Packers’ Offense Goes From Really Bad to Even Worse

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Seven points. In 60 minutes, the Green Bay Packers scored seven points in their 10-7 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.

Two touchdowns. In 120 minutes in back-to-back home losses, the Packers scored two touchdowns.

Other than a 10-point stinker at Cleveland in Week 3, the Packers had scored at least 27 points in each of their first six games. The wheels have come off, though, with a 16-13 loss to the Panthers last Sunday followed by the loss to the Eagles.

This was Week 10. The time of the season when a team should be stepping on the gas. Instead, the offense has veered into the ditch.

How is that possible?

“That’s a great question,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “I don’t think I’d be answering the question if I had the answers for it.”

The Eagles played soft zone defense, which should have allowed the Packers to move the ball efficiently, if not explosively, on the ground and through the air.

Instead, in the first half, the Packers had 20 net passing yards and went 0-for-5 on third down. Their five possessions ended with four punts and a turnover. In the second half, the Packers drove the ball down the field until they drove off a cliff.

“They’re just kind of waiting for you to mess up,” LaFleur said, “and, unfortunately, we messed up way too many times.”

For most of the first half of the season, LaFleur was waiting for his team to put together a complete game. Now, his offense can’t put together a complete series. When it wasn’t getting punched in the face by the Eagles’ front, it was kicking itself in the shins with elementary-level mistakes such as illegal-formation penalties, one of which turned a red-zone series into a punt.

The Packers had averaged 34.0 points in their first three primetime games of the season. They could have continued this game until Thursday and the Packers might not have hit 34.

To be sure, the Packers have issues on offense. Tucker Kraft’s on injured reserve. Jayden Reed’s on injured reserve. Matthew Golden was inactive. Romeo Doubs exited with a chest injury. The offense tried to rally with Christian Watson, Malik Heath, Savion Williams and Bo Melton as the receivers. On fourth-and-9 in the third quarter, Love threw a perfect pass to Melton, who dropped it.

It's not just the skill-position players. The offensive line is as bad as it’s been since the early years of Ted Thompson’s run at general manager.

There’s nothing that can be done about the injuries. The blame for the line either lies at the feet of general manager Brian Gutekunst, who assembled the unit, or Luke Butkus, who coaches the unit.

Whatever, the reality is Green Bay’s offense is not ready for primetime. Not even close. For the first time in the LaFleur era, the Packers scored less than 14 points in back-to-back games.

The Packers had a chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the final minutes, anyway. They were on the move with less than 2 minutes to go and faced a fourth-and-1 from the 44. The call was a shotgun handoff to Josh Jacobs. The result was Jacobs getting devoured almost instantly.

The execution was bad. The call was predictable.

Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs (8) fumbles the ball during the fourth quarter on Monday night. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“They called out our play,” Jacobs said. “We ran it like four times, they called it out.”

The Packers could have used a precious timeout. They could have changed the play. Instead, they stuck with a play that was doomed to fail.

Jacobs tried to bounce the run but didn’t have a snowball’s chance. He tried to lateral the ball back to Love to make something out of nothing, which resulted in a fumble.

“As a runner, it don’t ever feel good,” he said. “Whenever they know what we’re doing, it’ll never feel good because it changed my mind on how I’m going to run the ball, if we’re just being honest. If we’ve got code words or whatever, you hear it a few times, eventually you’ll react to it. That’s football but it’s never a good feeling.”

The Packers somehow got another chance to win the game, anyway, when Jalen Hurts inexplicably threw a bomb on fourth-and-6 with 33 seconds to go. The pass landed incomplete, and the Packers were given a chance to get to overtime but couldn’t take advantage.

The Packers finished the night with only 261 yards. A week after LaFleur lamented the offense going 1-of-5 in the red zone, the offense only reached the red zone once even though it crossed midfield on six of 10 possessions.

So, the Packers wasted a superb defensive performance. In Green Bay’s three losses, it allowed 13 points at Cleveland, 16 points against Carolina and 10 points against Philadelphia.

“It’s tough,” Love said. “It’s disappointing, it’s frustrating. You feel like as an offense you’re letting the defense down because they’re doing such a great job, obviously, against a really good offense over there. They stopped them for the majority of the game. We just didn’t find ways to score. It’s just not good enough. So, it’s definitely frustrating but we’ll find ways to overcome this and to be better, for sure.”

Jacobs, who didn’t think he’d sleep, is tired of hearing it.

“We’re midway through the season, we can’t just keep saying, ‘All right, we’re going to address it,’” Jacobs said. “We’ve got to find actual answers to our problems. I honestly don’t know what those answers (are). I feel like everybody’s got to dig deep and have the belief and give more. I mean, it’s not easy. We can’t live off of what we did last year or nothing like that. We’ve got to be in the moment.”

Time is running out. The Packers have plunged to third place in the NFC North and are clinging to the final playoff spot.

The Packers have a lot of questions. The seats are getting hotter. The man with the hottest seat of them all better find some.

“We’ve got to find solutions,” LaFleur said. “We’re going to keep on battling. I don’t sense any – there’s a lot of frustration, obviously, when you’re not performing to the level of winning football. But I do believe in the people in regards to finding solutions to try to iron this out. I’m confident that we can come up with something.”

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