Matt LaFleur, Jordan Love Address Fourth-And-1 Debacle Against Eagles

GREEN BAY, Wis. – On fourth-and-1 on Monday night, the Philadelphia Eagles knew what was coming.

The Green Bay Packers did nothing about it.

The result was Josh Jacobs getting devoured in the backfield and allowing the Eagles to escape Lambeau Field with a 10-7 victory.

Coach Matt LaFleur defended the turn of events that sealed the Packers’ fate.

On Thursday, in the middle of a question about whether the play should have been changed or a timeout been called, LaFleur interrupted.

“We do that all the time offensively. We know when corners are coming, we know when backers are coming,” he said before practice. “This is not like the first time in the history of football that people know what’s coming. That happens pretty regularly, I would say. It’s film study, it’s things that happen in-game.

“Bottom line is you’ve got to be able to block it. Sometimes, it’s not easy, but sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s just the bottom line. That’s football.”

On the play, right guard Jordan Morgan and tight end Luke Musgrave, two of the blockers at the point of attack, were pushed into the backfield. Jacobs lost 4 yards and fumbled while trying a desperation lateral to quarterback Jordan Love.

“It changed my mind on how I’m going to run the ball, if we’re just being honest,” Jacobs said after the game. “It makes me kind of like guess what I’m going to do.”

Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs is stuffed on the pivotal fourth down against the Eagles. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

What needs to happen to prevent the opponent from knowing what’s coming? And what should happen if the Packers are in a similar situation?

“Well, we got to come off the ball. I think that’s the No. 1 thing is you got to come off the ball,” LaFleur said. “It’s not like the first time we’ve ever ran that play. Certainly, you can do things in terms of changing up how you call it with your code words to try to hide it, and we’re constantly tinkering with that.

“Like I told you guys the other day, it’s the same play we scored a touchdown on. Unfortunately, they got a better jump off the ball and we never allowed our runner to get to the line of scrimmage. I’m thinking that if he gets to the line of scrimmage, he’s going to get a yard.”

In a nutshell, LaFleur believes the Packers would have been fine if they had simply blocked better. And he’s probably right, but with the game on the line on a do-or-die fourth down and the Eagles having figured out the Packers’ verbiage for inside zone, a timeout would have allowed the Packers to line up with at least some element of surprise against the defending Super Bowl champions’ defense.

LaFleur talks frequently about the importance of putting his players in position to succeed. With the game on the line, his players were in position to fail.

While replays show an opening to the left, at the moment Jacobs got the ball, Jalen Carter was overpowering Morgan and had his head in the hole. Therefore, the read is to run it where he did. Jacobs has some regret, anyway.

Fourth-and-1 run to Jacobs doesn't have a snowball's chance because the Eagles know what's coming and the blockers get mauled. pic.twitter.com/eiUJMxUxag
— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) November 11, 2025

“Obviously, you always could do things differently,” Jacobs said on Thursday. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to make the play. That’s always how I look at it. If the game is on the line, they trust you with the ball, you’ve got to make the play. And it really is just as simple as that.

“And if I was going back, then I would have just, sh**, ran. Obviously, just ran. So, it is what it is. I mean, hindsight’s 20/20. We say that now, but we never know. But I just know now, if I’m ever in that position again, or ever in any type of position, either to win a game or to have a great impact on a play to win the game or put us in position to win the game, I know how I’m going to go about it.”

Speaking on Wednesday, Love was on the same page as LaFleur. There are times when a defense knows what’s coming and the offense has to win, anyway. That mantra was a backbone of Vince Lombardi’s philosophy.

The game has changed, obviously, over the last six decades. These aren’t the Glory Years Packers. These Packers are 5-3-1 with a suspect offensive line and a sputtering offense.

“There’s times for sure throughout the course of the game where the D-line might be calling out what they think the play is. That happens a lot of times in the game,” Love said. “That’s not ever going to deter me from running the play. They might be guessing, but that was a play we called on the ball a couple different times.”

While time was of the essence, it also wasn’t critical. The ball was snapped with 1:30 on the clock. Had the Packers burned one of their two remaining timeouts to get into a better play and Jacobs picked up the necessary yard, they would have had a first down at the 45 with about 1:25 to play.

At that point, they could have hustled to the line and perhaps had 1:10 to gain the 23 yards necessary to give Brandon McManus a 50-yard field goal.

That’s an eternity with one timeout, the sideline and the ability to clock the ball.

Instead, the Packers ran straight into defeat.

“At the end of the day, they could hear the calls, as well,” Love said. “We’re making a call right there, in that 2-minute mindset, where we’re trying to go fast and get that first down. I’ve got the belief in our O-line that we can go create a hole, that we can go get that 1 yard that we need.

“It comes down to just execution. Obviously, we’ll look at some of the things we do no-huddle and clean some of that stuff up, so teams can’t catch onto what we’re doing.”

It was a disastrous finish for the Packers, who had a chance to force overtime. A month earlier at Dallas, the Packers forced overtime by 1 second after Love was too casual with the final seconds ticking away.

For the Packers to make any noise against the high-quality opponents that remain on the schedule and would stand in their way if they reach the postseason, they are going to have to run the ball with more consistency and they must tighten up their end-of-game process.

A start would be making the plays less obvious.

“Yeah, it’s frustrating,” Love said. “I think if you have a bad performance on offense and you win the game, it might not be as frustrating. But I think you go back and you look at the film and there’s still so many areas you look at as an offense and you’re like, ‘We’ve got to clean this up.’ I think you compound that with an ‘L’ and, obviously, the defense playing a pretty good game and us not being able to put up points right there makes it more frustrating.

“It’s two weeks in a row we haven’t scored as many points as we need to to win the game. I think that all being said, it’s frustrating, but I still think we’re right there where we need to be. We’ve just got to find ways to finish with touchdowns, limit the turnovers, finish with the ball on every drive and we’ll be where we want to be.”

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