Packers Report Card: Grades From Playoff Loss to Eagles

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers’ season ended in the most predictable fashion imaginable with Sunday’s NFC wild-card loss at the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Packers started slowly against a good team. They fought to the end. They fell short.
Here is our report card from Sunday’s game.
Passing Offense
In last year’s wild-card win at Dallas, Jordan Love’s 157.5 passer rating was the highest ever for a visiting quarterback in NFL playoff history.
In Sunday’s loss at Philadelphia, his 41.5 passer rating was the worst in Packers playoff history (minimum 20 attempts). It was even worse than Brett Favre’s six-interception debacle at the Rams in 2001.
Love finished 20-of-33 for 212 yards with zero touchdowns and three interceptions. To be sure, it didn’t help that Christian Watson was out with a torn ACL and Romeo Doubs and Jayden Reed were injured in the third quarter.
However, Reed and Doubs were on the field in the first half, when the Packers trailed 10-0 and Love was 9-of-15 for 70 yards. The lone big play during the opening half was a 20-yard completion to Reed in which he broke four tackles.
The first-half interceptions were both terrible. On the first play of the second quarter, Love went deep to Dontayvion Wicks on second-and-7. The ball shouldn’t have been thrown – Wicks wasn’t open – but Wicks did Love no favors by not making a play on the ball. Later in the second quarter, Love threw one right to linebacker Zack Baun. The third interception, coming late in the game, was irrelevant.
You’ve got to love Love’s competitiveness, whether it’s a third-and-12 scramble or continuing to sling it.
You’ve got to hate the passing game, though, which never got close to maximizing all the play-action opportunities that Josh Jacobs should have created. That’s got to be fixed this offseason.
Grade: F.
Rushing Offense
There was nowhere to run against the Eagles’ stout run defense for most of the game, yet Josh Jacobs managed to find 81 yards on 18 carries. He almost always finds at least a couple of yards. His ability to at least get it to third-and-manageable is why the Packers’ 53.8 percent success rate was the third-best on wild-card weekend.
Jacobs 31-yarder late in the third quarter, which set up his 1-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, shows the value of an elite running back. He turned a loss of 3 into an almost-highlight-reel touchdown.
Mostly, Jacobs did things by himself. According to Next Gen Stats, he had 84 yards after contact. That means he had minus-3 before contact.
How on earth did Tucker Kraft go from getting stuffed on a third-and-1 “quarterback” sneak to gaining 8 yards? The Eagles knew what was coming and had it stopped, only to be shoved backward by a green-and-yellow snowplow. There wasn’t much there on his fourth-and-1 conversion, either.
Grade: B-minus.
Pass Defense
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts started 6-of-6 for 39 yards and one touchdown. Starting with three incompletions to end the first quarter, Hurts went 7-of-15 for 92 yards and one touchdown the rest of the game.
What was bad was terrible. Hurts read a motivational book before firing a touchdown pass to Jahan Dotson for a touchdown to cap the opening drive. And Carrington Valentine will be immortalized in Philly sports lore for being abused by Dallas Goedert on a killer 24-yard touchdown late in the third quarter.
Once defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley figured out he couldn’t play it safe against Hurts, the pass defense showed its fangs. Hurts was under pressure for most of the game, with Hafley either sending extra rushers or presenting a six- or seven-man rush but only sending three or four.
According to Next Gen Stats, Hurts was pressured on 45.8 percent of his dropbacks, the third-highest rate during the wild-card round. In 11 under-pressure dropbacks, he was 3-of-9 passing, was sacked twice and produced 12 net yards.
That a secondary without Jaire Alexander wasn’t trounced by All-Pro A.J. Brown (one catch, 10 yards) and DeVonta Smith (four catches, 55 yards) was rather remarkable. Imagine what this defense could become with a real stopper.
Grade: B-plus.
Run Defense
Saquon Barkley seemed to be having his way with Green Bay’s powerful run defense for most of the game. Yet, when the Eagles came out to kill the clock late in the fourth quarter, Barkley’s 23 carries had produced 98 yards, a manageable 4.26-yard average.
Barkley mercifully slid to the turf rather than take his final carry 76 yards to the house. Still, the Eagles wound up with 168 rushing yards and a 5.0-yard average against a Packers defense that finished the regular season having allowed 99.7 rushing yards per game and 3.96 yards per carry.
Ultimately, the unstoppable force beat the immovable object, but it was a worthy battle.
Grade: C.
Special Teams
What a disaster.
Keisean Nixon fumbled on the opening kickoff return. Did he recover the loose ball? Replays indicated he did; the officials said he did not. Whatever. The larger point is he fumbled. Former Packers linebacker Oren Burks delivered a wicked tackle – credit him more than blame Nixon – but you can’t fumble, period, end of conversation.
The Eagles turned that into a touchdown. On the next kickoff return, Nixon ran a zillion yards only to get the ball to the 23. John FitzPatrick was flagged for holding on the cross-field/cross-country return, so the Packers started at the 13.
The one good play on special teams was Jayden Reed’s 20-yard punt return to the 43. The offense inched the ball downfield to set up a 38-yard field goal, which Brandon McManus pushed to the right.
McManus, whose last playoff game was the Broncos’ Super Bowl win almost a decade ago, signed with the Packers in part to get back to the playoffs. He was sensational in making 20-of-21 field-goal attempts in 11 games during the regular season. He’ll be a free agent; the Packers would be smart to bring him back.
The No. 1 rule for special teams – especially for franchises like the Packers, who always have mediocre to terrible special teams – should be don’t lose the game. Did the Packers lose because of their special teams on Sunday? No, but they sure played their part.
Grade: D.
Coaching
The Packers went 0-2 against the Eagles, Lions and Vikings – a combined 0-6 against the NFC’s three heavyweights.
In the two games against the Lions, the two games against the Vikings and Sunday’s loss to the Eagles, the Packers trailed by a combined 85-20 at halftime.
“I think that’s going to be a great reflection point this offseason,” coach Matt LaFleur said, “because, obviously, if we had the answers, it wouldn’t have been a problem, and for it to come up multiple times is disappointing.”
Disappointing is one word for it.
The best teams peak going into the playoffs. Instead, the Packers lost to the Vikings in Week 17, the Bears in Week 18 and the Eagles on Sunday.
LaFleur, like all coaches, loves to talk about complementary football. LaFleur’s offense and Rich Bisaccia’s special teams crushed Jeff Hafley’s defense under an avalanche of mistakes.
Unnecessary-roughness penalties by Keisean Nixon and T.J. Slaton, with the cold reality of defeat having set in, are a bad reflection on team discipline.
The Packers signed Josh Jacobs and Xavier McKinney in free agency and were rewarded with sensational seasons. LaFleur fired Joe Barry and hired Hafley and was rewarded with one of six defenses that finished in the top 10 in points and yards.
And their season ended a week earlier than last year, anyway.
You can argue whether or not this was a wasted season, but it’s impossible not to be at least a little concerned about a coaching staff that couldn’t beat any of the elite teams and almost didn’t win a divisional game.
Only Hafley’s belatedly aggressive approach saves the grade.
Grade: D.
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