Few outside the Packers building saw Sunday coming.
Green Bay routed Dallas, dicing up the league’s fifth-ranked defense behind Jordan Love‘s near-perfect debut and Aaron Jones‘ three rushing scores to vanquish the favored Cowboys, 48-32, and move onto the NFC Divisional Round.
“We came in here with the mindset that we were gonna dominate,” Love told Fox’s Erin Andrews after the victory. “A lot of people counted us out and we didn’t care about that. We knew what opportunity we had in front of us and made the most of it tonight.”
Just as popular opinion seemed stacked against the Packers, so too did the numbers.
Dallas entered the game as the NFC’s No. 2 seed with a 16-game winning streak at home, having won all eight contests at AT&T Stadium during the 2023 regular season with a plus-172 point differential and a 37.3 points-per-game average.
Perhaps Love, leading the NFL’s youngest roster, did not appreciate the odds stacked against the last of the conference’s three wild-card teams. If he did, he certainly didn’t care.
He was close to flawless, throwing for 272 yards and three touchdowns on 16-of-21 passing as the Packers raced out to a 27-0 halftime lead, and then a 32-point margin with just over 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
Love found plenty of wide receivers schemed wide open against Dallas’ previously stingy passing defense, but he also created his own chances by keeping his eyes constantly downfield under duress and showing off his much-improved accuracy on off-balance throws.
His final TD throw, a fourth-and-2 sidearm sling from the 3-yard line that found Romeo Doubs between a pair of Cowboys defenders, seemed to be the final cherry on top.
Despite Dallas scoring a touchdown on the ensuing drive to make it 48-24, Love headed to the bench with 5:52 remaining sporting a 158.3 passer rating.
He only lost that perfect rating when yet another desperate TD by Dallas pushed things to a two-score game, after which Love re-entered and threw an incompletion to settle for a rating of 157.2 — still the highest by a QB in a road playoff game during the Super Bowl era, per NFL Research.
Love was everything the Packers hoped he would be and more when they rocked the boat, kickstarting Aaron Rodgers‘ succession plan by selecting the Utah State product with the No. 26 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Including this shocking result, Love has gone 7-2 with 2,422 passing yards, 21 touchdowns and a lone interception since Week 11, when the Packers began their first of two different three-game winning streaks to close out the regular season and sneak into the playoffs.
“Jordan Love. Wow,” head coach Matt LaFleur remarked in his postgame news conference. “That’s about all I can say. What he did and the poise he shows. The command he shows. … I’m just so proud and happy for him.”
But even if Love is sure to get his flowers, he was far from the only impact player to help derail Dallas’ season.
Jones continued to surge after dealing with injuries for much of the season, finding the end zone three times while rushing for 118 yards on 21 carries. It was the 29-year-old’s fourth straight game with 100 yards rushing.
Doubs broke out in his first-ever playoff game. He collected all six of his targets for 151 yards and a touchdown, while rookies Luke Musgrave and Dontayvion Wicks joined him on the scoreboard.
Buoyed by a much-criticized defense suddenly showing up to squash the Cowboys offense with a clap-back performance that included a Darnell Savage pick-six, the Packers hung 48 on Dallas, the most allowed by the franchise in its postseason history.
Green Bay is now on to face the No. 1 seed San Francisco 49ers in its fourth trip to the Divisional Round in five years — only this time with a different man under center and a retooled cast of weapons around him.
Jones, the veteran back who has played a part in each of those playoff runs, knows the Packers have everything they need to pull off another upset.
“We believe in each other,” he said. “We have faith in each other. We know we have all the weapons in the building, in that room, however you want to put it, we have all the weapons we need on this team. People can continue to doubt us. That’s fine. We love the underdog mentality. We love the underdog approach. What are people going to say next, you know? We’re excited to see that.”
