Top 10 Green Bay Packers teams since 1992: 2002 Packers

We’re counting down the top-10 teams in the Favre/Rodgers Era. The tenth-best team is one that likely deserved a better fate than the one they ultimately ended up with.

The 2002 Green Bay Packers finished their season 12-4 and won the new look NFC North in its inaugural season. They were led by quarterback Brett Favre and a power running game under the direction of Head Coach Mike Sherman. They start our list at number 10.

Their defense was not a particularly strong unit, but were able to make up for that with timely turnovers. Marques Anderson led the team with four interceptions. Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila established himself as a star with a 12 sack season.

They entered the final week of the season with a chance to clinch homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. They were humiliated on the road by the New York Jets. That dropped them to the three seed where they faced off against Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons.

Key players

Brett Favre: Favre finished the season second in MVP voting. He had arguably his best season since his last MVP campaign in 1998. He finished the year with 27 touchdown passes and more than 3,600 yards passing.

Ahman Green: This was the first season where the Packers began to transition to more of a running team led by their star running back. Ahman Green had shown glimpses of brilliance, but he took charge of the starting running back role in 2002. He finished the year with 1,240 yards rushing.  More importantly, he became the identity of the offense for the next two seasons.

Donald Driver: Driver broke out in his first season as a starter and established himself as the team’s best receiver. The hope was the team would have a trio of receivers between Driver, trade acquisition Terry Glenn, and Javon Walker. Walker to this day represents the last first round pick the team has spent on a skill position player. Unfortunately for Green Bay, it was only Driver that lived up to his billing in 2002.

Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila: KGB established himself as the face of the defense with another big season. He was a vicious speed rusher off the edge that caused havoc in the backfield for opposing quarterbacks.

Highlights

After an overtime thriller in the opening game against the Atlanta Falcons, the Packers lost the following game against the Saints in the Superdome. They followed up that disappointment with seven straight wins, including a dominating 28-10 performance over the defending champion Patriots in New England. The offense was dominant in this stretch. Scoring 24 or more points in seven out of eight games. The Packers had the look of a Super Bowl caliber team during this stretch.

The home stretch of the season included a big comeback win at home against the Minnesota Vikings where Tony Fisher ran for a game winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter.

Lowlights

There was a brief two game losing streak against Minnesota and Tampa Bay on the road which killed some of the good feelings of the seven game winning streak. The lowlight that really put a damper on the rest of the season was the loss in the final game of the year. After the Philadelphia Eagles lost to the New York Giants on Saturday, the Packers had a chance to clinch homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. At the time, they hadn’t lost a home playoff game in the history of Lambeau Field.

They were embarrassed by the New York Jets. The loss knocked them to a three seed and forced a battered Packers team to take on Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons.

The biggest lowlight came in the team’s first playoff loss at Lambeau Field. Michael Vick embarrassed the Packers on that cold winter Saturday. Favre was intercepted twice. The team turned the ball over five times. The lasting image of this game is Vick escaping the clutches of KGB for what would have been a sack and turning the play into a huge gain for the offense. A season that began so promising, ended in flames.

Why didn’t they win a championship?

Ultimately, the team played its worst during the last two games of the season. Teams like to be playing well going into the playoffs, and the Packers had a bad taste in their mouth following their last test during the season.

They followed that up with a poor, sloppy performance that essentially gave away a playoff game. It’s rare that a team can win a game in which they lose the turnover margin by five. That’s even rarer in the playoffs.

The Green Bay Packers simply collapsed at the worst time possible. They were also ravaged by injuries at the end of the season. One lasting image from their final game was Donald Driver catching a touchdown from Brett Favre and laying in the end zone because he was in so much pain. Driver was playing with an injured shoulder.

It’s a team that was not at full strength for the latter half of the season, which is another large reason they went home early.