Packers vs. Cowboys playoff preview: Mike McCarthy squares off in opposition to former crew – USA TODAY

No crew has been extra dominant at residence this season than the Dallas Cowboys, successful all of their eight video games at AT&T Stadium to increase a streak that now goes again 16 video games. Solely two this 12 months have been one-possession video games, and the Cowboys scored at the least 30 factors in all however one. 
Dallas now has an opportunity to hold over that success with at the least one residence playoff sport for the NFC East champions and No. 2 seed behind the San Francisco 49ers. 
Head coach Mike McCarthy truly already has a postseason victory contained in the constructing. Nevertheless, it got here for the crew attempting to finish the Cowboys’ season subsequent weekend.
The Inexperienced Bay Packers punched their postseason ticket with a victory over the Chicago Bears on Sunday and earned the convention’s No. 7 seed. McCarthy received Tremendous Bowl 45 as head coach of the Packers, the place he coached from 2006 till his firing after Week 13 of the 2018 season. 
Jerry Jones employed McCarthy in 2020 and the Cowboys have gone 12-5 in every of the final three seasons. This 12 months marked the second division title – and residential playoff sport – of the McCarthy Period. 
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As a part of one of many youngest groups within the league, few present Packers gamers known as McCarthy “coach.” Working again Aaron Jones is one. Left sort out David Bakhtriari is the longest-tenured Packer, however he’s out for the season with a knee ailment and hasn’t performed since Week 1. 
McCarthy himself is not shopping for into any narratives in regards to the matchup.
“The drama of it, I’m positive (the media) will love,” he mentioned Sunday. “However I cannot take part in it. It’s playoff time. It doesn’t matter who play, to be trustworthy with you.”
The groups performed in one of many NFL’s most historic video games, the 1967 championship sport, a 34-27 Packers victory dubbed “The Ice Bowl” for the sub-zero temperatures of the day. 
Since then, they’ve met within the postseason seven extra instances. The winner of this weekend’s sport will break the 4-4 impasse. Dallas received 4 in a row and ended the Packers season in three consecutive years from 1994-96 earlier than Inexperienced Bay took the final two. The latest was a 34-31 victory engineered by McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers that led to a game-winning Mason Crosby kick as time expired within the 2016 divisional spherical; Dallas had entered because the NFC’s No. 1 seed. 
McCarthy went 125-77-2 with the Packers and 10-8 within the playoffs. Inexperienced Bay employed Matt LaFleur to interchange McCarthy, and the Packers had three straight 13-win seasons with little playoff success earlier than a 8-9 marketing campaign in 2022. This marks the franchise’s fourth time in 5 years advancing to the postseason beneath LaFleur. It is the primary with Rodgers’ alternative, Jordan Love, as quarterback.

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