As I watched Aaron Ripkowski barrel towards the end zone earlier today, dragging a number of Falcons’ defenders with him, I and the rest of Packer Nation, were on our feet. Sure our team was on the road. Sure our team was down 10-0. But this was it. The offensive spark that was sure to crack open the whole game and make this the shootout promised, not the lopsided donnybrook it was shaping up to be. Just as Green Bay had started slow against New York in the Wild Card Round to come back from a 6-0 deficit, so too would they now douse Atlanta.

So imagine the collective shock of millions of Packers fans when the ball was wrenched from Ripkowski’s grasp, turning what would’ve been a 20-30 yard run into a turnover that would cement the tone for the rest of this game: Atlanta was the boss.

Now, credit where credit is due, and rightly so, Atlanta has been one of the best teams in the NFL this season. But it seems to me that the Packers do this kind of thing to themselves on a consistent basis.

In the playoffs following the 2011 season, Green Bay (despite finishing 15-1 and having the #1 seed) was defeated by the Giants 37-20.

In the 2012 playoffs they were decimated in the Divisional Round by the 49ers 45-31 (that score mitigated by a Greg Jennings garbage time touchdown).

The next three seasons brought much closer games, but all were decisive losses: 23-20 Wild Card loss to San Francisco (2013), 28-22 overtime loss in the NFC Championship to Seattle (2014), and another overtime loss this one 26-20 to Arizona in the Divisional Round (2015).

And now the absolute shellacking at the hands of a rising Falcons team, final score 44-21.

Now I confess, I am a layman. I have never played football myself, nor am I by far any sort of football pundit. However, in my estimation there’s a pattern here and it sits squarely in the hands of two men: Ted Thompson and Dom Capers.

In the years since the Packers have won the Super Bowl Capers’ defenses have ranked as follows: 32^nd (2011), 11^th (2012), 25^th (2013), 15^th (2014), 15^th (2015), 22^nd (2016). The last time that Green Bay had a top 10 defense was that same year they won the Super Bowl, having the 5^th ranked defense in 2010.

The cause of such a tumble? Two fingers to point: Ted Thompson letting the roster fall into a general talent malaise, and Dom Capers continuing to run a system that has grown rusty.

Ted Thompson is a frustrating general manager as most Packers fans will agree. He makes his boon in the draft. He insists on trading away higher draft picks for lower ones to get more warm bodies on the roster, trading quality for quantity. He then refuses to sign free agents to fill the gap that he’s been unable to fill in the draft, instead promoting second, third, sometimes even fourth-string players. Do you know who was guarding Julio Jones (a number 6 overall pick) for the majority of the day today? Undrafted sophomore, LaDarius Gunter.

Now, I know draft position is no certain indicator of stock. There are plenty of players throughout the NFL who were either drafted late or not drafted at all, only to go and have extremely successful careers. LaDarius Gunter is not one of those players and he showed it numerous times on the football field. Frankly, it wasn’t fair of Thompson to let Gunter ever reach more than backup status by not filling the team’s needs and it’s not fair to Gunter that Dom Capers continued to play him.

But LaDarius Gunter is just a microcosm of any number of lower-skilled players that the Packers have played consistently throughout the years. Jared Abbredaris. Brandon Bostick. Chris Banjo. The list goes on. These players have been forced to forefront for one reason: Ted Thompson’s inability to fill in his draft fails with quality free agents.

Since Ted Thompson took over, and prior to this season, there had only been eight unrestricted free agents that have signed and played in at least one game for the Packers. Meanwhile, Thompson has let a number of spectacular Packer free agents go (Josh Sitton and Casey Hayward just to name a few from this past offseason).

I ease a little on Dom Capers. An organization works from the top down and Ted Thompson has not stacked Capers’ deck with the right cards to win. Still, creative defensive coordinators are able to pull more out of their hat than what Capers puts on the field. Matt Patricia, Patriots’ defensive coordinator, has had success despite Bill Belichick’s own unique draft strategy. Rod Marinelli has had a degree of success in his three years in Dallas, especially in 2014 when his “no name” defense helped power the Cowboys to a 12-4 record.

To add insult to injury, the contemporary equivalent to the Packers, the New England Patriots, have just reached their 9^th Super Bowl in franchise history, their 7^th under the quarterback-head coach/general manager tandem of Brady and Belichick. The only teams who’ve made the playoffs in all of the past eight years are the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers. In that time span, however, the Patriots have appeared in six AFC Championship games, winning three of them. Green Bay has only appeared in three NFC Championship games, winning one. And if Tom Brady wins the Super Bowl on February 5^th, it’ll be his fifth ring to Rodgers one.

The reason? The Patriots defensive rankings over the last three years: 13^th (2014), 9^th (2015), 8^th (2016).

In the end, it is this: Ted Thompson and Dom Capers have done wonderful things for the Green Bay Packers. They delivered a Super Bowl to Titletown for the first time since Make Sherman, Ron Wolf, Favre, and White were the haymakers. What they’ve built has contributed to a consistent playoff machine that’s become an omnipresent force in the league. But as they’ve established a model of consistency, teams with superior defenses (Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, etc.) have passed them by and reaped the rewards.

The solution is a simple and straightforward one: fire Ted Thompson. Fire Dom Capers. Give Green Bay a chance to win again.