Paul Bretl | 11/17/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — A blocked field goal attempt by Packers’ defensive tackle Karl Brooks as time expired was massive, to say the least. The blocked field goal secured the win and prevented Green Bay from falling to 6-4 on the season, 0-3 in the NFC North, and it kept their now 11-game winning streak against the Bears alive.
“It was just an unbelievable feeling,” said Karl Brooks in the locker room afterward. “At first when I touched it, I didn’t think I got enough of it and it fell short and that’s when I really celebrated, so it was fun, though, for sure. It was cool. It was a good experience.”
Blocking a field goal attempt is very rare. During the entire 2023 NFL season, only 19 attempts were blocked the entire season. Blocking a field goal attempt to win the game is an even more rare feat. However, while blocking a field goal may not have been probable for the Packers, the odds may have been more so in their favor given the matchup this week.
During the post-game press conference, head coach Matt LaFleur noted that special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia told the team on Saturday night that he would “not understand” if the Packers went through the entire game against Chicago without a blocked field goal or extra point.
“I’m visualizing myself blocking the kick,” said Brooks. “And like I said, I just wanted it more. I just fired off the ball and wanted to get a win.”
So why did Bisaccia, and in turn his players, feel so confident about that?
“We were going to block it,” said Kenny Clark on what he was thinking. “We talked about TJ (Slaton) or KB (Brooks) blocking the kick all week. They’ve got holes in their field goal protection and a couple of them they got close. So we’ve been talking about that all week. It was a problem, so, coach Rich has been telling them all week and we ended up getting one.”
Throughout the game, the Packers offense was provided sparks by Josh Jacobs and Christian Watson, but oftentimes that didn’t correlate into points with the Bears defense outperforming Green Bay situationally. The Packers entered Sunday’s game ranked in the bottom-third of the NFL in third down success rate and 29th in red zone success. On the other side of the ball, meanwhile, was a Bears defense that ranked top-10 in both of those categories.
Unfortunately, for Green Bay, the game would play out that way as well. Oftentimes doomed by early down woes that put the offense in predictable long down-and-distance situations, the Packers would finish the game just 1-for-5 on third downs and 3-for-5 in the red zone, including two trips where they didn’t even leave with a field goal.
“They’re really good,” said Jordan Love of the Bears’ red zone defense. “I think we had some opps and obviously I think we left a couple plays out there but like I said they’re very good in the red zone and third down. We knew that coming into the game. Obviously red zone, you want to put up more points. You want to finish a drive with touchdowns. Obviously the interception in the red zone did not help us. Like I said they do a good job in the red zone.”
Excluding the kneel down before halftime, the Packers’ offense had only six possessions in this game. That magnified their struggles on third down and in the red zone because there were so few opportunities.
A key contributor to the lack of possessions was the defensive struggles for Green Bay against quarterback Caleb Williams and the Chicago running game. Williams would rush for 70 yards on his own, averaging almost 8.0 yards per carry. Running back D’Andre Swift totaled 71 yards on 14 carries, including a long of 39 yards that went for a touchdown.
The trickle-down effect of having that kind of success on the ground is that it can keep an offense ahead of the sticks. The Bears were an efficient 9-of-16 on third downs in this game, in part due to being in favorable down-and-distances often. Moving the ball in the run game also allowed them to control the clock, holding the ball for almost 13 minutes more than the Packers and running an additional 25 plays.
The Packers’ pass rush was frequently negated by the quick passing game, and the ability to pick up yards on the ground helped create opportunities through the air, along with Williams’ able to go off-script and extend plays.
“We got poor with our rush lanes and he was running right up the middle and we gotta be better than that,” said Matt LaFleur. “He is an athletic quarterback and you saw it right there at the end of the game on 3rd-and-19, we got a sack, we fly over the top of him, it sets up a 4th-and-3 and then he makes a good throw versus man coverage.
“I thought he did a nice job today. When we played man coverage, going to the right areas, getting to the right guys and their receivers that’s a good group. They’re a really talented receiving core and they made some plays today. So we gotta get better in a lot of areas but I thought mostly his ability to use his legs, he had 70 yards rushing, or whatever, that definitely hurt us today.”
However, even with so many things going against the Packers, which includes both tipping your cap to the Bears and acknowledging that Green Bay made things difficult on themselves at times, they still found a way to win. The gap between being 7-3 versus 6-4 and 1-2 in the division versus 0-3 feels larger than the Grand Canyon, while in reality the difference was just the tip of Brooks’ left middle finger.
Without question, there are things that have to get cleaned up and that the team must improve upon moving forward. But the margin for winning and losing in the NFL is razor-thin, and regardless of how it looked for those 60 minutes, you aren’t going to catch the Packers apologizing for winning.
“I thought there were some good performances,” added LaFleur, “and I thought there was a lot of stuff we’ve got to get better at, mainly in situational football–third down and in the red zone and really on both sides of the football. So I told our guys we’ll never ever apologize for winning and we’ll take it and we’re going to learn from this.”