchdown pass last week that should have been nullified (Decker did not have full control of the ball), statisticians can subtract yardage from the final statistics.  

But with the first season over, now comes the postseason, which perhaps doesn’t matter as much to Manning because the passing stats don’t “count.” As we may recall, last season the Broncos were the top seed in the AFC, and lost in the divisional round to the eventual Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens.