The 2010s saw the Packers win their first Super Bowl since the 90s but also brought some of Green Bay’s worst playoff losses in recent history. The Packers are tied for second in postseason wins in the 2010s, despite many of those playoff runs coming to a screeching, heartbreaking halt.
This season, Packers fans enjoyed the luxury of not having to watch their team suffer yet another excruciating loss in the playoffs. Instead, for whatever reason, I exercised a self-destructive approach and ranked the five worst playoff losses the Packers have endured over the last 10 years.
5. 2019 NFC Championship Game – San Francisco 37, Green Bay 20
The Packers went 13-3 in the first season under Matt LaFleur in 2019. Throughout the year, a narrative ran rampant that this Packers team was one of the more fraudulent 13-3 teams in recent memory. This absolute beatdown at the hands of a dominant 49ers team added much deserved fuel to that fire.
The 2019 Packers weren’t a bad team by any means – you don’t go 13-3 by being a bad team. But they were much, much closer to average than they were to being exceptional. Fans will remember Aaron Rodgers’ quote after the Packers beat the Bears in the season-opener, 10-3: “We got a defense.” The Packers’ defense did finish 9th in points allowed but also a below-average 18th in yards per game. They were 27th in opponent rush yards per attempt and 26th in opponent rush yards per game.
Like other years, the Packers’ defense initially fooled everyone into thinking they had finally reached a level that could carry an aging Rodgers to another title. If the regular season didn’t convince people the defense was actually pretty bad, the 49ers loudly announced it in this game. 49ers running back Raheem Mostert ran 29 times for 220 yards and 4 TDs. Jimmy Garoppolo completed six passes… the entire game. San Francisco had a 99.7% win probability going in to halftime when they led 27-0.
No one truly expected the Packers to win this game. The 49ers had been the better team all season long. Like when the Packers ran into a juggernaut in Atlanta in the 2016 NFCCG, this was one that could be turned off at halftime. This one was more embarrassing than painful. Expectations were so low coming into the game that it ranks last on this list.
4. 2015 Divisional – Arizona 26, Green Bay 20
Though this game was close, and certainly much closer than the 38-8 mauling the Packers received from the Cardinals earlier in the same season, it remains one of the ugliest, jaw-clenching, scratch-and-claw games I’ve ever watched Green Bay play.
Really, this game serves as a microcosm of the entire 2015 campaign. The Packers started 6-0 before being trounced by the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos in a game that seemingly broke Green Bay’s season. They’d finish 4-6, still making the playoffs and even winning their Wild Card matchup versus the Washington Redskins.
I expected another game similar to the 38-8 result seen earlier in the year when Green Bay met Arizona once again in the Divisional round. What made it even more painful is that the Packers took them to overtime and narrowly lost.
Truthfully, the Packers were lucky to even bring that game to OT. On the Packers’ final drive of the game, down 20-13, Rodgers completed two of the most ridiculous Hail Mary passes you’ll ever see, the second one for a score as time expired to send Green Bay to OT. Jeff Janis (yes, who?) caught both and led the team with 145 yards and 2 TDs.
It took one minute of OT for the Cardinals to score and win the game. I’ll never forget Larry Fitzgerald taking a screen pass down to the five-yard line, weaving through helpless Green Bay defenders. Arizona promptly gave Fitzgerald the ball again for a 5-yard TD to end the game. As suddenly as the Packers kept the game alive, they were just as quickly put down.
The Cardinals, probably the third best team in the league in 2015, were destroyed by the Panthers in the NFCCG the next week. The Packers would absolutely have suffered the same fate if they were to pull this game out. The 2015 Packers were not very good, which is why this game is only fourth, but the close, ugly nature of the game keeps it from last place.
3. 2021 Divisional – San Francisco 13, Green Bay 10
The last time Green Bay made the playoffs. The 2021 Packers capped off their third-straight 13-win season with yet another gut-wrenching loss to the 49ers. This is the game that seemingly cemented the narrative that Rodgers is a playoff choker – after this game, it became hard to argue against that.
The game itself wasn’t all that captivating or memorable. I think that’s what makes it worse. Neither quarterback played particularly well. Rodgers was sacked five times, a couple coming in terrible situations. The 49ers eventually kicked a 45-yard game-winning field goal as time expired.
A California team came into Lambeau Field with freezing temperatures and made the Packers look like a team out of their element. This game truly made me sincerely doubt the advantage Rodgers and the Packers are so confident they possess over teams in the cold at Lambeau. Rodgers looked uncomfortable and old throughout much of this game. This game also featured the infamously baffling Aaron Jones reception, where he’s running free down the sideline off a deep Rodgers pass and inexplicably jukes inwards towards the incoming defenders. I still can’t explain any aspect of that play.
The 2021 Packers were a very good team. The fact they blew this game at home and scored 10 points in the process, in what very well might have been Rodgers’ last playoff game as a Packer, was unexpected and will always sting. After this game, it felt like an era finally coming to a close in Green Bay. In hindsight, the Packers should probably have gone through with a trade of Rodgers after the 2021 season.
2. 2020 NFC Championship Game – Tampa Bay 31, Green Bay 26
The 2020 Green Bay Packers are one of the best Rodgers-led teams ever. I think it’s the second-best offense they had under Rodgers, made possible by his ridiculous 4,300-yard, 48 TD, 5 INT, MVP season. It’s the second-best single season of Rodgers’ career, only behind 2011. Teams were getting blown out left and right by this Packers team.
Unlike other great Packers squads, the 2020 team came out firing right from the start of the year. They were the top offense in the league by several metrics. The defense was just good enough. I distinctly remember something feeling different about this team from the first game of the season against Minnesota, when they won 43-34. It hardly mattered how good the other team’s offense was – the Packers were going to outscore them.
