loading . . . What Does A Successful Season Look Like For The Packers? And Other Existential Questions. As the 2025 regular season rounds the final corner of this eighteen week marathon, it’s time for every team in the league to get a little existential.
For some teams, it’s an exercise in wondering “What went wrong?”. They’ve likely already known that this season would end in failure for months. In Las Vegas, the Raiders are probably wondering why they drafted a running back instead of a foundational offensive tackle, or why they hired a 74 year old head coach. The Arizona Cardinals are staring the prospect of diving head first into yet another full on rebuild, complete with another QB and Head Coaching search. The Minnesota Vikings might be scratching their heads about how they let not one, not two, but three starting QBs slip through their fingers (Darnold, Jones, and Rodgers), in favor of their JJ McCarthy experiment, in spite of their Super Bowl aspirations.
While the Packers are very much alive in the grand scheme of things, they aren’t immune from this kind of reckoning. It’s a very different area though, one that is deep within the DNA of sports itself. The spirit of competition demands winning: winning in the playoffs against the highest of competition in your sport, and ultimately of course, climbing the lofty peak of championships.
For 90% of the season, it’s been clear that a championship is the goal. Let’s take it all the way back to the genesis. In a now famous press conference, GM Brian Gutekunst ramped up the internal pressure on the team. His full quote:“You always have some disappointments in the year," Gutekunst told reporters on Thursday. "I think, for me, the thing that's been on my mind as we've concluded this season is we need to continue to ramp up our sense of urgency. These opportunities don't come (very often). The life of a player in the National Football League is not very long. We've got a bunch of good guys in that locker room, got a bunch of talented guys in that locker room, and yeah, I think it's time that we start competing for championships, right? I think they're ready. Like I said, I think they are wired right. I think that group is the kind of guys that can do that. At the end of the day, you've got to go do it. ... I'm excited about the group, but the sense of urgency, not getting complacent… Some of these guys have now proven themselves to be NFL football players and have attained that, but what's out there for us as a team that we're willing to commit to and sacrifice for?"
Gutekunst, I think it’s fair to say, held up his end of the bargain in that statement. In the ultimate “All In” move, he acquired Micah Parsons at the eleventh hour of the offseason, and the rest is history. The Packers were suddenly “Super Bowl or Bust”. Whether that idea is fair or not, that was the expectation, and it was the answer to that central idea I mentioned earlier. “What does a successful season look like for the Packers?”
116 days later, the Packers stand on the precipice of making the playoffs with another Green Bay win or Lions loss, but injuries all across the roster have stunted the lofty expectations that were created on that fateful day.
Now, at the risk of getting too existential about this silly little game we all love too much, where does the team stand now? What can we, as fans, reasonably expect out of the Green Bay Packers? There’s a number of ways that the season can end from this point on. Well, four to be exact.
The Packers miss the playoffs
This one is probably the easiest possibility to parse. Even with the team as injured as it is, failing to make the playoffs would leave this season as an abject failure.
For one thing, it would mean that the team failed to win either of the two remaining games on its schedule. Losing to the Ravens would be one thing. Baltimore finds itself in an extremely similar situation to Green Bay, after all. It’s possible that, after the Parsons trade, this was the most predicted Super Bowl matchup in the league, as two powerhouse teams looked poised to finally get over the hump. Instead, neither will (probably) win their division, and enter week 17 with their backs to the wall; Baltimore a little more than Green Bay. So if they drop one to the Ravens, that’s maybe understandable.
Losing to the fighting JJ McCarthys in a win or go home scenario? Unforgivable, embarrassing, and undeniably the final piece in a season of failure. For one, that means the Lions get to go to the playoffs in Green Bay’s place, the Cowboys would get a top 18 pick, and there would probably be some questions surrounding Matt LaFleur’s job security.
That last part becomes extra important in this particular scenario, and it’s the only one in which MLF's job even comes into question, in my opinion. Losing these last two games would almost certainly mean that the team was unable to overcome the rash of injuries. How much blame, then, falls to LaFleur? Do the injuries lend credence to his case, as a situation that no one could have overcome? Or, does the front office decide that the lack of a playoff appearance was below a metaphorical line in the sand that they had decided on before the season? Personally, I think there’s no way in hell that the Packers move on from LaFleur, at least this offseason.
