23-20 seems to be the theme of this football season for me. My favorite college team, Michigan, has had three games end with this score so far. Yesterday my NFL favorites from Green Bay had a game end this way as the Packers lost to Minnesota 23-20.

The Packers led 17-0 at halftime but let Minnesota creep back in it throughout the second half. The Vikings took a three point lead, the Packers came back to tie it and it looked like overtime. Not so fast, as Lee Corso likes to say, as the Vikings managed to get just close enough for a 56 yard game winning field goal as time expired.

This game was yet another painfully close loss for the Packers, who have five of those to go along with their one very convincing win over New Orleans. Brett Favre had a very good game against Minnesota, completing 28 of 36 passes for 315 yards, two TDs and no INTs.

Unfortunately, Brett got next to no support from the running game as Green Bay was held to a sickly 45 yards on 23 carries. This has been a problem all season.

The running game will be even further tested now that starting running back Ahman Green is out for the season, joining backup Najeh Davenport on the sidelines. The Packers will be forced to start third stringer Tony Fisher and will have to bring in additional reinforcements in the backfield.

Green Bay's defense looked good in the first half, forcing a turnover and keeping the Vikings off the scoreboard. The second half was a different story, as Minnesota scored on all their possessions and the Packer defense could not even preserve a tie with less than half a minute left.

The offense also became ineffective after the break, as Minnesota figured out that the Packers could not run the ball and concentrated on taking away Favre's passing.

What all this seems to point to is that the Packers just are not a very good TEAM right now. They have a future Hall of Famer at quarterback and he has given them at least a chance to win the five games they have come up short in. But there is only so much that even a player as great as Brett Favre can do, as I have mentioned before here. The running game and offensive line are still not playing well enough. Some of this is due to injuries, and with both Green and Davenport gone for the season things look even grimmer. The receiving corps has also been banged up and this has also been a negative factor.

The defense continues to show that they are not as abjectly horrible as last season, but they remain average at best and yesterday's second half was perfect proof of that. When they needed to shut Minnesota down in the second half they failed miserably.

Offense, defense, special teams...in all three of these areas the Packers are just not doing enough to win games. We will see what we will see as far as the rest of this season, but at this point it looks like a top five draft pick is much more likely than a playoff spot.

Oh well, at least this pretty much ensures that Ol' Number Four will be back for at least one more season...I just can't see him wanting to go out on too sour of a note.