Dougherty: A couple of different paths could lead Packers to Super Bowl title

GREEN BAY - The Green Bay Packers know the score.

Mark Murphy, the team’s president, took it head on during his speech at the shareholders meeting just a few weeks ago. Aaron Rodgers addressed it while defending his coach the first week of training camp.

The Packers haven’t won the Super Bowl for six years.

In that time they’ve won a lot of games (third-most in the NFL) and never missed the playoffs. But they haven’t won it all since the heady days of the 2010 stretch run even though they’ve had a future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback in his prime all those years.

It makes you wonder whether this streak of near misses is more anchor or sail for the franchise.

“It’s the burden slash goal every year to win it,” Rodgers said. “We live in Titletown. You’ve got to win championships. The interesting thing is every year with the turnover there are less and less guys who were on that (Super Bowl) team. Six or seven guys (remaining) from that team.

“The guys who were picked and brought in the last five years, they all don’t have rings, so they all want it as badly as the few of us who’ve got one and want to get back there and get another. That’s what helps, the hunger from those guys.”

For the record, the players remaining from the Packers’ last title team are Rodgers, Clay Matthews, Morgan Burnett, Jordy Nelson, Bryan Bulaga, Mason Crosby and Brett Goode

Like the last six years, the Packers enter 2017 as one of the handful of teams to beat. They’re not the Super Bowl favorite — that’s New England. But the Packers are right there.

The numbers vary slightly depending on the oddsmaker, but SuperBook.com’s odds this week are representative: The Patriots are favorites at 3 to 1, followed by the Packers and Seattle Seahawks (10 to 1 each), Dallas Cowboys (12 to 1), and Atlanta Falcons and Pittsburgh Steelers (both 13 to 1).

That really doesn’t tell you much to distinguish the 2017 Packers from any of the previous six years. They have an elite quarterback and haven’t suffered a season-wrecking injury so far in camp. As long as Rodgers is around, it’s Super Bowl or bust.

“You gotta be Super Bowl or bust,” said defensive lineman Ricky Jean Francois. “You’ve got one of the most high-powered offenses (in the NFL).”

There are two routes for these Packers to win their first Super Bowl since the 2010 season.

On one, their offense is so good it can’t be stopped, especially when big games are on the line. That’s how the New Orleans Saints did it in the 2009 season with a defense that finished No. 25 in yards and No. 20 in points. Their Drew Brees-quarterbacked offense led the NFL in both categories.

That route will put a lot on Rodgers, but that’s the NFL. The quarterback is everything, and he’s 33 and at the height of his powers.

Also, general manager Ted Thompson gave Rodgers and coach Mike McCarthy more to work with. Thompson signed not one but two tight ends of note in free agency — Martellus Bennett and Lance Kendricks — to replace departed Jared Cook. And he drafted three running backs in hopes to find something that sticks. An offense that closed last season as one of the NFL’s best — during their six-game, run-the-table streak into the playoffs, they scored the third-most points in the league — should be even better.

The other championship route is for coordinator Dom Capers’ defense to climb into the upper third of the league. That would take a big jump. Last season the Packers were No. 21 in points, No. 22 in yards and No. 26 in defensive passer rating.

That kind of leap is possible, but it looks to me like the longer odds of the two.

Almost by default, Capers’ defense should be a little better, if for no other reason than the outlook at cornerback. To put it as simply as possible, LaDarius Gunter was the No. 1 for most of last year; right now he’s probably the No. 5.

But there’s still good reason to question whether Capers will have the pass rush to bother the top quarterbacks in the league. You have to beat some of those guys to win a title.

The Packers have three players with a history of pressuring the quarterback — Matthews, Nick Perry and Mike Daniels. But Matthews (31) is on the wrong side of 30, and both he and Perry have injury histories that give pause. Things could go south for a couple different reasons, and camp revealed no sign of a pass-rush posse on the way.

The defensive outlook can change, though, if a new playmaker emerges. Rookie Josh Jones already looks like one of the Packers’ most dynamic players on that side of the ball. Maybe he’ll be a difference-maker in Capers’ new safety-linebacker role as the season goes on, though he’s not one now.  

Perhaps top pick Kevin King will be the team’s best cornerback by January. Or a healthy Damarious Randall will be a ball hawk who can change games. Or maybe Kenny Clark becomes a disrupter on the defensive line.

Those are the kinds of things that happen in championship seasons. When the Packers won the Super Bowl in 1996, running back Dorsey Levens came from nowhere to take on a key role. In 2010, young B.J. Raji and cornerback Tramon Williams were playmakers at season’s end. But those developments weren’t at all obvious at this time in ’96 and ’10.

Still, the Packers are built for offense, and most likely their prospects will largely come down to the position that matters most: quarterback.

How Rodgers goes will be how far the Packers go. He and his mates on that side of the ball will have the most say in whether six years turns to seven, or the Lombardi Trophy returns to Green Bay.