Paul Bretl | 11/7/2024

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Can the Packers cornerback room hold up over the second half of the season and help Green Bay be that contending team that internally they believe they are?

If there was a position or two at Tuesday’s trade deadline where it made sense for the Packers to make an addition, cornerback may have been at the top of that list, along with a pass rusher. However, as is often the case, Brian Gutekunst wouldn’t make any acquisitions.

In part, the trade market was limited and never quite took shape. As Gutekunst said on Tuesday afternoon, it was “very quiet” leading up to the deadline and it remained that way the day of. The only cornerbacks who were traded were Marshon Lattimore and Tre’Davious White.

My interpretation is that with Washington sending multiple mid-round picks to New Orleans for Lattimore, along with him being 28 years old and coming with a hefty cap hit in 2025, that equation was never going to add up and result in the Packers making a move. And with Green Bay being confident in their depth at cornerback, I’m not sure that they saw White as an upgrade over the depth that they already have.

“I think a lot of the moves you saw today were reactions to injuries and things like that where you’re missing things,” said Gutekunst of the trade deadline. “But yeah, no, I really like our group. Obviously we do a lot of work prior to the season to try to make sure that we’re a deep team that can sustain an entire season and if we have injuries that we don’t have to go outside of the building to fulfil that and I feel we’ve done that and I feel really good about our football team. I like our depth.”

The Packers have been bullish about their cornerback depth since the offseason. It’s why, even though there were question marks around this unit prior to the draft, Green Bay didn’t make an addition at that position until the seventh-round, even though they had the opportunity to do so earlier. Since then, whether it be Matt LaFleur or Gutekunst, both have continued to voice their confidence in that group.

On the year, the 6.6 yards per pass attempt allowed by the Green Bay defense ranks 18th in the NFL and 23rd in pass deflections. In terms of explosive pass plays, the Packers have surrendered the seventh-most through nine games and have the sixth-highest explosive pass play rate as well.

Naturally, when Jaire Alexander is on the field, this group performs much better. Alexander has surrendered a completion rate of just 56 percent this season with two interceptions, seven pass deflections, and a passer rating when targeted of just 79.9. However, Alexander has now missed three games this season due to injury and is coming off a 2023 season in which he’s appeared in only seven games.

Opposite of Alexander is Keisean Nixon, who has supplanted both Eric Stokes and Carrington Valentine on the depth chart, despite being the team’s nickel cornerback last season. Defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley then moved safety Javon Bullard down to the nickel.

“Those guys have done a great job this year,” said Gutekunst of Bullard and Nixon. “Bull, for a rookie, he’s just done an excellent job when he’s put in the nickel. The ability for him to play safety and nickel and what’s put on that guy for a young player to do what he’s done is really exciting what he’s done already, where he’s about to go. So that’s been good for us.

“Again, Keisean hasn’t played a ton of outside corner for us and he was kind of put in that position and I think he’s done a really good job for us. He’s got excellent instincts, he can take the ball away. So yeah, I’m really happy with him out there as well.”

Without Alexander in the mix, the Packers then have to rely on Stokes and Valentine. When Stokes has been on the field he’s been picked on. Despite his playing time taking a significant hit as the season’s gone on, he’s second on the team in targets, only one behind Nixon. According to PFF’s metrics, Stokes is allowing a completion rate of 68 percent and has no ball production this season.

Yet even with Stokes’ seemingly obvious struggles, Valentine hasn’t been able to see the field defensively when the Packers are healthy. If we count Bullard as a cornerback, Valentine appears to be the fifth option on the depth chart right now, although the team says they remain confident in him.

“I know he can handle it,” said Hafley of Valentine. “I have total confidence in him. I know you’ll start to see more and more of him. I think he’s practicing extremely well, I think there’s great competition in that room right now and depending on who plays, what packages we decide to go with, what personnel groupings they send on the field.

“Like last week, we saw again, there’s two weeks in a row we saw a lot of big people. So there’s less DBs on the field but I’m very confident in him and I’m excited as this season progresses to see what he can do and I’m confident. He’s got great energy, he’s competitive, he’ll tackle, so I have total confidence in him.”

An improved pass rush can go a long way in helping the Packers’ secondary, providing them with less time in coverage, along with pressure disrupting the overall timing and rhythm of the play. Having Xavier McKinney on the back end has also been an important safety net for that unit as well.

