The best games and moments of the Packers-Cowboys rivalry since the Ice Bowl

Sunday should be cold in Dallas for the Green Bay Packers' wild-card playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys, with a long-term forecast calling for a high of only 46 degrees and a low in the 20s.

That might seem frigid for Texas, but it's no Ice Bowl. Few things are.

The 1967 NFL championship game, which launched the Packers into Super Bowl II, remains one of the most iconic moments in sports and the deep-freeze archetype that represents Packers football.

Played in minus-13 temperatures and wind chills approaching minus-50, the nail-biting 21-17 win over the Cowboys came down to a sneak by Bart Starr with 16 seconds left on third-and-goal. Jerry Kramer and Ken Bowman threw the blocks that helped make it happen.

If we're running down the greatest moments in the Packers-Cowboys rivalry, we'd be irresponsible to put that anywhere less than No. 1 on the list. But this is a storied rivalry that has a lot of other memorable chapters.

More: The Ice Bowl, 50 years later: An oral history of the Packers-Cowboys 1967 NFL Championship Game

More: Has Ken Bowman been denied proper credit for the greatest block in Green Bay Packers history?

Mike McCarthy's return (2022 season)

For the first time since he was fired as Packers coach in 2018, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike McCarthy was back, this time leading Dallas into Lambeau Field in 2022. The Packers won in overtime, 31-28, when Christian Watson caught two fourth-quarter touchdowns to tie the game (part of a three-TD day for the rookie) and Mason Crosby won the game in overtime with a chip-shot field goal.

Aaron Jones waves goodbye (2019 season)

It was $10,527 well spent. Aaron Jones ran for a franchise record-tying four touchdowns as Green Bay topped Dallas on the road, 34-24, and his third score included a wave goodbye to Dallas’ Byron Jones as he headed to paydirt for the third time in the game. The NFL fined Jones for the action. “I’m going to have that blown up one day in my house,” Jones said. “I definitely got a nice picture out of it, but it hurts my pocket a little bit. I want that money.”

The LMAO game (2017 season)

It was made immortal thanks to the Snapchat posted by an unbothered Oshkosh man attending the game, rightfully believing that 1:13 was enough time to mount one last comeback. Though Dallas took a 31-28 lead with that much time on the clock, Aaron Rodgers immediately led the Packers down the field and into the end zone, where a Davante Adams touchdown with 11 seconds left gave Green Bay a 35-31 win.

Aaron Rodgers finds Jared Cook (2016 season)

Is it Rodgers' greatest pass as a Green Bay Packer? It's awfully hard to top the combination of skill and stakes. On third-and-20 from the Packers' 32-yard line, Rodgers rolled out of the pocket and found tight end Jared Cook for a 36-yard seed along the sideline, with Cook's feet tapping the ground in bounds before he fell to the sideline to stop the clock with 3 seconds left.

Mason Crosby drilled a 51-yard field goal — his second-longest of the game after an earlier 56-yarder — and the Packers knocked off the top-seeded Cowboys in the divisional round of the playoffs, 34-31.

Dez Bryant didn't catch it (2014 season)

Before a disastrous showing against Seattle the following week, the Packers caught a major break against Dallas at Lambeau Field in the divisional round. It looked as if Tony Romo had completed a remarkable fourth-down pass with 5 minutes to go in the game down near the Packers' goal line. Dez Bryant made a diving catch along the sideline, matched up with cornerback Sam Shields, and bounced into the end zone. It wouldn't have been a touchdown, but was it even a catch?

After review, officials ruled that Bryant didn't control the ball all the way through, a play that's been heavily debated in the years since. The Cowboys would have had a first-and-goal opportunity; instead, Green Bay ran out the clock and forced the Cowboys to absorb a 26-21 loss. Three years later, the NFL rewrote the rule to clarify that it would be a called a catch from then on.

The biggest comeback since 1982 (2013 season)

Green Bay's 2013 heart-stopping finale win over the Chicago Bears to reach the playoffs doesn't happen without Green Bay's shocking win in Dallas two weeks earlier.

Down 26-3 at halftime, Eddie Lacy and backup quarterback Matt Flynn (who'd been signed off the street earlier in the year) engineered the team's biggest comeback since 1982. Flynn found James Jones for a touchdown with 4:17 left in the game, and Lacy added a go-ahead score with 1:31 left after Shields intercepted Tony Romo on the possession in between. When Tramon Williams intercepted Romo again with 1:24 left, the Packers had cemented a 37-36 stunner.

Aaron Rodgers, welcome to the big stage (2007)

In 2007, playing on "Thursday Night Football" in Texas, Brett Favre suffered an elbow injury and a dislocated shoulder that knocked him from the game, forcing backup Aaron Rodgers onto the field. Green Bay didn't win, falling 37-27 to end a six-game winning streak, but Rodgers acquitted himself nicely, completing 18 of 26 passes for 201 yards and a touchdown. The Cowboys won the game and Favre was back the following week, but the Packers got their first glimpse at a promising future.

