Paul Bretl | 11/2/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — The Packers have found ways to win these last two weeks on walk-off field goals, but in part, they’ve found themselves in those situations is due to the inconsistent performance on the offensive side of the football.
A repeat performance this week against the high-powered Detroit Lions offense may prove to be too much to overcome.
“Anytime you’ve got a good offense on the other side, you know you’re going to need to put up points,” said Jordan Love on Wednesday. “Definitely just help the defense out. I’ve got faith in them they’re going to be able to get those stops. But definitely the goal on offense is to put up as many points as you can, because we know they can score in a hurry.”
Against the Houston Texans in Week 8, the Packers had six drives with fewer than six plays ran. The following week in Jacksonville, there were seven, which did include some scoring drives as well.
While overall, the Packers still rank sixth in points per game and fifth in yards per game, the up and down performances on offense aren’t new to the team this season either. Going back to the team’s Week 4 matchup with Minnesota, the Packers had 10 drives, whether they resulted in a score, turnover or punt that lasted fewer than five plays. The week after, versus the Rams, six of the Packers’ 10 possessions ended in three plays or fewer.
“I mean there are so many things,” Love said of the offense’s ups and downs. “You could break down every play of the game and find one little thing that we can improve on, so like you said, the consistency, I think, is definitely the most frustrating part. It’s part of the game, though. There’s highs. There’s lows.
“It’s definitely not ever gonna be perfect, but I think when we know there’s mistakes and mental errors that we’re having on our own end that it’s stuff that we can clean up, that’s the frustrating part, so just keep finding that consistency, keep trying to get better, improve on it, but I don’t think we’ve played our best performance yet, so we’re definitely still trying to hunt for that.”
One of the reasons that the Packers’ offense still ranks among the league’s best in several categories is because of the boom-or-bust nature of this unit. We see the dynamic playmaking ability this unit possesses with their ability to score quickly. However, this is a group that have also struggled to overcome setbacks on drives.
Generating explosive plays are great and often lead to points. The Packers will enter Week 9 having created the most explosive plays this season–an element that will be important in Sunday’s game against a Lions’ offense that leads the NFL in scoring. With that said, that can’t be an offenses only way for moving the ball either.
This boom-or-bust approach on offense seems to be stemming from issues on early downs–particularly first down. Whether it be a run play that doesn’t go anywhere, a penalty, or an incomplete pass that’s either off-target or dropped, the Packers are putting themselves in disadvantageous long down-and-distance situations.
The opponent gets paid to make plays too, but oftentimes, it is these self inflicted errors that are putting the Packers behind the sticks, which then gives the defense the upper hand in those long down-and-distances. And through the first half of the season, the Packers aren’t operating at a consistent enough level to overcome those setbacks.
“We need to start taking accountability for what’s going on with our offense early in the half,” said Tucker Kraft after the Jacksonville game. “That’s just not us. Like we need to figure out what it is we need to do to be more successful early on and we’ve got to start holding each other more accountable.
“There’s nothing broken with our offense,” Kraft added, “I want to say that on the record. We can just do better.”
Finding that consistency this week certainly won’t be easy against a Detroit defense that is aggressive and will challenge the Packers’ offense throughout the game, ready to pounce on any sort of miscue. But it will be a must in a game where scoring 28-plus points may be a necessity when it comes to winning.
“When they load the box and play you in tight man coverage like they’ve shown to do, there’s nowhere to run,” said offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich of the Lions’ defense. “You’d better have an answer for that. They do a really good job. Just all in all, I think it’s just a really physical defense that plays very aggressive, downhill. They do a great job of punching at the football and rallying to the football. To me, that usually is the mark of a really good defense.”