GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Given the emphasis Mike McCarthy puts on home games and division contests, a loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Sunday’s regular-season finale at Lambeau Field would be like a double whammy for the Green Bay Packers coach.
Already with home losses to the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears, the Packers are in danger of going winless at home against the NFC North this season.
That’s never happened to the Packers in the history of the division, which dates to 2002.
Prior to that, the Packers haven’t been swept at Lambeau Field by all of their division foes since the first incarnation of the NFC Central in 1968.
“You look back at that Chicago and Detroit game, and it was bad football being played,” Packers right tackle Bryan Bulaga said this week. “We’ve got to clean up a lot of things to get ready for this one. But we have plenty of confidence that we can play well and get the job done, but Minnesota is good team and playing well.”
In a Bizarro World kind of season, the Packers won all three division road games this season.
The last time they lost to all three current NFC North teams at home in the same season was 1991, but it was a five-team NFC Central back then and the Packers beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to avoid getting swept at home in the division. The same thing happened in 1986.
“You can make a case that division games really almost count as potentially two wins,” McCarthy said. “I think that’s a common goal for any NFL team as you prepare for a season. Here we go, particularly in the last three or four years putting on a division game near the end of the year, and for good reason. This is a game that when you looked at it when the schedule came out in the spring, that hey, you’re probably going to be playing for something and that’s definitely the case.”
The two division losses have been the Packers’ only defeats at Lambeau this season. Before this year, Aaron Rodgers had only lost two home division starts since he became a starter in 2008. His record as a starter in NFC North games at Lambeau Field is 17-4 heading into Sunday’s game.
“We need to bounce back, but you know we've had a good home-field advantage here for years, especially last couple years, and we've got to kind of tap into that,” Rodgers said. “If the weather is going to cooperate, it will be nice and cold. We look forward to that and we'll be ready to play.”