The Green Bay Packers win over the Lions was not only one of the longest games I've watched in a while (around 3 hours and 45 minutes) but it broke so many records that I'm having trouble keeping up with them all. The one for most passing yards in NFL history, and the other one for quarterback yards and touchdowns, are notable, and they've put Matt Flynn and Matthew Stafford in the record books.
FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | Audibles at the Line: Week 17. While watching this battle between Flynn and Stafford, Danny Tuccitto remarked that one of the NFL network's top 10 quarterback duels was the Monday night game in 1983 featuring the Packers and the Redskins. The battle between Lynn Dickey and Joe Theismann. The stats weren't as gaudy for those quarterbacks, but they still lead their teams in a higher scoring game.
Throughout the 1980s, the Packers were an also-ran franchise. They never had more than 8 wins in a season, and with the exception of the goofy 1981 strike year, they were never a playoff team. They weren't on the same level as a team like the Redskins. But for that one game, on national TV (back when that was a big deal), the Packers went toe-to-toe with a team that would usually blow them out. That was probably the highlight of the decade for the Packers.
So I'm a little disappointed that a meaningless week 17 game against the Lions, before which they held out three of their best players because they weren't needed, in some way surpassed that seemingly epic 1983 game. On the other hand, it shows how the Packers are that team to which others aspire.