Add the Packers to an ever-growing list of teams whose weaknesses — bordering on glaring deficiencies — were overlooked coming into this season because of the brilliance of a handful of players.
For the Packers, that means Aaron Rodgers, who as a player is a handful by himself. But even he can’t make up for what the rest of the team is lacking.
All things considered, no one should be surprised that they’re below .500 with seven weeks to go, have lost four of their last five, and desperately need a win next Sunday night in Washington to stop their slide into irrelevance. The surprise to many is that everything around Rodgers hasn’t been nearly as good as Rodgers is.
MORE: Week 10 takeaways
Two factors inspired the confidence that the Packers would look more like the team that’s been a constant championship contender, and that missed the Super Bowl by one game two seasons ago. The Packers were full of holes last season and still not only squeezed into the playoffs, but won a game on the road and pushed the Cardinals into overtime in dramatic fashion before finally going down.
And if that depleted team could do it, then they would be back to normal when several missing, ailing or underachieving players returned either to the field, or to their usual form.
Very few of those players have. Rodgers is pretty much the only one. Understandably, much of the heat has fallen on him. He doesn’t deserve all of it.
Even during that stretch when Rodgers’ game and production fell off, he still was playing very shorthanded. He’s looked like his old self, and often spectacular, over the last three weeks, especially against the Falcons and the Titans. They’ve lost both games, as well as the Colts game in between, at home.
The Packers around him have fallen apart in every phase of the game, though. Their defense was an embarrassment in all three losses, rarely able to slow the opposing offenses, much less stop them. The Colts and Titans, and quarterbacks Andrew Luck and Marcus Mariota, may have gotten inconsistent seasons on the right track because of the Packers’ defense.
MORE: Russell Wilson's career is starting to resemble that of his Sunday night opponent
On offense, meanwhile, the injuries to the Packers’ line are well-documented. So is the mixing-and-matching at running back, where, basically, they didn’t really play many actual running backs for a few games.
Worst of all, the receiving corps has fallen far short of expectations — and that might not be all their fault, because expectations now seem deceptively high.
There was so much certainty that Jordy Nelson would bounce back with ease from a torn ACL, but he's been up and down. Randall Cobb has seemed on the cusp of stardom for two years but has disappointed.
Take their best and healthiest moments from the previous two seasons, and the Packers are locking down the mediocre NFC North, and no one is asking about Rodgers’ decline — and certainly not Mike McCarthy’s future. They were all in various stages of health and production late last season and in the playoffs, and that sent the optimism skyward.
That’s all crashed to earth now, though. The biggest reason, though, is that they never should have been as high.
And Rodgers, for all he did to drag the Packers to within a loss of the coin toss of the NFC championship game last year, should not be shouldering so much of the blame.
There certainly was nothing more he could do Sunday in Nashville. Don’t hold your breath on what he can do under the same circumstances in Washington next Sunday.
This is who the Packers are … and not who the NFL thought they would be.