The Packers defense, not Aaron Rodgers, has Green Bay thriving again. Can it last?

Week 12 was the Green Bay Packers’ “all is lost” moment.

Aaron Rodgers, the reigning back-to-back regular season MVP, was roughly as efficient as Mac Jones or Kenny Pickett behind center. A defense missing blossoming pass rusher Rashan Gary had given up 95 points and more than 1,300 yards in its last three games. Predictive analysts pegged their playoff chances at roughly three percent.

But like that moment in screenplays — the bottoming-out that suggests our protagonist is well and truly buried — it has merely served as the foundation for a rousing Hollywood comeback. The Packers have won four straight games and need one more victory, at home, over the Detroit Lions, to make it to the postseason for the fourth straight year.

It’s a stunning turnaround for a team that could have understandably written off the final third of the season and given backup Jordan Love an audition at quarterback. But while Rodgers has been the subject of most of the headlines regarding this turnaround — he always had faith! — he’s been a supplemental piece of that puzzle. Instead, Green Bay’s surge has come from a defense that’s wrought havoc against dynamic offenses in recent weeks.

That defense has only given up 17 points per game in that four-game win streak — an average nearly a full touchdown less that it was through Week 13 (23.6) and one that would rank second overall in the NFL. Granted, two of those games came against the hapless Chicago Bears and the Baker Mayfield-on-a-bad-day Los Angeles Rams, but the other two were the Miami Dolphins (a top two offense as recently as December) and the star-studded Minnesota Vikings.

The Packers have forced 12 turnovers in that span, generating the havoc to win those games despite being out-gained in three of them. Over the previous four weeks, the Green Bay defense ranks fifth by allowing -0.128 expected points added per play from its opposing offenses.

Let’s talk about how that’s happened — and whether the Packers can keep it up and make a playoff run.