GREEN BAY — The Carolina Panthers are what the Green Bay Packers aspire to be.

They are smart, disciplined and tough. They are balanced on offense and physical in both lines. They play mistake-free, field-position football and are built to win in poor weather conditions.
The problem for the fading Packers is the Panthers are better at playing that style than they are. That certainly was the case Sunday, when the Panthers walked into chilly, snowy Lambeau Field and beat the Packers at their own game.

Carolina’s 35-31 victory in a game Green Bay absolutely had to have put the Packers’ backs flush to the playoff wall and showed again, to paraphrase

former NFL coach Dennis Green, that the Packers aren’t who we thought they were. Or, for that matter, who they think they are.

“It was a great environment,” coach Mike McCarthy said after the Packers rallied in the second half only to blow two leads in the fourth quarter. “It was snowing, just like you want it to be in November. The ability to run the football and be balanced on offense was our approach, and stopping the run on defense. That’s how we’re trying to build our football team.”

They’re not there yet. In fact, the Packers are drifting further from their preferred style of play with each game. Once again Sunday, they made just enough mistakes to lose.

That’s the biggest reason the Panthers are a giddy 9-3 and the Packers, coming off a 13-3 season, are a disheartening 5-7 entering December.

Of course, they have only themselves to blame. In a game where the Packers outgained the Panthers by 138 yards, they didn’t do the things they needed to do to win a game at Lambeau in late November. The Panthers, on the other hand, did everything they had to do, playing a brand of hard-nosed, error-free football the Packers couldn’t match.

The Panthers dominated the field position with their superior special teams. The clincher was that each time the Packers scored to go ahead in the fourth quarter, the Panthers took the kickoff and returned it to at or near midfield, immediately killing any momentum the Packers had gained.

The Panthers used their physical running game to punch the ball in — they scored five touchdowns, all on 1-yard runs — whenever they got near the end zone. The Packers? They had to settle for three field goals, including one in the final 2 minutes after they twice failed to run the ball in from the 1.

The Panthers’ defense surrendered tons of yardage to quarterback Aaron Rodgers in the second half, but they made the Packers work for their scores and never gave up the big play. The Packers couldn’t say the same. On Carolina’s two fourth-quarter scoring drives, Steve Smith, an electrifying playmaker who had been quiet to that point, caught passes of 36 and 54 yards, each time putting the ball at the 1.

Finally, the Panthers won the turnover battle despite fumbling on their very first play. They were perfect after that, while the Packers handed the Panthers seven points on Scott Wells’ wayward shotgun snap and Rodgers, who had been brilliant in the second half, finally cracked and threw an interception to snuff out Green Bay’s final hope.

It also might have snuffed out the playoff chances. Although they professed to taking it one game at a time the rest of the way, it is obvious to the Packers they must go 4-0 to have any shot at being a playoff team.

“You are what your record says you are, and we’re 5-7,” offensive tackle Mark Tauscher said. “You can say all the other things. We’ve had chances — and we have — but we haven’t finished ’em. This is all about results. This is about winning games. You can look at things and spin them, but the reality is, we’re 5-7 and that’s where we are. We’re just not making plays when we really need it.”

That’s been such a consistent theme that there’s only one explanation for it: Although they keep telling everyone they’re better than their record, the Packers simply aren’t good enough to play the style of football they want — and need — to play to win four in a row.

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