A couple of days on, the dust still hasn’t quite settled after the Packers’ not-quite-loss to the Cowboys. Once again, the Packers played not quite badly enough to lose, but not good enough to win, either.

The phrase “playing not to lose” has popped up a lot in the online discourse I follow, and I think that’s a pretty apt description of how the Packers handled a lot of the time with the Cowboys. In overtime especially, it seemed like the team had no urgency to get the ball into the end zone, settling instead for running a few safe plays that could have resulted in a score if everything went right, but ultimately only got the Packers close enough to kick a game-tying field goal.

To be fair, had the NFL not shortened its overtime period to 10 minutes from 15 minutes just a few years ago,

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