Packers cornerback Casey Hayward (29) and safety Micah Hyde look to stop Jordan Reed after a play by the Washington tight end Sunday. Credit: Getty Images

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Landover, Md. — Every week for the past month hope stirs that Green Bay Packers cornerback Sam Shields will be able to return from a concussion and resume his role as the lockdown guy in the secondary.

Then the weekend comes and Shields hasn't passed all the phases of the NFL's concussion protocol.

And so the Packers go with rookies Damarious Randall and Quinten Rollins at the outside corner positions, veterans Casey Hayward and Micah Hyde in the slot positions and rookie LaDarius Gunter and second-year man Demetri Goodson as backups.

At some point, the group is supposed to fall apart.

But so far it has held up so well the Packers are headed to the divisional round of the NFC playoffs. On this Sunday, red-hot Washington quarterback Kirk Cousins couldn't cross through the teeth of the secondary enough times to make a difference in a 35-18 loss at FedEx Field Sunday afternoon.

"We'd be the same," Hayward said when asked how good the secondary would be with Shields back. "We've been playing well on the backend all season. I've been hearing a lot of people talk, talk on TV, saying neither one of these secondaries is any good.

"But I don't know what statistics they're looking at. We're ranked No. 6 against the pass. And every major statistic we're in the top 10. How can our secondary be not good?"

The Packers probably have some believers in Washington after holding Cousins to 182 yards passing and one touchdown through three quarters during the Packers' NFC wild-card victory. Only a wide-open fourth quarter in which Cousins threw for 147 yards allowed him to finish with 329 yards passing.

However, all four of Washington's drives in the final quarter resulted in no points, making even all those completions and yards meaningless.

"It's the playoffs, that's all you can say," Hyde said. "I don't want to say we have a chip on our shoulder, but you make the playoffs you've got to be able to play. It's win or go home. We don't want to go home."

To understand how critical it was to hold Cousins to one touchdown pass, you have to consider what he had accomplished over an eight-game span dating to a four-touchdown performance against New Orleans Nov. 15.

Cousins topped the 100-mark in passer rating in seven of the eight games and had completed 19 touchdowns against just two interceptions. He was averaging a healthy 9.4 yards per attempt during that span.

The Packers held him to a 91.7 passer rating and 7.2 yards per attempt despite having to play all six cornerbacks on the roster because Rollins was knocked out of the game because of a thigh injury and Randall exited for a while with an injured knee.

At that point, Gunter was at one corner position and Goodson at the other.

"It was us just pretty much playing football the way we were taught," said Gunter, who had a key third-down breakup on wide receiver Pierre Garcon's deep in-breaking route when Washington was still within 14 points late in the game. "It was pretty crazy. It was my first action this season. I felt pretty confident."

Cousins made the Packers pay for covering talented tight end Jordan Reed one-on-one with Hyde in the second quarter with a 24-yard touchdown pass down the middle of the field. And he was able to complete nine passes total to Reed for 120 yards.

But Cousins threw 17 balls to Reed and barely completed half of them.

"We didn't stop him," Hayward said candidly. "He's a good player. He's hard to tackle. He's a big guy. You don't feel like you want to put your linebackers on him or your corners on him. He's a matchup problem. We were bouncing off him early.

"But I think the thing we did, we rallied. That's the main goal. Run to the ball and we'll be fine. Just try to hold them to some field goals."

The other plan was to make sure that receiver DeSean Jackson didn't beat them for big plays. Jackson came in averaging 17.6 yards per reception, but the Packers held him to two catches for 17 yards.

It helped that the pass rush was strong, which allowed defensive coordinator Dom Capers to keep both safeties back much of the game, but the philosophy the corners had with Jackson and Garcon was not to let them run by them.

"We wanted to force them to run routes," Gunter said. "Don't let them fly by you. I think we did a pretty good job."

Hayward called the philosophy "top-down," meaning if the receivers were going to catch anything it was going to be underneath the coverage and not behind it. Cousins was completing 69.8% of his passes, but there was a reason for that and the Packers wanted it to play in their favor.

So, they were willing to let him throw it in front of the coverage as long as it wasn't beyond the first-down marker.

"You can watch on film, he checks down a lot," Hayward said. "That's why his completion percentage was so high. Not to take anything away from him because he's been playing well, but a lot of his completions are intermediate routes.

"We just rallied to the ball."

As a result, the secondary piled up stats.

Safety Morgan Burnett had 11 tackles. Randall had eight and a breakup, Hayward had seven and a breakup and Hyde had seven and a breakup. But no stat was bigger than the tackle Ha Ha Clinton-Dix had in the first quarter after Jackson beat Randall on a crossing route in the red zone.

Jackson was racing to the corner of the end zone but he was carrying the ball in his right hand and when Clinton-Dix got there he shoved Jackson out of bounds before the ball crossed the plane of the end zone. The Packers held on three straight plays and forced a field goal that held Washington's lead to 5-0 instead of 9-0.

"I was just trying to finish the play," said Clinton-Dix, who had two pass breakups. "That's the biggest thing in this league is play to the whistle. That's what I'm coached to do and that's what I'm trying to do."

Now, the Packers will head for Arizona where they gave up 260 yards passing and two touchdowns in a 38-8 loss. Fourteen of the Cardinals' points were scored on defensive touchdowns and star receiver Larry Fitzgerald was held to four catches for 29 yards.

But too many big completions were allowed to receiver Malcolm Floyd (6 for 111) and running back David Johnson (3 for 88).

Maybe Shields will be back. Maybe he won't. Maybe Rollins won't play. Whatever the case, this group of defensive backs doesn't seem to care. It will play with whomever shows up.