Paul Bretl | 12/29/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Another game against one of the NFC’s best and another loss for the Green Bay Packers, who now fall to 0-5 on the season against Detroit, Philadelphia, and Minnesota.
“The margins in this league, especially against a good football team, are razor thin,” said Matt LaFleur after the game. “I don’t think we were at our best, but that’s a credit to them in our slow start and that’s me as much as anybody. So I gotta be better and we gotta get better. And we gotta learn from this and try to move on and get some momentum here.”
The final score won’t tell the whole story but behind a lack-luster passing game, the Packers dug themselves an early multi-score hole that proved to be too much to overcome. This, unfortunately, wasn’t uncharted territory either for Green Bay. In their four games against Detroit and Minnesota, they found themselves in a combined 89-13 deficit.
“You can’t get down against good football teams and if there’s a lesson there, that is the lesson because it’s tough to comeback,” added LaFleur. “I think our guys continued to fight and battle and scratch and claw but ultimately we just can’t just put ourselves in a hole like that. It certainly took us way to long to get going offensively and if that happens, then I mean, this is the result.”
As was to be expected against this Minnesota front, it was tough sledding in the run game for Josh Jacobs, whose longest run was just 13 yards. However, that element did provide the offense with some stability with the Packers averaging 4.3 yards per rush as a team over the course of the game.
However, the passing game couldn’t get anything going to complement the run game. So how bad was it for Jordan Love and the offense?
As we’ve seen from the Packers’ offense in previous games where they’ve trailed by multiple scores, they made a valiant comeback to make the game interesting, along with some help from two missed Minnesota field goals and a Sam Darnold interception. Perhaps that late success can be the catalyst behind improved play in a potential future meeting, but for now, it was too little too late.
“I feel like today we figured out a lot about ourselves,” Josh Jacobs said in the visiting locker room. “I don’t want to too much give it away what we feel like we figured out, but we’ll see. We’ll see how it plays out.”
When it was all said and done, Love finished the game completing 19-of-30 passes for 185 yards at an average of 6.2 yards per attempt. Through three-quarters of the game, however, Love had completed 10-of-18 passes for 64 yards at 3.6 yards per attempt. For some context around that figure, Bryce Young entered Week 17 ranked 35th in yards per pass with 6.1.
On passes of at least 10 yards, Love was just 4-for-10 for 77 yards, according to ESPN, with a 40% off-target rate on those throws. In addition to that, entering the fourth quarter, there were four different Vikings’ receivers who had more receiving yards than Love did passing yards.
“It’s obviously ended up being a close game, but we know it’s hard when you put yourself in a hole and are down early and just kind of shooting yourself in the foot,” Jordan Love said. “So there’s so much stuff to clean up and get better at but I think we’re still a really good team. We can put up points.
“But when you put yourself in a hole, it’s just it’s hard to climb out of that hole. And when it’s a good, a good team, like the Vikings it just makes it even tougher. So we’ve got to figure out ways to start faster and put up points.”
While still battling inconsistency and needing to put together a full four-quarter performance, Love and the passing game had been trending in the right direction over the last month. From Weeks 13-16, Love had completed 67% of his passes at 8.7 yards per attempt with six touchdowns to no interceptions.
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Yet even in last week’s blowout victory over New Orleans, particularly in the second half, we saw disjointed performance from the passing game for Green Bay, and that play rolled over into this week’s game against one of the most aggressive and stingy defenses in football.
Against a blitz-heavy Vikings’ defense, pressure on Love became a bigger issue in the second half. Those passing game woes then became magnified at this point of the game with time was running out and the Packers still trailing by multiple scores.
The trickle-down effect of this is that it then forces Green Bay to become pass-heavy, which played right into the strength of the Vikings’ defense, who continued to turn up the aggressiveness and pin their ears back as they often do.
With that said, the offensive line play wasn’t the main issue for Love and the passing game. According to PFF’s initial metrics, Love was pressured on fewer than 26% of his dropbacks, and when blitzed, he completed 62% of his passes.
The bigger issue was the overall lack of rhythm and cohesiveness in the passing game. The Brian Flores’ defense does a terrific job of disguising coverages, and he threw a more man coverage-heavy gameplan at the Packers’ offense, which was something that they were not prepared for, and it showed.
“Credit to them they came out played a little bit more man than we were anticipating,” LaFleur said. “They had shown that a couple games, didn’t think we’d get it, so I think that’s part to our slow start is, we gotta be able to adjust quicker and have some plays that in there that can attack that coverage and that falls squarely on my shoulders.”
This has also been a Packers’ offense that has thrived off the explosive passing play but they didn’t have that ability in this game. Of course, not having Christian Watson available can impact that specific phase of the game, but a pillar of the Vikings’ defense has been taking away those downfield attempts, which then forced the out of sync Packers’ passing game to have to string together long drives.
“You gotta take the underneath routes and checkdowns,” said LaFleur. “You gotta have time to allow things to develop if you are going to try to take a shot. But they do a good job of keeping a lid on the coverage. That’s how they play. We knew that going in, so there was going to be minimal opportunities to push the ball down the field. You gotta be super efficient.”
In general, there were some off-target throws from Love, perhaps facilitated by the unexpected looks, and the Green Bay pass-catchers dealt with drops and, as Matt LaFleur said at halftime, they weren’t always where they were supposed to be within the timing of their routes, and overall, the fine details of the passing game were off.
Not helping things were the penalties on the offensive side of the ball. It was a bit reminiscent of the issues we saw on offense during the first half of the season.
You put all of that together, and add in the inability to lean on the run game, and you got a Packers’ offense that was too frequently playing behind the sticks and in predictable passing situations, where the Vikings’ defense thrives and has been one of the best units in football this season.
“You gotta stay on schedule because once they get you into third down that’s where they’re really good,” LaFleur added. “I mean, that’s one of the best in the league at third down, so you gotta stay in front of the sticks or stay out of third down in general.”
It was far from a perfect performance from the Packers’ defense, who didn’t get after Sam Darnold very well, putting more of the burden on their secondary. But they did contain the Vikings’ run game and kept the game within reach late so the offense could make that late push.
However, the lack of complementary football between the offensive and defensive units made the job of the defense all that much harder.
With the Green Bay offense sputtering, it led to multiple short possessions, resulting in Minnesota holding the ball for 11 more minutes than the Packers, and, at one point in the latter portion of the game, the Vikings had run almost 20 more plays than Green Bay. Up against an offense as high-power as the Vikings, that discrepancy in plays and in the time of possession battle would be a lot for any defense to overcome.
“They have some good plays,” said Xavier McKinney. “They’re a good football team. They’re gonna make plays. We can’t stop everything. But there’s just certain situations where we just gotta be better. We gotta be cleaner. But they’re gonna make plays. He’s a good quarterback. They got a good team. They got good offensive players who can make plays for them. So yeah, we just gotta be better.”
The Packers have a playoff spot locked up, so that isn’t the issue right now. And they’ve proven to be a good team this season. But what they haven’t shown is that they can beat the best teams in the NFC and that obviously can be a huge problem come the postseason.
“I want to say yeah but right now the story is we haven’t beaten those teams,” said McKinney when asked if the Packers were at the level of the NFC’s best. “So I can’t sit up here and say we’re on the same level if we ain’t beat them. In order to be on the same level, you gotta beat these teams. We gotta be more on our details. We gotta play cleaner. We gotta start faster. That’s just what it is.”