
If you are a Vikings fan drowning in despair right now — and let's be honest, that is pretty much a factory setting — perhaps I can divert your attention away from their 1-5 dumpster fire and onto the surprising Sunday failure of the Packers AND to the misery of former coach Mike McCarthy, now in Dallas.
In a game befitting an old feature in these parts — RandBallStu's "Increasingly Lost Season" — Green Bay came into a meeting of future Hall of Fame quarterbacks riding high and came out of it with a lot of questions.
It started out the way I thought it would, with the Packers jumping to a quick 10-0 lead over the Buccaneers. That is, in fact, the point at which I started watching.
But then 6-foot-2 Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw a pair of uncharacteristic interceptions — one a pick-six, the other returned just short of the goal line — to completely change momentum.
From there, 6-foot-4 Tampa Bay QB Tom Brady directed a bunch of nice drives — punctuating one with a touchdown throw to ex-Gopher Tyler Johnson and another to longtime tight end Rob Gronkowski — and the end result was 38 consecutive Tampa Bay points in a runaway win.
Another ex-Gopher, Antoine Winfield Jr., delivered a hard hit on Rodgers that left the Packers looking for an explanation. Rodgers, one of just five quarterbacks with a lower QBR in Week 6 than Kirk Cousins, was left to explain how a 38-10 loss might be … a good thing?
"I think we needed a kick in the (butt) a little bit," Rodgers said. "There's a little bit of wake-up to stop feeling ourselves so much and get back to the things that got us to this position. I think this would be, unfortunately but fortunately, something we can really grow from."
That is, of course, unless Sunday's game gave defenses something to copy for the rest of the season to neutralize Rodgers.