GREEN BAY, Wis. — The New England Patriots, with three consecutive blowout wins over first-place teams and seven consecutive wins overall, made their statement as one of the best teams in the NFL.

On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers made a statement of their own.

In a potential Super Bowl preview, the Packers made the key plays to beat the Patriots 26-21 on Sunday at Lambeau Field. It was the statement win over an excellent opponent the Packers had been searching for all season.

“Let’s be real: We beat a heck of a football team tonight,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. “With that, you get a little extra nugget of confidence that goes with it.”

In a battle between two of the hottest teams and best quarterbacks in the NFL, the Packers won for the eighth time in nine games as quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw for 368 yards and two touchdowns.

Needing a touchdown on a drive that started with 8:35 remaining, Patriots coach Bill Belichick rolled the dice on fourth-and-3 near midfield. The Packers rushed six but quarterback Tom Brady hit receiver Julian Edelman for a gain of 5. Then, on third-and-7, Brady connected with tight end Rob Gronkowski for 10. LeGarrette Blount then thundered for 12 to the Packers’ 21.

Brady nearly gave the Patriots the lead with a perfectly placed pass but Gronkowski lost control of the ball diving in front of safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, who helped poke the ball loose in the end zone. A sack on third down brought on Stephen Gostkowski, but he missed a 47-yard field goal with 2:40 remaining.

“Tom just threw it up,” Gronkowski said. “I tried to go up and make a play. I went under it. I am pretty sure I caught it but, at the last second, (Clinton-Dix) made a nice play and hit it out of my hands. It was a good play by him. When my number is called, I have to come down with that play.”

The Patriots, with two timeouts and the two-minute warning, had a chance to get the ball back to Brady. However, the Packers were able to convert a third-and-5 with just over two minutes remaining when Rodgers found crossing wide receiver Randall Cobb for a gain of 7 against tight coverage from cornerback Kyle Arrington and safety Devin McCourty.

What the Packers said:

“It was just an awesome team effort. The guys on the back end held them up long enough, so he had to sit back on the pocket, and Mike Neal really came through with an awesome rush. They left me single-teamed. Datone (Jones) did a heck of a job taking up the double team. That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to capitalize whenever they try to put two on one guy. The guy who is single-teamed has got to capitalize, and that’s what we did. That’s just the tale of the game.” — DT Mike Daniels, on the third-down sack that thwarted New England’s final drive.

“First thing we do is look at each other and say, ‘We’ve got to make the stop, guys.’ We didn’t point any fingers. It happens. It was too good to be true. It happens. We looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve got to win this game.’ That’s what was said and that’s what we went out there and did. However we had to get it done, that’s how we got it done. There’s no blueprint on how you’re going to go out there and get the stop. At the end of the day, we knew we had to get one. We did what we had to do and made the plays.” — CB Tramon Williams, on the feeling after WR Davante Adams dropped a touchdown pass that would have put the Packers up 30-21 in the fourth quarter.

What the Patriots said:

“It is heartbreaking for us. Coming in, we felt like we knew what they were going to do. It was two great teams playing. When it comes down to the wire like that, you need to be critical of errors and you have to make sure that you are doing the job that you need to do. We did some good things, but tonight they made more plays than us. This was a big test for us. To go down to the wire like this is expected when you have two great quarterbacks and two great teams going at it. It was a dog fight.” — CB Darrelle Revis.

“We’re in a decent position. I think we really need to turn it up and just realize that every possession and every play is an opportunity, and if you don’t take advantage of it, you never know which play it’s going to be in close games like this that leads to losses. We have to win tough games and find ways to make the important plays when we have them.” — QB Tom Brady.

What we learned about the Packers:

1. The Packers are for real. They had won seven of their last eight but had fallen short against every team with a top-tier quarterback, with their three losses coming to Seattle’s Russell Wilson, Detroit’s Matthew Stafford and New Orleans’ Drew Brees and their biggest win coming against the Eagles and their backup quarterback, Mark Sanchez. Beating Tom Brady is the statement this team needed to make. “We finally seem to be carrying our own weight in light of how well the offense has been playing,” LB Clay Matthews said. “It’s great to see that we can string these together and we’re not riding the roller coaster that we’ve done maybe in the first half of the season. We’re feeling good. We’ve got playmakers on defense. There’s still room for improvement but it’s just about putting it together because we feel we can be just as good as anyone else out there.”