Little did we know at the time that the end was foreshadowed in a 38-10, Week 6 loss against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, newly led by Tom Brady. The 2020 Bucs are a legendary team in their own right, as they’d go on to win the Super Bowl in Brady’s first year there.
It’s weird to call this NFCCG a back-and-forth battle, because the Packers never actually held the lead at any point in the game, but that’s what it felt like for chunks of it. What would inevitably sink Green Bay was a brutal sequence to end the half and start the second half. The Bucs got the ball up 14-10 with just 28 seconds left in the first half. Brady then threw a 39-yard touchdown to Scotty Miller that Packers cornerback Kevin King horribly misjudged in the air, scoring right before half with one second left.
Tampa Bay then got the ball to start the second half and followed the last touchdown up with another, taking a commanding 28-10 lead. The Packers’ second half comeback attempt wasn’t just garbage-time points and yards. This was a great Green Bay team, one that had the capabilities to erase the 18-point deficit. And they almost did. With two minutes left in the game, in a moment that will haunt Matt LaFleur, the Packers and their fans forever, LaFleur elected to kick a 26-yard field goal to bring the score to 31-26 instead of going for a potentially game-tying touchdown and 2-point conversion.
From there, the Bucs would run the clock out and advance to the Super Bowl. An average-at-best defense was exposed in this game, and a historically dominant Packers’ offense was stifled just enough to lose. It remains one of the biggest “what if” seasons and moments in the Rodgers era of Packers’ history.
1. 2014 NFC Championship Game – Seattle 28, Green Bay 22
Most fans immediately knew this would take the top spot. It’s not even a question. This is hardly comparable to any other game on this list. It’s arguably the worst Packers’ playoff loss of all time.
The 2014 Packers were a phenomenal team, right up there with 2011 and 2020. They were the number one offense in points scored, led by the second-time MVP Rodgers. The team also sported one of the better defenses of Rodgers’ career as a Packer. The team started 1-2 before finishing 11-2.
The 2014 Packers hit an incredible hot streak in the middle of the season. I remember this team best for being up on the Bears 42-0 at halftime at Lambeau, in a game where Rodgers threw 6 TDs in the first half, one shy of tying the all-time single-game record. They won 55-14. The very next week they dropped a second-consecutive 50-burger, stomping the Eagles 53-20. Two weeks later they beat one of the great Patriots teams of the Belichick-Brady New England dynasty – a team that went on to win the Super Bowl that season – 26-21 at Lambeau Field.
More than any other Packers’ team I’ve closely followed, the 2014 squad felt destined to reach the Super Bowl. For much of the 2014 NFCCG, it seemed it was going to come true. At this point in the season, Rodgers was hobbled with a bad calf, and it was clearly affecting his play. Rodgers played poorly in Seattle, throwing just 178 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs. It was the Packers’ defense that looked poised and prepared to carry the team to the Super Bowl.
The Packers intercepted Russell Wilson three times in the first half and added a fourth in the fourth quarter. Wilson finished the game with an abysmal 44.3 passer rating, completing less than 50% of his passes. The Packers struggled to score off these turnovers and were very conservative in the red zone, opting to settle for field goals in a couple situations where going for it on 4th down would happen without question in today’s NFL.
The Packers were up 16-0 at halftime with Seattle’s offense in utter shambles. And then, late in the third quarter, things started getting bizarre. Seahawks punter Jon Ryan threw a touchdown on a fake field goal to bring the score to 16-7. The Packers’ offense meandered for the rest of the game but managed to tack on another field goal with 11 minutes left in the fourth to go up 19-7.
With five minutes left, Wilson threw his fourth interception. The game felt over. Morgan Burnett slid down as soon as he intercepted it as the Packers’ defense celebrated. Green Bay was up two scores with the ball with just five minutes left. Run the ball, kill the clock and go to the Super Bowl.
The Packers went three-and-out, giving the ball right back to Seattle. With two minutes left, Wilson ran in a touchdown to bring the score to 19-14. The Packers were still fine. The Seahawks only had one timeout left. Seattle needed an improbable onside kick to keep their season alive.
Then, in maybe the most infamous single play in Packers’ playoff history, Brandon Bostick jumps in front of Jordy Nelson on the onside kick, fumbling it and allowing the Seahawks to recover. Now Green Bay needed a stop.
In three plays, the Seahawks scored another touchdown to take their first lead of the game with 1:33 left on the clock. It gets worse. Wilson scrambles around on the 2-point conversion attempt, circling back so far in the pocket, releasing a prayer of a pass off his back foot that seems to hang in the air forever before it gently fell into Luke Willson’s hands in the endzone. The Seahawks had a three-point lead. The Packers were in full panic mode.
The Packers managed to get one last field goal to send the game to OT. They’d never see the ball again. It took six plays on the first drive of OT for Wilson to throw a rainbow touchdown pass over Tramon Williams, right into the arms of Jermaine Kearse. The second the ball landed in Kearse’s arms; I remember shutting off the TV. The Seahawks were going to the Super Bowl, and I’d never forget what I had just witnessed as a young Packer fan.
It remains one of the most epic and catastrophic playoff collapses of all time. Not just in Packers’ history, but ever. It hurts to relive, but it’s important to detail how the fourth quarter went down. A collapse so late in the fourth quarter, with so many chances for the Packers to put the game away, will likely never happen quite like that again.
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Liam O’Donnell is a devoted Packers fan and an aspiring sportswriter from Milwaukee. He writes for PackersTalk.com and you can follow him on twitter at @liamodonnell___.
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