It's Green Bay's show now (1997 season)

The Packers have owned the rivalry with the Cowboys lately, and certainly in the early stages of the Super Bowl era. But in the 1990s, it was all Cowboys. Dallas eliminated the Packers three times from the playoffs, then beat Green Bay again for good measure on "Monday Night Football" in 1996, 21-6, marking one of only three losses for the eventual Super Bowl champion Packers that year. The Packers didn't even allow a touchdown that day; Dallas got seven field goals from Chris Boniol.

But in 1997, it was officially time for a new era. The Packers throttled Dallas, 45-17 at Lambeau Field, with Favre throwing for four touchdowns and Dorsey Levens finishing with 190 yards rushing and two all-purpose scores. The Packers would be back in the Super Bowl later that year.

A near miss in NFC title game (1995 season)

For the third time in as many years, the Packers were eliminated by Dallas in the postseason, but this was the closest Green Bay had gotten yet to the promised land with Favre and Reggie White on the roster.

After Robert Brooks caught a touchdown with just more than 5 minutes left in the third quarter, the Packers had a 27-24 lead. But the Cowboys reclaimed the edge with a 90-yard touchdown drive and, when Favre was intercepted by Larry Brown on the next series, Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman found Michael Irvin for a 36-yard touchdown and a two-score lead. It ended with a whimper and a 38-27 loss, but the Packers were on the doorstep, and they proved it by breaking through to the next two Super Bowls.

The Cowboys won the Super Bowl, but that's the last time they've appeared in an NFC Championship Game. The Packers, meanwhile, have played in eight more since.

The Jason Garrett game (1994)

It became a dubious moment in Packers history when the Thanksgiving game went so awry. It appeared Green Bay would have the upper hand with Aikman injured and replaced by backup Jason Garrett. But Garrett, the future Cowboys coach, threw for 311 yards and two touchdowns, and the Packers saw a 24-13 lead in the second half disappear in a 42-31 loss, despite four touchdowns and no interceptions by Favre. The Packers would lose to the Cowboys in the playoffs, as well.

James Lofton's reverse (1982 season)

Lynn Dickey pitched to Eddie Lee Ivery, who handed the ball on a reverse to receiver James Lofton in the divisional round of the 1982 playoffs. The electrifying Lofton weaved his way through would-be tacklers and scampered 71 yards for a touchdown against the Cowboys, cutting the deficit to 23-19, but Dallas answered with a touchdown, just as they did after Mark Lee's 22-yard interception return later in the fourth quarter. The 37-26 score belied how exciting the finish was for a Packers team that hadn't been in the playoffs in a decade.

A stunner against a Super Bowl qualifier (1975 season)

Green Bay came into the meeting 0-4, while Dallas was 4-0 and in the midst of a season that would end with a loss in Super Bowl X. But somehow, the Packers found a way at Texas Stadium. John Hadl's 26-yard touchdown pass to Rich McGeorge with 1:52 left accounted for the winning points in a 19-17 win, the only win Bart Starr ever had as a coach against Dallas. Larry McCarren forced a fumbled punt that allowed the Packers to take over at the Dallas 31-yard line in the final minutes, and two plays later, Green Bay had the lead. The Packers still finished the year 4-10.

An Ice Bowl rematch on Monday night (1968 season)

In a rematch of the two Ice Bowl participants eight months later, Starr threw four touchdown passes with a national TV audience watching on Monday night — no, it wasn't yet "Monday Night Football" officially, but it was part of the league's experiment to test out the Monday night format. The Packers won 28-17, but perhaps it can be seen as a last hurrah.

Green Bay lost its next two games and four of its next five, and Vince Lombardi had already stepped down as head coach. The Packers finished 6-7-1 that year, while the Cowboys finished 12-2 and were in the midst of a dynastic run that would include four straight trips to the conference title games from 1970 through 1973, with two Super Bowls and one championship. Three more Super Bowls (and one title) would follow from 1975 through 1978.

The goal-line stop to reach the first Super Bowl (1966 season)

If someone said "Packers vs. Cowboys in the NFL championship game just before the merger," you'd picture the Ice Bowl, right? But we should still mention the year before, when the Cowboys had a fourth-down, last-gasp snap from the 2-yard line, looking to tie the game in the final seconds.

Dave Robinson nearly sacked Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith and instead coaxed an errant pass that Tom Brown hauled in for an interception in the end zone. Green Bay won the thriller, 34-27, and advanced to the first Super Bowl.

Imagine how history changes if it's Dallas in that first AFL-NFL title game. It was Green Bay's 10th NFL championship.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The best games and moments of the Packers-Cowboys rivalry