Can the 2024 Packers succeed where recent "contenders" have failed in Green Bay?

Understanding why former iterations of the team failed can be infrustructure for Brian Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur as their put this team together.

When Kyle Shanahan, Raheem Mostert, and the San Francisco 49ers ran the Green Bay Packers off the Levi’s Stadium turf in 2020, it was then the latest Aaron Rodgers-led team not good enough to compete. They didn’t have the horses to compete with the 49ers. It happened far too often. For all the work general manager Ted Thompson did to build a team around Rodgers, including the gamble on Rodgers himself, the team-building came up short too often.

That changed under Thompson’s successor, Brian Gutekunst, yet the team still came up short. Now, with Jordan Love and another revamped roster under one of the best general managers in the NFL, the Packers head into 2024 with what looks like their latest “best” chance to win a Super Bowl.

When a team has Rodgers, the expectation nearly every season will be to win the Super Bowl. Some years, superlative quarterback play can and does overcome considerable flaws in roster construction or coaching. Patrick Mahomes has done it two years in a row. However, in order to avoid these mistakes in the future, Green Bay must look at its past.

Looking back through the history of recent teams going back through Mike McCarthy, there are a handful of clear reasons the Packers came up short when they had a team good enough to win.

Sometimes, you just get beat

This is the hardest one for fans to understand, but sometimes the team is built the right way, it’s well coached and you just lose.

After a 2008 season featuring a slew of last-minute losses in which the defense fell apart, the Packers morphed into one of the best defenses in football under coordinator Dom Capers. Charles Woodson re-established himself as one of the preeminent defenders in football, Rodgers’ ascension began. But in the postseason against the Arizona Cardinals, one of the best defenses of the Rodgers era got smoked by Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald to the tune of 45 points. This was the Defensive Player of the Year’s team!