I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING, EITHER.

Sometime during that difficult October stretch for the Green Bay Packers, perhaps it was after that beatdown from Minnesota or perhaps it was one of those close losses to teams with comparably poor records, I observed elsewhere on social media that it was a young team, with players still jelling, and the test for their continued development might take the form of close losses to Detroit and Kansas City, as part of that development is learning how to stay close to objectively better teams.  Then comes the learning to win.

I don't mind being wrong about that meditation.  First came that game at Detroit.  The Packers won the toss, took the ball, took the lead, and didn't relinquish it.

Next, Kansas City came to Green Bay on Sunday night, with Carrie Underwood singing about a "Lambeau showdown," Taylor Swift making an entrance to the skybox, and Simone Biles in parka along the sideline.

Kansas City won the toss, deferred, and the Packers took the ball, took the lead, and didn't relinquish it.

When the Green Bay Packers were 2-5, general manager Brian Gutekunst said Jordan Love had a "very important 10 games" coming up to finish the season. It was the kind of thing a GM says because he has to. Even if he still believed in Love, very few others did at that point.

It's not like Love was playing well and the Packers were losing. He was a big part of the Packers' terrible record. Maybe the biggest part.

When is the last time a quarterback entirely changed the narrative about his future in about a month?

Love has come alive and so have the Packers. The Packers got a huge upset, knocking off the Kansas City Chiefs 27-19 on Sunday night. The Packers held on in a wild final two minutes with the Chiefs trying to score and tie the game. Love continued his fascinating hot streak, throwing three touchdowns and looking like a totally different player than we saw the first two months of the season.

The Packers are 6-6, have a very soft upcoming schedule with no teams over .500 remaining and unless there's another 180 coming in their season, they're likely going to the playoffs in the NFC. It's a remarkable turnaround for the team, led by the quarterback who was struggling badly over the first two months of the season to replace Aaron Rodgers.

Of course there are other factors in Love's sudden improvement. The offensive line has been way better. Christian Watson got healthy and has been making plays, which made it frustrating to see him leave Sunday night's game in the fourth quarter with what appeared to be a hamstring injury. The Packers' defense did a good job against the Chiefs and has looked improved.

That's Frank Schwab, a sports betting pundit, and he probably does not live in Packer Nation, where we recall Aaron Rodgers's first season learning curve.

If you watched Love's first game against the Detroit Lions this season, or his three-interception fiasco against the Las Vegas Raiders, or when he and the Packers put up 17 points in a loss to the Denver Broncos or 10 points in a loss to the Minnesota Vikings, you would not have predicted Love emerging as an exciting potential cornerstone weeks before Christmas.

That's why the Packers let it be known he still had 10 games to make an impression. It took him only five.

We'll see. Next up, another prime time game, Monday night in New Jersey, and the Packers ought to be looking for payback after being exposed by the Giants in the first game of King Charles III's reign.

The much-maligned defense might be jelling as well.

The Packers came into the game with a slightly different approach than most teams that play the Chiefs. They decided to play their defense the way they normally do and not double-team tight end Travis Kelce most of the game.

It resulted in Kelce getting wide open a couple of times, but his four catches for 81 yards didn’t do a lot of damage. Mahomes’ longest completion of the night was 27 yards and his other receivers averaged just 7.6 yards per reception.

“We just played our defense,” said slot corner Keisean Nixon, who made the defensive play of the game, anticipating a sideline route and making an over-the-shoulder interception catch to snuff out a Chiefs drive with just over 5 minutes left in the game. “We didn’t bracket him or anything like that. Go look at the tape.”

As is almost always the case, the Packers didn’t shut down everything. Running back Isiah Pacheco rushed 18 times for 110 yards and a touchdown before getting kicked out of the game for throwing a punch at Nixon, who instigated the whole thing by refusing to let Pacheco up from the ground after he fumbled (he was ruled down after a review, but the personal foul and ejection stood).

