Packers running back Eddie Lacy finished with 63 yards rushing and a touchdown in Green Bay’s victory over Washington. Credit: Rick Wood

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Green Bay — It makes for a great storyline.

The Green Bay Packers offense, inept the second half of the season, finds itself in time for a NFC wild-card playoff victory at Washington. Suddenly, the Packers are on a roll as they move to the next round and seek revenge against an Arizona Cardinals team that whipped them by 30 points two weeks ago.

The mood was upbeat around Packers headquarters as the team began preparations for a divisional game Saturday night at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. But behind the scenes, the Packers have to deal with the reality that the Cardinals dismantled them so badly that the hangover carried into the winner-take-all NFC North title showdown with the Minnesota Vikings the next week.

The offense seemed to gain its footing against Washington, which was missing three of its top six cornerbacks, and now gets the chance to show its 346-yard performance was no fluke. In beating Washington, 35-18, the Packers scored their most points since a 38-28 victory over Kansas City in Week 3.

If there is a benefit to playing a team that crushed them, 38-8, two weeks prior, it's that the Packers have done most of their research on the Cardinals already. They will study Arizona's 36-6 loss to the Seahawks in Week 17, but they have the luxury of focusing much of their six-day practice week on perfecting what they do.

"Really, we're just coming in watching the Seattle game and going back and watching our game, and going back and checking, going through the cutups, just identifying some things," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said Monday. "Frankly from an offensive standpoint, because of the way the second half went, we still have a lot of offense from the first game that we never got to.

"So I guess there is a silver lining in that."

The biggest difference in what the Packers did offensively Sunday against Washington and what they did in their previous 10 games was play a West Coast-style offense. Instead of relying on long-developing option routes and scramble plays, they went to a rhythm passing game.

After a poor start in which they gained seven yards on 13 plays, quarterback Aaron Rodgers started winning some first downs and dominating second down with short timing throws. He completed 7 of 18 passes for 78 yards on first down and 9 of 9 for 83 yards plus a 20-yard pass interference penalty on second down in the final three quarters.

"Yeah, it's all about playing on time," McCarthy said. "I thought our first and second-down production was up but our third-down conversion I didn't think was very good. The ability to generate first downs and play at tempo, that's what our offense is conditioned to do.

"We talk about it all the time. You look at baseball, how many attempts at the plate can we get? The more attempts at the plate that we're going to get with our offense and Aaron Rodgers, we feel we have the opportunity to score a lot of points."

Despite injuries on the offensive line, McCarthy hadn't been calling quicker-developing pass plays or wasn't convincing Rodgers to stick with them when they were called because the offense just could not sustain drives. Rodgers scrambled less against Washington than he had been and was hit just twice all game, a huge turnaround from previous weeks.

McCarthy said that he began including Rodgers in Tuesday game-planning sessions with the coaches recently to get his input on how to attack the opponent. It's possible it was a way to help get on the same page with Rodgers and help him see that throwing in rhythm instead of trying to turn everything into a big play was the best way to go.

"It's definitely helpful," McCarthy said of having Rodgers around. "He's played a lot of football. He's got a great football mind and he asks good questions, and questions are important in those meetings, because it can be dry.

"I mean he can dust off this and that (idea), throw it in, 'We've done this, we've done that.' To me, that's the worst mistake coaches can make, when you just don't go through the process."

Both McCarthy and Rodgers almost certainly can expect Arizona's fifth-rated defense to put up a better fight than Washington's No. 28 unit. The Cardinals sacked Rodgers eight times, picked him off once and held him to 151 yards passing on 15 of 28 attempts in the first meeting.

Unlike Washington's secondary, Arizona's cornerbacks, led by Pro Bowl player Patrick Peterson and veterans Jerraud Powers and Justin Bethel, will be pressing the Packers' receivers all game long, making long routes more difficult. Peterson matched up with Randall Cobb most of the day and neither James Jones nor Davante Adams was a factor against the Arizona secondary

After all three receivers played a significant role in the victory Sunday, there's hope they will be more of a factor this time around.

"Here's what I know: I know our guys will be ready and up for the task," offensive coordinator Edgar Bennett said. "Obviously you certainly go back and look at the tape of the first game, you learn from it, you make certain adjustments and corrections. But moving forward, again, the mind-set is to go to Arizona to win, period."

The fast-tempo, quick-passing game that ignited the offense in Washington could be a tool to help the offensive line. However, there's a chance left tackle David Bakhtiari (ankle), who missed the first meeting, will be available this week, and even if he isn't, center JC Tretter came through in a big way Sunday starting his first game at left tackle.

It might mean better protection for Rodgers.

Somehow, the Packers have to figure out a way to get in good down-and-distance situations so that their running game can be a factor, too. Eddie Lacy had 12 carries for 60 yards in the first Arizona game before the deficit got so big the running game was abandoned, so there's some evidence the Packers will be able to run it.

Lacy and James Starks combined for 116 yards and two touchdowns and Cobb tossed in 24 more on five carries in what proved to be a very balanced rushing attack in Washington. The running game and passing game accounted for the same amount of first downs (11), which is the epitome of balance.

It needs to continue.

"I think certainly playing at a high level last night, it helps in knowing that again, we're capable of playing at that high level every single time we step on the field," Bennett said. "We've got to have another great week of preparation the same way we did this week coming into this last game, and I think our guys know what it takes.

"We have some tremendous veteran players that have been in these situations before. We know what it's like, what it's going to take, and I think we'll get it done."