Packers Feeling Different Sort of Urgency After Loss to Eagles

The Green Bay Packers are 5-3-1. In a normal season, that might be something to be happy about. After all, if the regular season ended today, they’d be preparing for a playoff game.

The problem?

This isn’t any other season.

Brian Gutekunst said it plain as day during the offseason.

"I think, for me, the thing that’s been on my mind as we’ve concluded this season is we need to continue to ramp up our sense of urgency,” Gutekunst said.

“These opportunities don’t come (very often). The life of a player in the National Football League is not very long. We’ve got a bunch of good guys in that locker room, got a bunch of talented guys in that locker room, and I think it’s time that we start competing for championships.”

The last line was the big one. It was time to compete for a championship.

The front office put its money, and its draft choices, where its mouth was when Gutekunst traded two first-round picks and Kenny Clark to acquire All-Pro defensive end Micah Parsons, then gave him the largest contract in NFL history for a player who does not play quarterback.

The message from Gutekunst was simple. The time is now.

Where does the onus fall after that?

The head coach and the quarterback.

Jordan Love was the hand-picked successor to Aaron Rodgers in the 2020 NFL Draft. The pick was met with scrutiny that is not worth re-hashing.

Two-and-a-half years into his run as the starter, Love has proven a capable quarterback. They reached the playoffs in both years as the starter, with his lone playoff win coming in his first season at the helm.

The Packers came into that season playing with house money. The likelihood of competing for a championship in the first year post-Rodgers was minimal, at best. That win over the Cowboys changed everything. Green Bay’s arrow was pointed skyward after winning seven of its last 10 games, including the postseason, with Love looking every bit like a franchise quarterback.

The Packers went from a team that had no expectations before the 2023 season to playing with the Super Bowl-or-bust weight placed on their shoulders again entering 2024.

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur looks on from the the sidelines against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night. | Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

You know the story from there. The Packers did not meet expectations in 2024. They won 11 games but lost all six against the best teams in the NFC. They were largely non-competitive for four of those games, with the season ending against the same team it started against, the Philadelphia Eagles.

The trade for Parsons before this season was supposed to vault them into a position as Super Bowl favorites. A statement win over the Detroit Lions in the first game of the season only made the noise surrounding the team louder. With a dominant defense led by Parsons and an explosive offense with LaFleur and Love at the controls, this team looked destined to compete for a championship.

Fast forward to November.

The Packers have won five games in 10 weeks. Their offense looks stuck in the mud. It cannot score in the first half. The last two weeks, it could hardly score at all, managing a feeble 20 points in back-to-back home losses to the Panthers and Eagles.

Monday’s game against the Eagles was a chance to wash the bad taste out of their mouth from an embarrassing home loss as a double-digit favorite against the Panthers.

The Eagles are the defending Super Bowl champions and beat up the Packers twice last season. A win against them could have done wonders if there was any remaining doubt about this team’s ability to hang with the best teams in the NFL.

In 2010, Mike McCarthy famously said his team was “nobody’s underdog” before a matchup against the juggernaut New England Patriots without his starting quarterback. The Packers played inspired football that night. While they did not win, the message was clear that McCarthy believed in his team.

After a 10-7 loss against the Eagles on Monday night in which the offense looked lifeless, LaFleur had a different approach.

“Unfortunately, he said, there’s absolutely no moral victories in our sport, but I was proud of our guys’ effort,” LaFleur said. “I thought they battled for four quarters. We knew it was going to be a four-quarter fistfight. I thought our defense was outstanding and, unfortunately, just too many mistakes offensively to overcome it.”

LaFleur is right. There are no moral victories in the NFL. There are no moral victories in the place he works, either.

This is Titletown.

The goals are simple on a yearly basis. The Packers either win the Super Bowl or their season is considered a failure.

LaFleur’s statement about moral victories sounds like something a heavy underdog would say after nearly pulling off a massive upset against a team that even the coach thinks is superior.

The Packers are not supposed to be a heavy underdog. These are the teams they were supposed to not only throw punches with but deliver knockouts against.

It is time to start competing for championships, remember?

The reality of the situation is damning. Since being anointed Super Bowl contenders at the start of the 2024 season, they are 1-7 in games against the league’s best teams.

They have a big win against the Lions to start this season, but that’s it.

Simply put, that’s not good enough.

Quarterbacks and coaches often get too much credit when things are going well, and all the blame when things go bad.

That’s the nature of the business. LaFleur and Love both knew what they signed up for.

In this city, they name a street after you when you win. That’s what coaching in a city where the trophy is named after its most famous head coach is like.

Love has done some nice things in his career.

LaFleur has won a lot of regular season games.

Box score numbers look great. Advanced numbers look good.

All of those things are nice but, at some point, they don’t put together the most important stat in the most important column.

LaFleur and Love haven’t won enough.

Now with their backs against the wall, it’s time to save their season. Or, perhaps in LaFleur’s case, his job.

“I’ll leave that for everybody else to decide,” he said. “I’ll just focus on the day-to-day and try to do -- I feel like you’re always coaching for everything in this league, you know?

“That’s just my mindset. It’s always been that way. You can’t ever exhale. You got to always be pushing. That’s just my mindset and that will be my mindset until they tell me not to coach anymore.”

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