Or a blueprint,” said ESPN’s Trent Dilfer

Might it have awakened a team that had been cheap moncler jackets dispatching opponents so easily with the flick of Aaron Rodgers’s wrist and needed a good test before the playoffs?

“Or a blueprint,” said ESPN’s Trent Dilfer, who has been watching the Packers closely all season.

Any blueprint for beating Green Bay that the Chiefs might have provided is mitigated by the fact that the Packers have been struck by injuries. The absence of receiver Greg Jennings shortened the field for the offense. Running back James Starks was hurt, too. And injuries on the offensive line — tackle Bryan Bulaga strained his knee, and his replacement, Derek Sherrod, broke his leg — exposed an already weak link. But Dilfer, who watched the game from the Denver press box before the Broncos’ game against the New England Patriots, pointed to what now has to be the greatest concern for the Packers as they focus on locking up the N.F.C.’s top seed and prepare for the playoffs.

“You can overwhelm their offensive line,” Dilfer said.

The Packers’ offensive line, for now, may not belong in the top half of the league, but that is hardly a secret. The Giants, who came within a few minutes of beating the Packers two weeks ago, were able to pressure Rodgers, too. Play the run on the way to the passer, and the Packers’ opponents can control the line of scrimmage.

That makes what Rodgers has accomplished all the more remarkable. Until the Chiefs game, the Packers had not even trailed in the fourth quarter this season. That is testament to Rodgers’s extraordinary decision-making, his ability to unload the football quickly and to augment his game by throwing on the move.

But Crennel, who earned points in his pursuit of the top job with the victory, unleashed outside linebacker Tamba Hali, who sacked Rodgers three times and harassed him plenty more. Rodgers looked more uncomfortable than he had all season as the Packers struggled to block, well, everything. The Packers did not change their plan and start rushing more, even though Ryan Grant appeared to be running well, finishing with 66 yards on just 12 carries.

Is that a blueprint? Sure, but it is hardly new. Every team tries to disrupt every elite quarterback. The Chiefs managed to do it, holding Rodgers to a season-low 235 passing yards and the Packers’ top-ranked scoring offense to 14 points, three touchdowns below its average.

“We set the tone on both sides of the ball,” Chiefs linebacker Derrick Johnson said. “This is the great thing about football. You can’t always look at the records because you’ve got grown men out there who are all getting paid. You don’t have to be better on paper.”

The Packers’ final two regular-season opponents are Chicago and Detroit, each capable of overwhelming an offensive line. Those games will probably tell the league much more about whether the Chiefs’ blueprint is repeatable. The Packers need only one victory or one San Francisco loss to secure the top seed, so their primary goal now is to get as healthy as they can before the playoffs begin. The Packers, after all, have a blueprint they can follow, too: the one they used last season to win the Super Bowl with 15 players on injured reserve.

Year of the Comeback

Detroit’s 28-27 victory over Oakland came after the Raiders had taken a 27-14 lead with 7 minutes 47 seconds left. But this is the year of the comeback, even if red jackets for women
Tim Tebow, who has made the fourth quarter must-see TV for Broncos fans, could not pull off his sixth one Sunday. So how could anyone be surprised when Matthew Stafford threw two touchdown passes in the final five minutes?

Entering the weekend, there had been 60 fourth-quarter comebacks in the N.F.L. this season. The record, 70, was set in 1989. Detroit is the first N.F.L. team to win three games in a season in which it trailed by 17 points, so the 13-point deficit probably seemed manageable.

Why all the comebacks?

The former coach Brian Billick thought back to a book he had in which Knute Rockne said that if you could be good in only one part of the game, make it offense. Then the team never gives up hope.

“It’s indicative of what we’ve talked about all season: the explosion of offense,” Billick said. “Because of the capabilities of so many teams, you’re never out of it.”

But the former coach Herman Edwards, now an ESPN analyst, sees something on the other side of the ball, too. Fatigue may be leading to errors, he said, and fatigue may be one of the predicted results of the lockout that is finally coming to fruition. Billick scoffs, but Edwards says he thinks the lack of appropriate conditioning in the off-season is catching up to players.

“Mentally, guys are breaking down, and then fundamentals break down,” Edwards said. “With the read offense, you play the whole field, not just inside the numbers. Big guys can’t be switched out. Secondary guys get fatigued if it’s a no-huddle, fast-break offense.”

Even practices are problematic because as players are injured, teams cannot practice normally.

Texans’ Loss May Resonate

Think Houston’s loss to the Carolina Panthers was not damaging because the Texans had clinched the A.F.C. South? The Texans were in position for a first-round bye. Now they could finish with the third seed, behind the Patriots and the winner of the A.F.C. North, the Baltimore Ravens or the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Texans would still get a home game, but they would play on wild-card weekend, and extra games are bad news for a team with a rookie quarterback and a pile of injuries.

Tebow Mania Ebbs

What to make of Tim Tebow now that the Patriots have quieted — at least for a few days — the din surrounding him?

“You can’t win a championship this way, but you can win a lot of games,” Brian Billick said of the Broncos’ strategy with Tebow at quarterback.

That is why the tentative signs that Tebow’s passing game is improving late in the season are so critical. The Broncos are in good position to go to the playoffs. But there, they will find more teams that are capable of scoring a lot of points and capitalizing on the Broncos’ errors. A deep playoff run seems as unlikely as Tebow’s recent success.

But if John Elway’s planned intensive off-season tutorial with Tebow can improve his passing enough, he could become more like Cam Newton: a true dual threat. As long as John Fox is the coach, the Broncos are unlikely to be anything but a run-first offense, anyway, and that plays to Tebow’s strengths.

“When you watch Tim Tebow, it’s about him,” Herman Edwards said. discount moncler sale“He continues to compete. He’s got flaws. Is he going to have to learn to play in the pocket? Yeah, absolutely. But the team has bought into him. This is not a quarterback-driven offense. This is a team effort.”