The Packers make the playoffs, but lose in the wild card round.
Man, this is a painful possibility. Especially, and as we will assume will happen for the rest of this article, the Packers end up playing the Bears in the first round.
The Packers and the Bears, despite having a rivalry that is over a hundred years old and spans 212 games total, have only met each other in the playoffs twice. The first time was in the 1941 Western Divisional, which the Bears won 33-14. Nearly seventy years later, the two teams met in the 2010 NFC Championship Game, which the Packers won 21-14 on their way to a Super Bowl title.
The stakes in this one would be just a little higher. Maybe even enough to outshine the rocky season, short of a Super Bowl ring? Losing this game would definitely mean that the Packers’ 2025 season was a failure, despite persevering through all of their injuries to make the playoffs in the first place.
The Packers only win one playoff game
Now, of course, the inverse. The Packers manage to win that historical game (again, we are assuming that it’s against Chicago), whether it ends up taking place in Green Bay or, more likely, Chicago. Sending the Bears packing, especially after this last game, would feel all the sweeter, right? It would raise Jordan Love’s playoff record to 2-2, and provide the Packers with a lot of much needed momentum, as they look ahead to the 2026 season.
In most scenarios, with the Packers being the likely 7th seed for the third year in a row, beating the Bears would mean a trip out west to face Seattle, who currently hold the NFC’s 1st seed. In this alternate universe, the Packers are unable to escape that House of Horrors with a win. Does that change the calculus at all? Considering the expectations of growth and success that this team had for itself, even before the Parsons trade, would that really be enough to call this season a success?
The Packers reach the NFC Championship game, the Super Bowl, or win the whole damn thing.
These scenarios, however. Oh boy, I’m getting giddy just thinking about it.
First off, the obvious. The Packers are able to take their injury lumps in stride, and overcome them better than anyone could have ever predicted. They make the playoffs, beat the Bears, upset the #1 seed Seahawks in their own house. In these scenarios, it's pretty clear what the catalyst of such an unprecedented run would have been. One Jordan Alexander Love.
This was, of course, the plan before the season. The defense could play well enough to keep the Packers in every game they played, while Jordan and the rest of the offense kept up the pressure with consistent point scoring. To see that version of the Packers, even without their superstars in Micah Parsons and Tucker Kraft, or Devonte Wyatt in the middle of the defense? It would be eerily similar to the 2010 Super Bowl team that won the championship while having 16 players on the injured reserve list. Maybe the Packers really are destined to fulfill the ancient prophecy, and Love will become the next Packers QB to win the Super Bowl at age 27. He’d also join Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers as QBs to win the Super Bowl in their third season as the team’s starting QB.
Hmmm. Maybe the Packers would also have to beat the Bears on their way to the Super B- oh wait, yeah that’s in there… What about losing your star TE halfway through the season to a knee injury? Check. Did the Packers sign a big run-stuffing DT late in the season? Oh, that’s right they did.
Maybe it’s just destiny.
Now, as fun as this hypothetical discussion has been, the reality of course is that one of these scenarios is going to come true. We, as fans, are going to have to choose the standard to which we should be holding this beaten and bruised version of the Packers to.
Is it really fair to even have these discussions in the first place? Maybe assigning value to a season based on wins isn’t fair to the thousands of hours that the players have dedicated to getting to this league in the first place. Maybe the real metric of a successful season is the friends we made along the way?
Okay, that one was a little much.
These are all rhetorical questions of course, but I am genuinely interested to hear what all of you have to say on this topic. Where does the line of expectations go when the team is so affected by something so far outside of their control? How much does historical context weigh into those expectations? Is there such a thing as a successful, yet championship-less season anymore?
Personally, I think the wild card round is the true test of subjectivity in this discussion. To me, the bare minimum of a "successful" season is making the playoffs. Do they need to win that game? Well, that’s for you to decide.
Filed Under: FeaturedKalani Jones
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Co-Owner of the thirteen time world champion Green Bay Packers. Sometimes I write about them. Follow me on Twitter at https://x.com/kjones_in_co and on Substack for film breakdowns!
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NFL Categories: Green Bay PackersTags: Green Bay PackersNFL playoffsJordan LoveSuper BowlMatt LaFleur
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