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Playoff-bound Packers remain hungry for more

Xavier McKinney, Josh Jacobs have bigger goals in mind

S Xavier McKinney
S Xavier McKinney

GREEN BAY – Xavier McKinney didn't need a playbook, team meeting or ticker-tape parade to know the situation the Packers safety was entering into was special earlier this year.

All it took was a single meal.

After his signing with Green Bay in March, McKinney and his family sat down for dinner with Head Coach Matt LaFleur, new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, fellow free-agent signee Josh Jacobs and a collection of Packers coaches at Lodge Kohler, located across the street from his new NFL home.

It felt like it, too.

"When the coaches have a good relationship with the players, that's how you know it's going to be a really good team," McKinney said. "I hadn't even met everybody on the team yet. I just was basing it solely off the coaches, how they interacted with me, how they interacted with my family, and just knowing that, I already knew it was going to be something special."

Seven interceptions and 11 wins later, McKinney recalled that dinner with fondness after a 34-0 shutout of the New Orleans Saints on Monday night, a victory that clinched the Packers their fifth playoff berth in LaFleur's six seasons at the helm.

The allure of the postseason helped draw McKinney and Jacobs to Green Bay after both made just one playoff appearance apiece with the New York Giants and Las Vegas Raiders, respectively.

In 2022, McKinney and the sixth-seeded Giants upset the Minnesota Vikings before losing to NFC East rival Philadelphia 38-7 in the divisional round.

The year before that, Jacobs made his lone playoff appearance under current Packers special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia, whose stint as interim head coach saw the fifth-seeded Raiders make just their second AFC playoff appearance in the last 22 seasons before falling to Cincinnati, 26-19, in the wild-card round.

Jacobs – the NFL's fourth-leading rusher with 1,216 yards this season – has been chasing another shot ever since.

"It's kind of hard to put into words, man. It's the main reason why I came here," Jacobs said. "Just here and seeing that everything is paying off, man, it's been huge. Doing it with this group of guys and this team, it just makes it all better, so I'm loving it. I'm enjoying the ride."

Most of the Packers' locker room has experienced both the agony and ecstasy of postseason play, including last year's prolific run to the No. 7 seed in the NFC playoffs that saw Green Bay knock off Dallas, 48-32, in the wild-card round.

A week later, Green Bay nearly upended top-seeded San Francisco before the 49ers rallied in the fourth quarter for a 24-21 victory.

The NFL's youngest team for the second straight year, the Packers took a clear mind and fresh approach into a 2024 season. The growth has been obvious in a team whose only losses this year have come to the three other NFC teams that have already clinched playoff berths: Philadelphia, Detroit (twice) and Minnesota.

Currently in sixth in the NFC playoffs, Green Bay is one game ahead of Washington (10-5) and two games behind the fifth-seeded Vikings (13-2), whom the Packers play this Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.

"We can do whatever we want to do. We write our own story at the end of the day," defensive tackle Kenny Clark said. "We've just got to keep on building. Each and every week, we're just trying to get better and be able to play our best football into the postseason. We've got two more games left; we've got to keep stacking these wins."

McKinney spoke for close to 30 minutes at his locker after the game Monday night, mentioning how he had to "scratch and claw" to get to the postseason in New York. Before McKinney could even finish that thought, however, cornerback Keisean Nixon interrupted the star safety from one locker over.

"Welcome to Green Bay," Nixon said.

Laughing ensued, but McKinney acknowledged the work is far from over. While Sunday's game in Minnesota and the regular-season finale against Chicago will decide the Packers' seeding, it's also about building momentum heading into the postseason.

Because the playoffs are not the ultimate goal. It's simply the boarding pass on a journey Green Bay hopes will end in New Orleans this February.

"We made it to the playoffs, but we want to do more than that," McKinney said. "We didn't go through everything we went through in OTAs, camp and even throughout the season all the different adversities that we went through throughout the season to just make it.

"We want to go all the way, and I believe we have the team to do it."

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