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The Detroit Lions have finished in front of the Green Bay Packers in each of the last two seasons. That doesn’t appear to be sitting very well with Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst.
The Green Bay general manager appeared to be a little salty after receiving a question at the NFL combine about chasing the Lions in the NFC North.
“Around here, we’ve never hung banners for division championships, so it’s never been about that,” Gutekunst told the media, via The Athletic’s Matt Schneidman, on February 27. “It’s a nice starting point, but I think we’re always looking for bigger things.”
Schniedman stated on X (formerly Twitter) that he didn’t view the comment as a diss at the Lions. But MLive.com’s Benjamin Raven argued it will likely be difficult for any Lions fan to believe that.
“Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst might not have been intentionally trying to take a shot at their division rivals and the reigning NFC North champions,” Raven wrote. “But it’s hard not to take his recent comments that way from the scouting combine.”
The Lions raised a banner celebrating their 2023 NFC North title at Ford Field and their practice facility.
Lions End Division Title Drought
Before the 2023 season, the last time the Lions won a division title, the NFC North didn’t exist. Detroit captured the NFC Central crown in 1993, which meant some players on the team’s roster weren’t even born yet when the Lions last won a division title.
Obviously, winning division titles isn’t the ultimate goal. No member of the Lions organization has said that it is.
But a division title is still an achievement, and if a franchise hasn’t done that in a while, it’s worth celebrating.
In the case of the Packers, though, they won 15 division titles from 1994-2021. With that success, expectations rose beyond just wanting to capture a division crown.
So naturally, the Packers haven’t raised a banner for each division championship.
Neither approach of celebrating division titles or shrugging them off is wrong. That’s because each is based on a team’s expectations and past success.
“In Green Bay, it’s a yearly expectation at this point, and no amount of erased generational demons by the Lions can change that fact,” wrote Raven.
“That said, the Lions are in a much different spot than the Packers, with a rabid and hungry fanbase begging for anything resembling a winner. They just won their first division title in more than 30 years, winning multiple playoff games in the same campaign for the first time in the Super Bowl era, coming 30 minutes of competent football from playing for a Super Bowl.”
Lions-Packers Rivalry Growing?
The Lions and Packers have been division rivals since the creation of the league’s first divisions in 1933. But it’s been a one-sided rivalry for much of the Super Bowl era.
Under Detroit head coach Dan Campbell the past few years, though, the Lions-Packers rivalry seems to be growing. Although Green Bay won at Ford Field on Thanksgiving in the most recent rivalry matchup, the Lions had beaten the Packers in four straight prior to that.
In Week 18 of the 2022 season, the Lions edged the Packers, 20-16, at Lambeau Field to eliminate Green Bay from playoff contention.
Looking at 2024 and beyond, the Lions and Packers possess the two most complete rosters in the division. If Kirk Cousins leaves the Minnesota Vikings, the Lions and Packers will also clearly have the best two quarterbacks in the NFC North.
That could mean the Lions and Packers battling for the division crown in the foreseeable future. That should be a heated battle even if Gutekunst wants to minimize the importance of a division crown.
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