Misery loves company, and what better way to usher in a new year than tormenting the mind by looking back at missed opportunities for the Green Bay Packers?
Green Bay was vocal in training camp that the goal was to win the NFC North. They fell short in that quest, and a few key plays stick out as the culprits. We won’t power rank the plays; we’ll simply go in order. To start, let’s head to Cleveland.
The Packers were dominating the Cleveland Browns after a 2-0 start to the season and led 10-0 entering the fourth quarter. Joe Flacco and the Cleveland offense had done absolutely nothing up to that point through 45 minutes.
A field goal with less than four minutes to go made it 10-3. Still, a lot would have to go wrong for Green Bay to lose.
Per ESPN analytics, the Packers had a 90.7% chance to win facing a third-and-three with 3:18 to go. Jordan Love did the one thing he couldn’t and threw an interception on a great read from safety Grant Delpit. Delpit ran it back inside Green Bay’s five-yard line, and the odds for the Packers dropped to 68.8%. One play later, the Browns were in the end zone, and the odds sank even further.
Yes, kicker Brandon McManus had a field-goal attempt blocked with 27 seconds left, and Cleveland then walked it off with a field-goal attempt of their own a few plays later. Many will point to that moment as more gut-wrenching. However, without Love’s interception, the Packers would almost certainly have won that game with little drama. What looked like a 3-0 start to the season turned into a disaster.
While there were two losses to the Carolina Panthers and Philadelphia Eagles in the time between the Browns matchup in Week 3 and Week 15, nothing felt as deleterious to Green Bay’s division title dreams than what happened during the Denver Broncos game.
Green Bay led 23-14 in the third quarter, and the offense was humming. With 13 minutes left in the third quarter, the Packers had an 80.1% chance to win. Love threw a pick on the first play of that drive, and Christian Watson exited with an injury on that same play. That wasn’t the moment, though.
While you can’t quantify it as a percentage, the Micah Parsons play, where he tore his ACL, putting an abrupt end to his tremendous season, was also a major morale-buster.
Parsons’ injury sent a shockwave through that sideline, the fanbase, and the city of Green Bay. Sure, the Packers still had a chance to rally the troops and claim the division despite losing Parsons, but his exit pretty much put the writing on the wall. It wasn’t a missed field goal or a turnover for Green Bay. It wasn’t the defense yielding a back-breaking touchdown. Still, it was the one play Packers fans will look back to and wonder “what if” about. What if Parsons never suffered the injury? Do the Packers claim the NFC North?
We’ll never know.
Finally, we fast forward one week to the divisional clash in Chicago.
Green Bay dominated the game and dictated the pace. The defense was flying around in its first game without Parsons. Then all hell broke loose.
At one point in the fourth quarter, the Packers had a 99.1% chance to claim victory. The play that will never be forgotten, though, came via an onside kick.
The Packers led 16-6 late, and a Cairo Santos field goal at the two-minute warning made it 16-9. With only two timeouts remaining, the Bears opted for the onside kick. Having only two timeouts at their disposal, a recovery for Green Bay would all but seal the victory. Even after the field goal split the uprights to make it a one-possession game, the Packers still had a 96.9% chance to win.
For some reason or another, Romeo Doubs moved back after the ball took the first hop on the onside kick. Typically, players are taught to attack and get to the ball once it passes the 10-yard threshold to disallow any chance of another funky bounce. Doubs’ first move was to go backwards, and he couldn’t get a clean grasp.
Romeo Doubs drops the ball and the Chicago Bears recover the onside kick!#Bears pic.twitter.com/yh4DwcOrZk
— Julia Grop (@julieamiini17) December 21, 2025
The Bears scored on a fourth down late and won the game in overtime after the Packers botched a center-quarterback exchange on their only overtime possession on a fourth-and-one. Multiple plays — some baffling, some just bad — contributed to that stupefying loss, but none was as nauseating as the onside kick recovery. Before that kick, the success rate for recovering an onside kick was at 8% on the season. Chicago truly defied the odds.
That play helped to tip the odds, not to mention quash the good juju the Packers had built up on their path towards a division crown. Instead, Chicago claimed it.
Green Bay still has a chance to go on a run in the postseason, though that seems incredibly unlikely at this point. As far as not winning the division again? The Packers can look back at those three plays as the biggest reasons why it didn’t happen in 2025.