Packers Searching for Points as Passing Game Continues to Struggle
"Offensively, we’ve got to find a way to score points because I think any time you hold somebody to 17 points, I think that’s enough to win football games in this league."
That was part of coach Matt LaFleur's opening remarks after the Green Bay Packers lost 17-13 to the Las Vegas Raiders on Monday night.
The defense, for as much scrutiny as it faces on a weekly basis, did its job. The Raiders only scored 17 points. The defense racked up three sacks and an interception of Jimmy Garoppolo. It held Davante Adams to four catches for 45 yards.
Heck, their run defense, which is notoriously putrid, held Josh Jacobs to 69 yards on 20 carries.
It's a game any functional NFL offense should have won.
The Packers, however, are not a functional NFL offense.
Through the first seven quarters of the season, they certainly looked like one.
They scored 31 points against Chicago, with another seven coming on Quay Walker's pick-six.
They added another 24 against Atlanta before the wheels fell off in the fourth quarter.
Through the first two games, Jordan Love led the NFL in passing touchdowns and quarterback rating.
Since then, the offense has driven into a ditch.
Love and the offense were shut out through three quarters in their home opener against the New Orleans Saints. A miraculous comeback helped overshadow the struggles the offense faced through most of the day.
The come-from-behind victory didn't lead to anything significant four days later against the Detroit Lions. The division-leading Lions showed these young Packers just how far they have to go when they raced to a 27-3 lead in the first half.
The Packers scored 17 points in the second half, but the game had mostly been decided.
Monday night's debacle in Las Vegas might have been rock bottom for a young offense.
With two starters on the inactives list, the Raiders were playing with a patchwork secondary that had to elevate two defensive backs from the practice squad before the game started.
The Packers, on the other hand, had their full arsenal of pass catchers. Sure, running back Aaron Jones was inactive, but that should not have mattered against a Raiders defense that was playing left-handed.
Instead, it was the same old story for this Packers' offense.
It couldn't establish any semblance of a rhythm in the first half. It scored three points on its second drive of the night, but that was all it could muster in the opening 30 minutes.
"Yeah, I mean, obviously, searching for a little bit of answers right now," LaFleur said.
"I think this week will give us an opportunity to kind of go back and, you know I thought we did that over the mini-bye. But, we’ve got to find something to get us going, to jumpstart us."
The first half in general has been a struggle for the Packers. They’ve scored 26 points in the opening 30 minutes of their five games, with 20 of those coming in the first two weeks. They were shut out by New Orleans and managed a field goal against Detroit and Las Vegas.
Love finished with 182 passing yards against the Raiders. Of those, 77 came on one play in which the Raiders dropped Christian Watson in coverage.
Packers passing offense has struggled to find its way
Photo by Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA Today Sports Images
"I'm not sure what they were doing there. It had to have been a busted coverage." Watson said.
"I have to find a way to make a play,” he added. “I think my number was called way too many times tonight for the plays that I made. I have to make more plays than that."
Watson is right. He needs to make more plays, and so does the rest of the passing game.
While the focus has been on Green Bay's anemic run game after the first five weeks, the quickest way to scoring points is through the air.
Prior to Watson's 77-yard play, the Packers’ receivers had two catches for 13 yards.
They have yet to have a 100-yard receiver in a single game this season. Love has topped 250 passing yards once.
After not turning over the ball in the first two games, Love is one interception behind the Raiders’ Jimmy Garoppolo for the dubious lead league.
Love thinks that's something that can be fixed, but his decision-making, a question mark coming out of college, is coming into focus as he starts more games.
"Just decision-making with the ball. That one was a very bad read, obviously. The guy’s sitting right there, I threw it right to him." Love said.
"The one later in the game that got tipped, the DB made a good play, he broke on it, but (I was) still forcing that one in there. The last one, trying to make a play to go win the game. But, yeah, I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to take care of the ball. And, you know, not taking care of the ball hurts our team. So, I’ve got to be better in that area."
Love is right. Taking care of the ball is what LaFleur has called a quarterback's top priority.
That has to be an even bigger priority when the offense is searching for an identity.
AJ Dillon and the offense is searching for an identity.
USA Today
The Packers don't run the ball well. They are in the bottom half of the league in passing yards per game.
Add it all together, and the Packers are averaging 25 points per game. That’s a solid number. However, if you remove the opener against Chicago which is, at this point, a clear outlier, that number shrinks to 18.7, putting them in the same area as the Zach Wilson-led New York Jets.
The margin for error is painfully small.
"It just seems like we’ve put ourselves in those situations quite a bit over the course of the first five games of the season," LaFleur said.
"That’s tough to overcome in this league, especially when you have a lot of youth on that side of the ball. I’m not trying to make excuses for it. We’ve got to do a better job to avoid those situations and really not put ourselves in them."
That's part of the growing pains the offense will go through in its youth movement, but it needs to find something it is able to lean on.
If it can't, there will be more games like Monday night's.
One touchdown and 13 points isn't going to win many games. The Packers need more from their offense, and it's up to their coach and new quarterback to find those answers.
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