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Packers like look of their early dates: Schedule turns harder as weather gets colder

GREEN BAY — If they were dictating their own schedule, the Green Bay Packers probably could not have come up with a better way to start the 2009 season.

Two straight home games to start the season—including a Sunday night contest against rival Chicago and its new quarterback, Jay Cutler—four bottom-of-the-barrel teams from 2008 among the first six opponents and a bye after what stands to be a major battle against Minnesota in Week 4 at the Metrodome?

That’s not bad.

Considering the growing pains the Packers are going to endure installing a new 3-4 defensive system and the emphasis coach Mike McCarthy puts on a fast start, the organization wasn’t preparing to fire off a letter to the commissioner to express its displeasure.

“You never can really tell exactly how it (the season) is going to lay out,” President Mark Murphy said in a brief news conference in the team’s media auditorium. “I do think having two homes to start the season and the division matchups, I think (those) are always important.

“To have three of those division (games) in the first five weeks and then obviously with the bye there, too, I think it’s something that we can use to get off to a good start. But obviously we have to play and perform well.”

In the first eight weeks of the season, the Packers will have played four times within the division, four times at home and faced only two teams (Chicago and Minnesota) that had winning records the previous season.

The catch to the schedule isn’t that the Packers will face a murderer’s row of opponents in the second half—after all, their schedule is the third-easiest in the league by measure of results from last season—it’s that they’ll walk a December gauntlet that will test their cold-weather DNA.

Beginning Dec. 7, they’ll play home against Baltimore on Monday night, away against Chicago and Pittsburgh and home against Seattle. They finish the season Jan. 3 in sunny Arizona against the defending NFC champion Cardinals.

Back in the 1990s, this would have been a late-season schedule the Packers relished, but under McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson, the Packers have not been all that good in the cold. Including their frigid NFC Championship Game loss to the New York Giants two seasons ago, they’ve gone 7-5 in outdoor games in cold-weather venues in the final month of the season.

Compare that to a 14-5 mark under Mike Sherman from 2000-’04 and a 19-2 mark under Ron Wolf and Mike Holmgren and you see that cold-weather dominance has been lost under the current regime.

If the Packers are going to bounce back from their dreadful 6-10 season of 2008, they’re going to have to find a way to win outdoors in December.

“That’s something we are going to change,” Murphy said. “We’re in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We should be a good cold-weather team. I am optimistic that our new practice field with the heating element and the field similar to what we have in Lambeau will allow us to continue practicing outside and to get to practice under conditions that we are going to play in, which should help us.”

McCarthy wasn’t on hand to comment on the schedule, but in a statement released by the team, he referenced the team’s history of playing well at the end of the season and applauded the league for starting the month of December with a Monday night game. It means McCarthy will be able to give his team more rest after a Thanksgiving Day game Nov. 26 in Detroit.

Playing at night on Dec. 7 might not be ideal for those who have to sit in the stands, but it’s becoming a fact of life in the network-dictated world of the NFL. It will mark the first time a Monday night game has been played in December at Lambeau Field.

The other three cold-weather games in December start at noon, but are subject to a move to prime time if the networks so choose under the league’s flex scheduling plan.

There isn’t anything abnormal about the schedule, but there are some notable features:

-- The Packers play each of their division foes on national television.

-- Four of their last six games are on the road and three of those games are against teams that participated in championship games last year (Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Arizona).

-- Five of the opponents (St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Tampa Bay and Seattle) enter the season with new head coaches.

-- The Cincinnati game in Week 2 and the Dallas game in Week 10 are ‘’Gold“ or Milwaukee season ticket package games.

-- There will be four nationally televised games, including two Monday night games (Minnesota, Oct. 5 and Baltimore) and a Sunday night game (Chicago, Sept. 13). It continues a streak of 18 consecutive seasons they have played on Monday night.

-- This will be the first time in six years the Lions haven’t had to play at Lambeau Field in the final month of the season.

-- The Cowboys will be making an appearance at Lambeau Field in consecutive seasons for the first time.