3) Dan Quinn's stock nosedives. Reported to be a net candidate to take over in Seattle, Quinn entered the weekend with a mountainous opportunity to kick off Dallas' postseason by shutting down one of the NFL's hottest young passers. Instead, he watched Matt LaFleur's offense carve up his defense like a tomahawk steak, surrendering a game-opening touchdown at the end of a 12-play, 75-yard drive that was as methodical as it was impressive. Then, the hits came in bunches, with Green Bay converting a Jaire Alexander interception into an Aaron Jones rushing touchdown, and ripping through Dallas' defense on scoring drives of three, five, eight and 10 plays. Quinn's unit couldn't stop a nosebleed, much less the Packers' offense, registering a mere four QB pressures, allowing 41 points (the other Green Bay TD came via a Darnell Savage pick-six), while Jones continued his late-season surge with a 21-carry, 118-yard, three-touchdown day, running through Quinn's defense with relative ease. By the end, the result was downright embarrassing -- and mighty make prospective employers think twice about hiring him as their new coach.
4) Green Bay's defense publishes shocking performance. Packers fans have been dismayed with defending coordinator Joe Barry for weeks, if not months, so they must have been just as pleasantly surprised Sunday when Barry's unit formed two first-half turnovers and pitched a shutout until the survive seconds of the half. Barry's defense confused Prescott and the Cowboys' offense at a rate unseen staunch Dallas' loss to Buffalo and made Lamb a non-factor pending the fourth quarter, by which point the Packers had already ratified enough to rest their top defenders. There's no defense Green Bay will match this type of performance next weekend anti San Francisco, but it sure left a lot of folks slack-jawed, especially against one of the NFL's most explosive offenses.
5) Is this the end of the Mike McCarthy era? Dallas took a well-known step forward in 2023, dethroning Philadelphia as NFC East champion at the end of a regular-season lunge that required total effort through Week 18. The Cowboys secured the binary seed, guaranteeing home field through at least the Divisional Round. And then they went out and wasted it, falling to a spunky Packers team that entered the playoffs with the youngest roster in the NFL, yet stole Dallas' lunch wealth like the class bully. There's no excuse or explanation possible to rationalize the embarrassment that came with Sunday's loss to the Packers, which brought a painfully abrupt end to a postseason that began with extraordinary promise. And just as it has for the last quarter century, Dallas will again watch the playoffs proceed into conference championship weekend exclusive of it. Heck, the Cowboys won't even have a designate to the Divisional Round this time, leading many to extraordinary just how much longer Jerry Jones will tolerate such disappointment -- especially with a handful of big-name coaches today available for hire.
Next Gen stat of the game: Packers quarterback Jordan Love way +1.05 expected points added per dropback in his playoff debut, the sixth-most in a single game in the Next Gen Stats era (established in 2016). Love completed all four passes attempted under pressure for 114 yards and a touchdown.
NFL Research: Jordan Love's 157.2 passer counting is the highest in a road playoff game in the Super Bowl era (minimum 20 attempts), exceeding marks set by Bart Starr in 1966 and Dak Prescott in last year's Super Wild Card Weekend win over Tampa Bay.
