Now that our top plays are in the books, I’d like to offer one final coda to our look back at last season.
2025 was really dumb.
I wrote in the conclusion to our top play of 2025 that everything after Keisean Nixon’s interception capped off the Packers’ win over the Bears in Week 14 seems pretty forgettable. That’s not to undermine the work of my colleague Tyler Brooke, who rightly celebrated Matthew Golden’s touchdown against the Bears in the playoffs. That should have been a game-sealing touchdown, and yet, well, we all know what happened.
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Nixon’s interception really does seem like the last true high point of the season, and that’s dumb! A season that starts 9-3-1 shouldn’t have its last, best moment in Week 14. That’s a dumb thing that happened to us as Packers fans.
And it’s hardly the only thing. Brian Gutekunst took great pains from 2022 through 2025 to assemble a deep and exciting cadre of wide receivers, yet the entire crew was hardly ever healthy together in 2025. Jayden Reed started the season injured, got more injured, and never really found his footing at all. By the time Christian Watson came back from his ACL rehab, Matthew Golden was dinged up. And even when the top options were healthy, 2025 third round pick Savion Williams had left the lineup with a season-ending injury of his own. It’s not as though Williams would have been any huge difference maker down the stretch, but it’s still annoying that we got to see so little of him. And beyond that, it’s dumb that the Packers’ top five receivers were literally never all healthy at once; part of the reason Golden even had a chance to score his playoff touchdown at all was because Dontayvion Wicks was in the concussion protocol. Dumb!.
And not all dumbness has to do with injuries. I don’t want to belabour this point, but it’s pretty dumb that Matt LaFleur spent so much of 2025 trying to make the Packers into a power-running team, and they just weren’t. The offensive line couldn’t hack it. Josh Jacobs wasn’t healthy enough to carry the load. It just wasn’t working. It’s dumb to try to be something you’re not, and it’s even dumber to keep trying it after you know what you are.
But back to injuries and the havoc they wreak. Part of the reason they couldn’t get the ground game clicking was the offensive line. As much as the Packers’ wide receiver room lacked continuity, the offensive line was nearly as bad. Don’t get me wrong, the Packers’ offensive line may not have turned out to be all that good in 2025, but we never really got to find out. Zach Tom got injured early, as did Aaron Banks. And by the time they sorted out their injuries, Elgton Jenkins was about ready to call it a season with an injury of his own. And then Zach Tom’s second injury, this one much more serious, happened against the Broncos, and that was that. Whatever work the Packers had done on their line was just gone like a puff of smoke in the wind. Dumb!
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And there’s that Broncos game. The Packers were flying high, up 11 points on a team headed for a deep postseason run, and then they got the ball back with a chance to go up 18. But then it all fell apart. Goodbye Christian Watson (for a time, at least). Goodbye, Micah Parsons. Goodbye (again), Zach Tom. One game shouldn’t be allowed to be so dumb, but there it was.
And the list goes on. The loss to the Browns. The loss to the Panthers. The loss to the Eagles. The second and third Bears’ games. Dumb, all of them! And rife with dumb, unforced errors that a better team could have avoided. Should have avoided. Failed miserably to avoid. Took apparent glee in inflicting them upon themselves.
And I say good riddance to all of it. Our top plays countdown is over, 2026 training camp is just a couple of weeks away, and better things are on the horizon. If 2025 was dumb, 2026 need not be the same way.
It had better not be, at least. I’d say I don’t know if I can tolerate another season as dumb as 2025, but I know that if 2026 turns out the same way, I’ll be right back here again in the summer of 2027 waiting for another chance to get hurt again. Maybe that’s the dumbest thing of all.
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