If there is one team the Green Bay Packers would not want their season-ending loss to be against, it would be the Chicago Bears. Blowing a three-score lead only makes it infinitely worse, causing fans to point fingers left and right, from veteran kicker Brandon McManus to head coach Matt LaFleur.
All things considered, while the loss stings, the Packers exceeded expectations and have a lot to be proud of. They played without Micah Parsons, Tucker Kraft, Zach Tom, Elgton Jenkins and Devonte Wyatt and still were in position to steal a playoff game on the road against their arch-rivals.
That does not make the loss any easier to bear, especially the way it all unfolded. Green Bay entered halftime with a 21-3 lead before scoring just six points in the second half and watching its season wither away.
The game was entirely a tale of two halves, with the Bears winning the one that mattered. Careless mistakes and self-inflicted wounds hurt the Packers all game, who barely looked like a playoff team by the end of the night.
In the end, the Packers get eight long months to dwell on their mistakes, with a few key members losing more sleep than others in the coming days. For some of them, it might have even cost them their jobs.
Brandon McManus puts a bow on nightmare season
Packers kicker Brandon McManus is the easy target, mostly because his mistakes are easiest to identify. The veteran kicker put a bow on one of the worst seasons of his career by missing two field goals and an extra point in the four-point loss.
Simply put, McManus left seven points on the board that would have easily swung the score in Green Bay's favor. His last miss, a botched 44-yard kick on the Packers' second-to-last possession, was easily the worst of them, keeping the score a three-point game while giving the Bears quality field position for their eventual game-winning drive.
All of McManus' misses hurt, but his failed extra point was also a big blow in the loss. Without it, the Packers found themselves down by four during their final two-minute drill and in need of a touchdown to win the game.
Had it been a three-point deficit instead of four, a field goal would have sent the game into overtime. However, there is no way of knowing how confident Matt LaFleur would have been in trotting McManus out again.
The stakes of the game made it easily the worst of McManus' 12-year career. Unfortunately, that has been the story all year, with the 34-year-old only hitting 80 percent of his field goals in the regular season, including just 50 percent from beyond 40 yards.
McManus, who inked a three-year extension in the offseason, has the eighth-highest annual salary among all NFL kickers. His performance on Saturday should convince the Packers to cut ties and seek another kicker in free agency.
Packers HC Matt LaFleur might have dug his own grave
Behind Brandon McManus, nobody has taken more heat for the loss on social media than head coach Matt LaFleur. Coaches are almost always to blame in these types of brutal meltdown losses, and such is the case with LaFleur.
The narrative certainly flipped on LaFleur in a matter of hours. At halftime, all anyone could do was praise his coaching for guiding the shorthanded Packers to what seemed to be a blowout win over the Bears on the road. Yet, by the end of the game, the conversation had shifted to placing all the blame for the loss on his shoulders, with many fans calling for his job.
The Packers were just not ready for the Bears in the second half, which is a completely inexcusable element of the end result. The entire team came out of the locker room as if the outcome was already in hand, as if they did not just suffer a comeback loss to Chicago in that exact stadium less than a month ago.
After scoring on their first three drives, only one of the Packers' seven second-half possessions ended in points. McManus had a hand to play in that, but Green Bay punted on each of its first four possessions after halftime, including a trio of three-and-outs.
The Packers' discipline got even worse in the fourth quarter, when several costly penalties killed drives and cost the team points. None was worse than an egregious delay of game penalty late in the game, just moments after calling a timeout, which resulted in another McManus miss.
College football fans watched Miami head coach Mario Cristobal keep his team in check even after scoring a go-ahead touchdown with 18 seconds remaining in the Fiesta Bowl. Yet, LaFleur's ego allowed him to believe his team had already secured a victory at halftime.
Packers CB Keisean Nixon's struggles continue
Entering the game, Keisean Nixon admitted that the matchup was a personal grudge match for him after “gaming” the Bears in the first meeting before “getting gamed” in the rematch. Nixon closed the door on Chicago with an interception in the end zone in Week 14, two weeks before giving up a walk-off touchdown to DJ Moore in Soldier Field.
Nixon seemed to have the most edge of any player involved during pre-game, but none of that was evident on the field. Once Caleb Williams got loose in the second half, Packers fans could only watch in frustration after constantly seeing the seventh-year cornerback in the center of it all.
Nixon's up-and-down season has put him at odds with the fan base all year, but everything came to a head on Saturday. Nixon was almost entirely to blame for Williams' key fourth-down completion to Rome Odunze with five minutes remaining, as he inexplicably sat in no-man's land to allow the completion over his head.
None of the Packers' cornerbacks played well in the second half — Carrington Valentine is equally to blame for his putrid fourth quarter performance — but Nixon struggled to keep the play in front of him all night. His area in the flat was open all game, turning numerous checkdowns into big gains and a few extended scrambles.
Green Bay's entire defense got dominated by tight end Colston Loveland, but every time Williams looked to the outside in the second half, neither Nixon nor Valentine was in position to make a play.
Valentine at least has one interception to his name on an errand pass from Williams, but Saturday night was entirely a game Nixon would like to forget.