2. At 9-3, the Packers, Eagles and Cardinals are tied for the best record in the NFC, which puts Green Bay in position for the No. 1 seed and homefield advantage. Green Bay is 6-0 at home this season. “When we get that advantage at home, we’d like to make the most of it,” QB Aaron Rodgers said. “I think this year more than any other year we’ve really played exceptional at home. It’s a combination of knowing the footing, the crowd noise, the energy, the surroundings and being very efficient. It wasn’t the type of blowout we’ve had the last four weeks (at home), but nobody expected that. If we had done a little better in the red zone, we probably would’ve given our defense a little better opportunity to play one-dimensional football.”

–QB Aaron Rodgers extended two NFL record streaks. He has now thrown 360 consecutive passes at home without an interception and tossed 31 touchdown passes since his last interception at Lambeau Field, which came almost two years ago against Minnesota. Rodgers, the NFL’s career leader in passer rating, now has 220 touchdown passes and 55 interceptions for his career, a ratio of 4.00-to-1. Brady is second with 387 touchdowns and 140 interceptions for a ratio of 2.76-to-1.

–WR Jordy Nelson’s 45-yard touchdown reception just before halftime gave him 10 touchdowns for the season. Randall Cobb also has 10 touchdown catches this season, giving the Packers two wide receivers with double-digits touchdowns for the first time in franchise history.

–WR Davante Adams caught six catches for a career-high 121 yards since WR Jordy Nelson saw plenty of CBs Brandon Browner and Darrelle Revis and was limited to only two receptions. “I was uncomfortable in warmups,” Adams said. “I got a little adrenaline going, because of my heel injury earlier on in the week, so that was kind of holding me back a little bit. But once I got out there, I wasn’t even feeling it and I was just … oh, I was feeling it, but I wasn’t feeling the heel. I was real comfortable out there and started getting in the rhythm of catching the ball, and Aaron (Rodgers) was trusting me and relying on me to make some plays and get open.”

What we learned about the Patriots:

1. The Patriots entered the game with the best record in the NFL, and Sunday’s result does nothing to take away from the belief that they are the best team in the AFC. The Packers had hammered their last four games into submission by halftime, leading Patriots coach Bill Belichick to talk extensively this week about the need just to survive the opening 30 minutes. They did more than that, going blow for blow against the Packers. “That’s a good football team,” Belichick said, “and in the end they made a few more plays that we did tonight. I thought both teams competed hard, and I’m really proud of the way our guys hung in there right to the end. We just couldn’t quite make enough plays to come out on top and they did.”

2. Tom Brady is one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, but the Patriots probably should rely more on their running game. LaGarrette Blount rushed 10 times for 58 yards and seldom-used Brandon Bolden rushed three times for 17 yards and a touchdown against the Packers’ 30th-ranked run defense. Still, they threw 36 passes and ran the ball only 18 times.

–TE Rob Gronkowski caught seven passes for 98 yards. He had caught at least one pass in all 62 career regular-season games. He needs 90 yards to reach 1,000 yards for the season. WR Julian Edleman added seven receptions to give him 77 for the season, which puts him on pace for 103 receptions. He had 105 last season, which ranks sixth in franchise history.

–QB Tom Brady, who finished 22-of-35 for 245 yards, two touchdowns and a passer rating of 102.7, topped 3,000 passing yards for the season. That gives him 12 3,000-yard seasons for his career, which is tied with John Elway and Drew Brees for the fourth most in NFL history.

–LB Dont’a Hightower tallied 10 tackles, including three for losses, and one sack on a rare blitz, with New England frequently using a three-man rush to contain QB Aaron Rodgers. Hightower has 4.5 sacks, a career high.