Paul Bretl | 1/13/2025
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Following a one-and-done showing in the playoffs that included ending the 2024 season on a three-game losing streak, the Packers will enter the offseason in search of answers.
The story that we saw unfold in Philadelphia on Sunday even was all-too-familiar to one that we had seen throughout the season. And not just one or two other occasions, but now six times in 2024.
Against the NFC’s best–Philadelphia, Detroit, and Minnesota–the Packers finished the season 0-6 with the game unfolding in each of those contests somewhat similarly: the offense would get off to a slow start, Green Bay would fall behind by multiple scores, and oftentimes at the center of those issues were self-inflicted mistakes, whether that be due to penalties or a lack of execution.
“I think that’s really the thing that hurt us in a lot of games,” said Jordan Love. “We talk about it, I feel like, a lot of the times this season and just feel like we’re not getting beat by the other team; we’re kind of beating ourselves.
“Whether it’s penalties, turnovers, stalled drives, things like that, I think it all comes back down to the details and execution – a lack of execution in some of those areas. So, something you’ve got to be focused on when you go out there and try and limit that stuff.”
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This season when facing playoff teams, the Packers had a record of just 2-6 and were minus-six in the turnover battle with a minus-3.4 points differential. However, if you watched those games, that score differential doesn’t accurately portray how the game unfolded.
In five of those six games against the Eagles, Lions, and Vikings, the Packers would trail at one point in those contests by at least two scores, forced to play catchup for the remainder of the game.
“I’m not sure,” said Love of the slow starts. “It’s something that we’ll look at and figure out in the offseason to clean up, but I mean, it’s pretty much comes down to executing and making plays out there and just wasn’t good enough.”
The slow starts on offense created a viscous cycle that was difficult to break from. The short possessions by Green Bay often put their defense in a bind, whether that be having to defend short fields or simply having to play a high number of snaps because the Packers’ offense couldn’t sustain drives.
Naturally, when facing high-powered offenses, the defense can only do so much and odds are, you’re going to fall behind. This then limited the Packers ability to really get into their gameplan as they played catch up early and negated their ability to lean on the run game and set up play-action opportunities to help the struggling passing game out.
This cycle and bizzaro complementary football would repeat itself over and over, making things more and more difficult.
“We gotta learn from it,” said Xavier McKinney. “There’s things we gotta do better with, things we gotta do a better job with and I think that we will.”
With a talented team that we’ve seen both this season and last get hot for stretches and be as difficult as anyone to defeat, the thought would be that a switch would get flipped at some point and we’d see this team take off. However, particularly over these last three games, it became more clear that this wasn’t going to be the case because there just weren’t any answers to what ailed this team.
“I think that’s going to be a great reflection point this offseason,” said Matt LaFleur of the slow starts, “because obviously, if we had the answers, it wouldn’t have been a problem, and for it to come up multiple times is disappointing.”
Despite the outcome, there is, of course, certainly still reasons for optimism moving forward. For the second season in a row, the Packers, as the youngest team in football, made the playoffs. They also had two more wins than they did in 2023, hit home runs in free agency with Xavier McKinney and Josh Jacobs, had key contributions from several rookies, the defense took a big step forward in Year 1 under Jeff Hafley, and they have talent throughout the roster.
However, for a team that came into 2024 with Super Bowl aspirations, while the arrow is still pointing up and there is absolutely reason for hope heading into 2025 and beyond, as we saw six times this season, the 2024 Packers’ weren’t yet ready to beat the best teams.
“We lost to some really good teams,” Love said. “We’ll look at those games but we’ve got to find ways to execute and win those big-time games like that. Obviously, this year we weren’t able to do that.
“There’ll be a lot of stuff we’ll look at, try and figure out what exactly the root of our problem is and areas we can get better. But, yeah, just wasn’t good enough against the really good teams in this league. It’ll be something we’ll focus on this offseason.”
The message in the locker room after the game was to not forget this feeling. The feeling of defeat, the feeling of playing a mistake-riddled game when it mattered most, and letting that fuel the offseason ahead, as the Packers enter the coming months looking for answers to the same questions that plagued them throughout the season.
“Main thing on my mind is figure out how do we take that step, how do I help the guys take that step,” said Josh Jacobs. “But also, we got some guys – our locker room is gonna be different. We got some guys due for a contract this year. We don’t know what that’s gonna look like, how that’s gonna shake up. But I know I’m gonna try to get some guys here.”