I looked into my backyard upon getting up this morning, and it was colored green and gold.

The season opener for the Super Bowl XLV champion Green Bay Packers is tonight against Super Bowl XLIV champion New Orleans. The Packers won Super Bowl XLV over Super Bowl XLIII champion Pittsburgh, 31–25.

(As I write this, by the way, I am planning no additional post today on President Obama’s much vaunted jobs speech tonight. Obama will say nothing he hasn’t already said, and nothing that in its proposed form will pass Congress. Those who watch the speech will be wasting your time.)

Before we move on to whether the Packers will be the NFC representative at Super Bowl XLVI, right down Interstate LXV from Chicago (which will not be visiting Super XLVI unless they buy tickets), we should pause to recall how truly amazing winning Super XLV was. Just getting to Super Bowl XLV required winning five consecutive games — the last two regular-season games and three road playoff games, two against teams that had beaten the Packers earlier that season.

The Packers limped into the playoffs with the sixth NFC seed, and no NFC sixth seed (I’m glad I’m writing this and not saying this) had ever gotten to the Super Bowl. Teams fight to win games so that they can host playoff games, not play them on the road, and the Packers had not won a single road playoff game since the 1997-season NFC Championship.

And this was after a regular season in which the Packers had (seemingly inexplicably) lost to NFC North doormat Detroit, lost a home game, and lost their best running back and tight end. To think the Packers, one of the youngest teams in the NFL, were a Super Bowl team in early January seemed like the little boy presented with a barn full of horse manure who digs in excitedly under the rationale that there has to be a pony in there somewhere.

Dallas defensive lineman Larry Cole once described a rookie quarterback’s taking the Cowboys to an improbable win as a “triumph of the uncluttered mind.” Maybe one of the youngest rosters in the NFL didn’t know they weren’t supposed to be able to get to the Super Bowl. Maybe this is the football gods’ payback to Packer fans for the 2007 season, when the Packers should have gone to the Super Bowl but did not after the unspeakable home NFC Championship overtime loss to the New York/Jersey Giants; they shouldn’t have even gotten to Super Bowl XLV, but now there is a fourth Lombardi Trophy at Lambeau Field.

Several things are now certain. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ 2009 season proved that he could play quarterback as well as any quarterback in the NFL. (He now has as many Super Bowl rings as Brett Favre.) Coach Mike McCarthy may look like a second-generation bar owner, but has not merely the technical expertise (including adaptability, given that without running back Ryan Grant the Packers may have had the worst running attack of the previous 28 Super Bowl champions) but the motivational art to win under difficult circumstances. (One of the greatest motivational moves in the history of the NFL came the night before Super Bowl XLV, when McCarthy had his players sized for their Super Bowl rings.) And after more than half a season of utter confusion, the Packers now know how to play the 3–4 defense (or coordinator Dom Capers’ diabolical variations thereof).

The reason no one has repeated as a Super Bowl champion since Denver won Super Bowls XXXII (which we won’t discuss here) and XXXIII is that, to quote a longtime sportswriter, winning one Super Bowl means you play 16 Super Bowls the next season. Inevitably some of the Super Bowl ring-wearers decide they had a bigger role in the team’s success than they actually did and head to (financially) greener passages. Add to the fact the kind of luck that follows around champions usually lasts just a season.

On the other hand, short of a Rodgers injury beyond one probably-going-to-lose-anyway game, could the Packers have had a more calamitous season injury-wise than 2010? The Packers’ leading rusher in  2010, Brandon Jackson, had all of 703 yards. The team averaged 100 yards rushing per game, 24th in the NFL, and was outgained on the season. (Somewhere Vince Lombardi is demanding “What the hell is going on out there?!”)  The Packers’ offense ranked just ninth in yardage and 10th in scoring.

No Packer coach has gotten much of a reputation as being a defensive genius. (Lombardi, Mike Holmgren, Mike Sherman and McCarthy were all offensive coordinators before going to Green Bay.) But remember the axiom that offense wins games but defense wins championships, and consider that Capers’ 3–4 defense was fifth best in yardage and second best in points, and that the Packers were second best in turnover ratio. And, by the way, they played the second half of Super Bowl XLV without their defensive leader, cornerback Charles Woodson, and did not fall apart.

Go back two paragraphs to the paragraph about the offense, and consider that injured running back Ryan Grant and tight end Jermichael Finley are itching to contribute to a Super Bowl team. The Packers won a Super Bowl with a far-from-great offense that is likely to get better. The team appears to be reaching that promised land where the upward sloping graph of experience and the downward sloping graph of skill meet.

My crystal ball (which correctly predicted 6–10 in 2008 but refused to bow to the Super Bowl hype and predicted, uh, 8–8 last year) sees a 12–4 season, with losses at Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and the New York/Jersey Giants. That should be enough to win the NFC North, even with rapidly improving Detroit and always-difficult Chicago. (Although the Bears could have a 2011 crash like the Vikings had a 2010 crash — literally in the case of the deflating Metrodome.)

Atlanta is probably the most skilled team in the NFC, and Philadelphia spent big on the free agent market to improve. They appear to be the Packers’ biggest roadblocks on the way to Super Bowl XLVI, along with possibly tonight’s opponent, the Saints. The conventional wisdom says one of them will get to Indianapolis and not the Packers. Then again, I didn’t get around to predicting a Super Bowl until the NFC Championship game, so call me a pigskin pessimist.