Dallas Returns to Lambeau Field for a Matchup of Ages

With a controversial 24-20 win at home over the Detroit Lions, the Dallas Cowboys propelled themselves into the divisional round of the playoffs. Being the highest seed remaining from the NFC's Wild Card Round, they'll face the Green Bay Packers on the road this Sunday.

The game was monumental for the Cowboys, who haven't participated in the playoffs since the 2009 season, a year before the Packers would win a Super Bowl on their field, AT&T Stadium, then known as Cowboys Stadium. In nearly two decades, their match against the Lions was only their third postseason win.

On the flip side, Detroit has only one playoff win on its record since 1951, a 1991 matchup against Dallas. When Detroit failed to seal a victory in a game they led by 14 points in the first quarter, it clinched the NFC playoff schedule, sending the Carolina Panthers to face the Seattle Seahawks.

Packers fans will reminisce over highlights of previous games against the Cowboys throughout the week, as opposed to any semblance of history the squad has with Carolina.

The Panthers franchise, which started playing in the NFL in 1995, has played Green Bay 13 times in its existence. The Packers won nine of those matches. Looking at the list from a surface level, the only memorable game is the 1996 NFC Championship, the first head-to-head between the teams, which sent Green Bay to New Orleans in search of a Super Bowl.

Dallas' record against the Packers is damn near the opposite. The teams have faced each other six times in the playoffs. The first two battles decided who would go to the first two Super Bowls, and both were won by Green Bay, who would eventually win the pair of Super Bowls, too. The second match, tabbed the "Ice Bowl," is noted as one of the NFL's best games of all time.

Squaring Bart Starr against Don Meredith and Tom Landry against Vince Lombardi, the 21-17 subzero victory is deeply entrenched into the allure of both the league and the Packers.

After seeing each other in back-to-back years in 1966 and 1967, the postseason rivalry took a break for 15 years, reemerging in the 1982 divisional round, the Cowboys' first win over the team in the playoffs.

Again, the series took a break, only to be visited in three consecutive years in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Once more, Dallas left with wins in all of those games.

So, since that historic Ice Bowl, the Green and Gold haven't accomplished much, if anything, against the team. With four straight playoff losses on their resume, some would think that Green Bay's chances of winning this weekend should be rethought, but what happened in 1982, a year before quarterback Aaron Rodgers was born, doesn't hold much weight in 2015.

As far as the regular season is concerned, the Packers are on a three-game win streak, winning 17-7 in 2009, 45-7 in 2010 and 37-36 on the road in 2013 under Matt Flynn, who started for an injured Rodgers in a dramatic come-from-behind heartbreaker for the home Dallas squad.

When looking at the recent past between these two teams, memories do begin to spring up. If Flynn's comeback doesn't jog your memory, maybe it's Rodgers' entrance on Thursday Night Football as a backup taking over for Brett Favre, the iron man who needed to take the rest of the night off due to a separated shoulder.

The game seemed to be a passing of the torch when everyone realized the California quarterback could throw with the best in the league. The next offseason, Favre retired, unretired and was told the lead gig was given to Rodgers. Then he was traded. There's a case that the Cowboys match just a year before was the beginning of the era we're now entrenched in.

I'm sure Packers fans are happy they get to see these two teams go at it once more this weekend, if for no other reason than the stories people will remember and tell over the course of the week.