GREEN BAY, Wis. – The beer will be cold at Lambeau Field on Sunday night.
So will the players, coaches and fans for the primetime showdown between the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings.
According to Weather.com, Sunday’s forecast calls for a high of 13 and a low of 2. The Packers presumably will have some sort of edge because they play in the elements, but the Vikings live in Minneapolis – a colder climate than Green Bay – so probably won’t turn into Frosty with horns protruding from his snowy head.
Packers coach Matt LaFleur, having lost his last two games against the Vikings, will grab any advantage he can find as his team battles injuries and COVID in its pursuit of the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
“Absolutely it does (matter),” he said of the cold on Monday, “and I think it all starts with our approach, our mind-set going into that game. It’s great when we can get outside here and try to get acclimated to it as best we can. But I think our guys have the right mindset in that regard and embrace the cold. You have to up here, and it’s to our own advantage.”
With sunset set for 4:23 p.m., there will be 3 hours for the temperature to plunge before the 7:20 p.m. kickoff. Going with a kickoff temperature of 5 and winds ranging from 5 mph to 10 mph, the wind chill will be about minus-10.
A kickoff temperature of 5 not only would be cold. It would be rare. According to Stathead.com, there have been only six games league-wide with a kickoff temperature of 5 or colder since Aaron Rodgers took over as Green Bay’s starting quarterback in 2008.
Three of those games involved the Packers and, oddly, the frigid weather meant nothing other than the bitterly cold feeling of disappointment. The Packers lost all three of those games: 24-21 to Houston with a kickoff temperature of 3 in 2008, 20-17 at Chicago two weeks later with a kickoff temperature of 2, and 23-20 to San Francisco in the 2013 playoffs with a kickoff temperature of 5.
Including the 2007 NFC Championship Game, a 23-20 loss to the Giants in which it was minus-1 at kickoff, the Packers haven’t won a 5-degrees-or-colder game since the 1996 NFC Championship Game. With a kickoff temperature of 3, Green Bay romped 30-13.
On the other hand, Rodgers is 26-4 at home in regular-season games played in December and January. Two of those losses came in 2018 – 20-17 vs. Arizona in what would be Mike McCarthy’s final game and 31-0 vs. Detroit in which he suffered a concussion on the first series.
His passer rating in those 30 games was a lofty 112.0 on the strength of 65 touchdowns vs. eight interceptions. He had a 100-plus rating in 17 starts.
Conventional wisdom dictates power running games should be delightful when the thermometer gets frightful. Not so with Rodgers.
“You wouldn’t think you’d be able to do that, both in the cold, in the wind,” offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said recently. “I’ve never seen anything like what Aaron Rodgers can do. We had a game earlier this year, the wind was howling a little bit. It’s fun because you always have coaches out there throwing to the guys in pregame. Balls are going everywhere and they’re fluttering. Aaron is just dime’ing it all over the place. It’s almost like he can adjust to the wind. It’s an amazing thing to watch him throw the ball. It’s very difficult because you have to play it, the ball starts turning. It doesn’t come just straight at the wide receivers, which make it even more difficult to catch than it already is. He’s very talented when it comes to throwing the ball in the wind.”