But just like in the Lions game, they made life for the quarterback difficult. Goff coughed up the ball three times in that game. And in the Chargers game, the Packers benefited from some dropped passes, but they also swatted away a pass on fourth-and-1 to seal the victory.

“We’re playing the whole 60 minutes and doing whatever it takes,” outside linebacker Rashan Gary said. “We’re trying to keep everyone to that standard and that’s doing what we’ve got to do to win ballgames.”

I didn't see a lot of cuts to the skybox where Mr Kelce's main fan was looking on. That ejection for punching was part of a comedy of officiating errors that turned a fourth quarter that was running as expeditiously as a Hiawatha into a 40 minute slog with lots of replay reviews, officials conferring, and for all I know somebody wishing King Charles could order "off with his head!"

During that final drive, Mahomes scrambled to the right to try and pick up a first down after the play broke down. He caught a lane and instantly broke toward the first-down marker on the sideline.

Right before Mahomes stepped out of bounds, safety Jonathan Owens drilled him hard. That led to a 15-yard personal foul penalty.

Though hitting a quarterback who is clearly giving himself up, or any player who had already stepped out of bounds, will lead to a penalty every time, Mahomes hadn’t done either of those things. He was still in bounds when Owens hit him, and he had lowered his shoulder toward Owens in an attempt to gain more yards. The hit was clean, and it should have been legal.

Owens was hit with the penalty, which extended the drive for Kansas City.

Official Brad Allen was asked after the game about that call, and said that the "covering official believed that the defender made late and unnecessary contact" with Mahomes.

Then a few plays later, the Packers got away with what should have been pass interference. Had it been called, the Chiefs would have been within the 10-yard line and in a great position to tie the game late.

Mahomes launched a deep ball for receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling down in the middle of the field. But as Valdes-Scantling went to make the catch, Packers cornerback Carrington Valentine grabbed Valdes-Scantling's back and jumped through him to successfully deflect the pass. By all accounts, that was pass interference that officials did not call.

I wonder if anyone in the league office is going to send a strongly worded note to NBC taking issue with one of the broadcasters referring to that non-call as a make-up call for the call on the non-foul.  Ryan Young of Yahoo Sports noted, "Though the missed calls didn’t end up swaying the game the other way — they sort of evened themselves out in the end — the final drive was incredibly chaotic all around."

I surely didn't have "Packers in the playoff mix" in my thinking earlier this fall, and yet here we are.

The Vikings, Rams, Seahawks and Packers are all locked up at 6-6 and battling for the sixth and seventh playoff spots in the NFC (both wild-card slots). Though the Falcons are also 6-6, they wouldn't be part of the equation as leaders in the NFC South and would be sitting in the No. 4 seed, with 9-3 Dallas holding the No. 5 (and first wild card) spot.

The joys of having unbalanced schedules, plus compensatory scheduling with the Packers getting a third-place schedule this year.  The idea is to achieve parity.  The reality is there sometimes will be eleven or twelve win teams going on the road as a wild-card and a team with a losing record winning its division.  The in-division scheduling in the closing weeks helps, with Philadelphia playing Dallas, Atlanta playing New Orleans, and the Packers going to Minnesota.  The Rams are already done with Seattle.

To determine tiebreakers among teams in different divisions, the first maneuver is to apply division tiebreakers to arrive at just one team per division. The Vikings have (for the moment) a head-to-head tiebreaker with Green Bay and would represent the North, while the Rams have beaten the Seahawks twice. The Vikings and Rams haven't faced each other, but the Vikings have a better record against NFC teams and get the No. 6.

Now, the remaining three teams go back into the shuffle for the No. 7 spot. The Packers represent the North and the Rams represent the West. Green Bay has the head-to-head advantage and gets the No. 7.

The article goes through the playoff possibilities, should you be interested.  All that matters now is to win and keep playing, beginning with Monday in New Jersey.