In a subpar NFC, Packers reign over Bears

CHICAGO - It's one thing to only have to beat Jay Cutler to get to the Super Bowl, but it's quite another to only have to beat Caleb Hanie to get to the Super Bowl.

The Green Bay Packers aren't going to toss this one back, however. They'll take the Super Bowl trip just as if they really earned it, and 15 other members of the National Football Conference would be happy to trade places.

The Eagles are among those teams, and among the teams that, with a break here or there, can legitimately say it could have been them hoisting the Halas Trophy on Sunday.

If Michael Vick had thrown a touchdown instead of an interception at the end of the wild-card game against the Packers, everything changes. Prior to that, if the Bears had knocked Green Bay from the playoffs in the last game of the regular season, the postseason house of cards would have been built completely differently.

But that's not the way it played out, and the conference championship was won by a team whose great offense didn't score a point in the last 41 minutes of the game. It was won by a team whose great defense couldn't keep third-string quarterback Hanie from leading the Bears to two fourth-quarter touchdowns that kept the outcome in doubt long after it should have been decided.

The Packers did just enough to win, though, and their 21-14 margin buys them the same right to play in Cowboys Stadium in two weeks as if it had been a 40-point rout.

It's not a new thought that the best teams in the NFL are pretty good, sometimes a little better than that, but far from great. The difference between the top seven or eight teams in the conference is really not that significant. How great can either the Packers or Bears really be if both lost to the Redskins this season? (Of course, that's a question you can ask about the Eagles, too.)

You can't blame the Eagles' organization for feeling it came very close to the Super Bowl, and after watching the Packers and Bears wrestle around somewhat artlessly, it is difficult to argue.

It wasn't much of a game when you take it apart. Too many penalties, too much sloppy work. Some coaching decisions that didn't make any sense, and then the unintended quarterback comedy that the Bears chose to unleash.

Chicago was 7-9 in 2009, and if the Bears' organization really felt the team was set up for a Super Bowl run in 2010, there probably would be a better backup quarterback in place than 38-year-old Todd Collins, who has been in the NFL 16 years and not thrown more than 67 completions in 15 of them.

Starter Jay Cutler suffered a knee injury near the end of the first half and tried to start the second half, but couldn't plant his right leg in order to throw the football. He was replaced by Collins, who was predictably awful, and then by Hanie, a 25-year-old from Colorado State with eight career pass completions.

Hanie did well enough - a lot better than Collins, anyway - except when he failed to see 337-pound Green Bay nose tackle B.J. Raji drop into coverage on a zone blitz. Raji picked off the pass and rumbled 16 yards into the end zone for what would become the deciding play of the game.

And that's how the Packers got back to the Super Bowl for the first time in 13 years. They didn't let Caleb Hanie beat them. Who knew that's all it would take?

After the game, the Bears quickly went into no-one-thought-we'd-get-this-far mode, and if that made them feel better, well, fine. Once having gotten this far, however, it would have been nice to make a better showing.

As for Cutler, who is not well-liked around the league because he's kind of a pouty whiner, the Twitter world went wild, with lots of players and former players berating him for coming out of the game.

"He's one of the toughest guys on the team. We don't question his toughness," linebacker Brian Urlacher said. "There's nothing I love more than jealous people watching us on TV when their season is over."

Cutler said he wanted to play, but couldn't push off and there really wasn't much of a decision to make. All right, whatever. Have a nice off-season, and two weeks from now, you can tweet nasty things about the Packers.

So, that's your NFC season, for what it was worth. The Eagles were in the mix, and held their own with the last two teams standing. They lost by five points to the Bears, and by seven and then five to the Packers. A play here, a play there, to be sure, but great teams make those plays.

The conference didn't have any great teams this season, a fact that will probably become apparent in the Super Bowl. It had some good teams, and one of them had to win it. Turned out to be the Packers, and you could wish them luck as they head to the Super Bowl, but they've had plenty of it already.