GREEN BAY — You've seen it in sports: Teams put so much into home-field advantage and getting to the Super Bowl, that if they fall short, they emotionally can't recover.
On Monday, Lance Allan of TMJ4 Sports asked Packers GM Brian Gutekunst that very question. After exit interviews, does he feel the team will use it as motivation, or will it be too tough of a mountain to climb? Bottom line: He doesn't think that this will be a fatal blow to the psyche of the Packers, that they can recover from it next season.
"Yeah, I don't have any doubts that this team will recover," Gutekunst says. "Obviously, every year is unique in its own way and there's a lot of work that goes into each year. So once guys get back to work, I think the sting of this loss will, not that it will ever leave them completely, but they'll be working towards different goals and I think will you know, help get over some of that."
Gutekunst continues: "I will say, you know, the sting of this game and with our players, it was for me to see that how much it mattered to these guys is always something I appreciate. It's not always that way. But these guys cared very, very much. This one hurt them deeply. This was very important to them. And it was very disappointing to them as we know, walked off that field into the locker room. So, I know we got a lot of the right guys in that locker room, who care a lot about what we're trying to accomplish, and that gives me great hope for the future."
By the way, Gutekunst says "there's no truth whatsoever" to the story that came out over the weekend about the Rams making a run at Aaron Rodgers, but the Packers refused.
