Former Green Bay Packers coach Mike Holmgren still believes what he saw Aaron Rodgers do on a cold January night in Atlanta in 2011 was one of the greatest masterpieces ever produced by an NFL quarterback.

Rodgers burned the top-seeded Falcons to ground, completing 31 of 36 passes for 366 yards and three touchdowns. He rushed for a fourth score and danced his way out of a half-dozen sacks. The Packers finished with 48 points, easily dispatching the Falcons and earning a trip to Chicago for the NFC title game.

“I will say this forever. The playoff game against Atlanta a few years ago, that was maybe the best quarterback performance I have seen by anybody ever,” Holmgren said, according to Mike Sando of ESPN. “He dropped back, he ran, he threw on the run, he threw accurately, he got first downs.”

The Packers offense scored on seven of 10 possessions against the NFL’s fifth-best scoring defense. The three exceptions: A fumble by Greg Jennings after a long catch-and-run on Green Bay’s first possession, a missed field goal early in the fourth quarter and the one kneel down from Rodgers to end the game.

There was a stretch spanning the second and third quarters where the Packers scored touchdowns on five straight offensive drives. Four of the drives covered 80 or more yards.

Green Bay converted eight of 12 third downs and finished the game with 28 first downs. On several of the third downs, Rodgers escaped sacks and found open receivers to move the sticks.

Case in point:

“It was one of those nights,” Rodgers said after the game. “I felt like I was in the zone.”

To this day, Rodgers still references his performance in Atlanta as one of his greatest ever.

It will be difficult to beat.

The wave of destruction unleashed by the Packers during the second and third quarters might represent one of the most dominant 30-minute stretches of football ever crafted by the franchise.

Rodgers threw three touchdowns and ran for another, and cornerback Tramon Williams intercepted Matt Ryan for a pick-six right before the end of the second quarter. The Packers turned a 7-0 Falcons lead after the first quarter into a 42-14 advantage going into the fourth.

Packers play-by-play man Wayne Larrivee threw out his “Dagger!” call when Rodgers found fullback John Kuhn for a short touchdown with 2:49 left in the third quarter. The 13-3 Falcons hadn’t lasted 45 minutes in their own building against Rodgers and the eventual Super Bowl champions.

The Packers went on to outlast the Bears in the NFC title game and beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, where Rodgers crafted another masterpiece in North Texas. But as Holmgren knows, Rodgers’ utter dominance of the Falcons a few weeks earlier must still be recognized as the moment he showed the NFL world the height of his transcendent powers.