I'm certainly not saying this victory should be dismissed. It was great. Regardless of the strength of opponent, it was a short week, coming off an emotionally-draining loss on national tv, and the win was absolutely thorough: we dominated in nearly every aspect. This was exactly what we needed to do, and it could end up saving the season.
But what does it mean for the rest of the season? Is this team back on the playoff track we all expected before the year started? Kinda hard to tell from this game. It was a home win against arguably the league's worst team (personally, I'd put them second-worst after the Texans, even though the Texans beat them earlier this year), coming from across the country, with a rookie QB and a rookie head coach who looks way in over his head, and they lost their best player after four early carries. This wasn't exactly some epic triumph over adversity.
The bye week is coming at the right time. Unfortunately, our next game is at Lambeau against a Packers team on a seven-game winning streak, led by the reigning league MVP, and they just beat a 7-0 team without their top three wideouts (who are all expected back against us), top two corners, and two starting offensive linemen. Their head coach just set the NFL record for best winning percentage of all-time in their first 40 games. That is brutal.
And we HOPE we're getting our star QB back for it. And if Russ does return, we HOPE there won't be any lingering issues with his injury, but we really don't know. Russ has never even won at Lambeau healthy, and this is the first time in his career he has had to miss games.
A win would be absolutely incredible going forward, but this team will have to play a perfect game most likely. And I don't know that we can really afford the loss because the 3-5 start gives us so little margin of error. Realistically, we have to go no worse than 7-2 the rest of the way to maybe make the playoffs. We lose to the Pack, and suddenly that's 7-1 at worst we can be over the last eight games.
Season is nowhere near over, but I can't get on board with either extreme on the confidence spectrum.