Whether or not the confidence that the Packers have in their cornerback room and overall depth is misplaced remains to be seen and we won’t truly have that answer until we see how the rest of the season plays out. It’s not as if the cornerback group has been bad this season, but I think the real question is, are the Packers good enough there to be a true contender?

“I really do like our depth,” added Gutekunst. “We’ve got to continue to come together as a football team and play better football at times, but we’re 6-3, I think we’re in a good spot, I’m excited about the second half of the season and to see how these guys grow together.”

Paul Bretl| 11/5/2024

GREEN BAY, Wis.– Coming off a disappointing loss against the Detroit Lions, the Packers will enter their bye week at 6-3 on the year, but they’ll have to sit with their most recent mistake-filled performance for the next two weeks before they return to the field.

“I think for us, the only thing that is hard is to go on a bye after a loss, because this loss will sit with you for a long time,” said Matt LaFleur on Monday. “We’ve got a lot to think about, I would say, over the next 13 days before we play again, or until we get really into the Chicago Bears. But it is what it is. I think there’s, like I said earlier, there’s a lot of things that we all have to collectively work on, on an individual basis in order to get us to be a better football team.”

Penalties, dropped passes, a back-breaking interception and some missed tackles on defense all contributed to the sloppy performance that we saw from the Packers on Sunday. But the truly alarming part of it all was that it’s not as if this was a one-off performance.

To varying degrees, self-inflicted mistakes have been the norm this season for the Packers, but they’ve often been able to overcome them with splash plays on both sides of the ball or simply because they are playing an inferior opponent. However, against a team of Detroit’s caliber, those errors are a recipe for disaster.

“I think we’ve been, we’ve had good moments of playing good complimentary football and then we’ve had some not so great moments,” said LaFleur. “And I think some of the mistakes maybe that we’ve made the last four games that we’ve won showed up yesterday against a good football team that, it’s hard to overcome those in those moments.

“So, they played, Detroit played a clean game. When you look at it, they played a clean game, didn’t make any critical mistakes where we were, had a handful of critical mistakes that really came back to bite us.”

As LaFleur said, there have been good moments. While it can be easy to fixate on the problems–particularly when the wounds are still fresh–this is a team that is still 6-3 on the year, has been one of the best at generating explosive plays on offense and among the best at forcing takeaways on defense.

However, for a Packers team with Super Bowl aspirations, they aren’t where they need to be in that regard either. Those miscues, specifically the penalties, have been a major contributor to the inconsistent play that we’ve seen from the offensive side of the ball this season.

Through nine games, this is a very boom-or-bust Green Bay offense, able to score as quickly as anyone, but it’s a group that also struggles to sustain drives with the aforementioned penalties or dropped passes or off-target throws or whatever it may be, putting the offense behind the sticks and in predictable passing situations, which for any unit can be difficult to overcome on a regular basis.

When it comes to the question, ‘how do the Packers find more consistency?’ we know the answer is fewer penalties and overall better execution to limit mistakes. But the calculus, or the solution to get to that answer, is what eludes this team. Everything just described has been an issue for much of the season, but it hasn’t improved.

“I think it’s just trying to do too much,” said Sean Rhyan after Sunday’s loss. “We were talking about you can’t make big plays, you just gotta do your job. I think it kind of happened today, just trying to do too much. I think we just gotta, when we are out there, relax a little bit, know that we’re good enough to take on whoever and execute.”

Unlike in the last two seasons where the Packers’ bye has come either very late in the season or early on, this year’s is right in the middle. While it will provide LaFleur, the coaching staff, and players the opportunity to take a step back and reflect on what has been up to this point in the season, the self-scouting component that is synonymous with the bye week from the outside is a bit “overblown,” says LaFleur. Week-to-week in-season, the Packers are always on top of that process.

However, without having to gameplan for a specific opponent this week, the additional time does provide the coaches and players with the opportunity to be hyper-intentional about one area that they can improve upon. The key to making that a worthwhile endeavor is making sure that the work done this week in that regard is then applied next week when the team is back together and on the practice field.

“I think it’s just, one of the things our staff is doing with each individual today (Monday) is, there’s got to be a focus on one thing that we can all improve upon because all of us can improve in some area,” LaFleur said. “So, that’s the focus today and I wanted our guys to know that leaving the building today so that when they come back on Monday, not only can they work on it over, on their own for the next six days, or whatever. But when we get back and have practice next Monday, that there’s got to be an intentionality behind that.”

No team wants to enter the bye week on a loss, but to state the obvious, at the halfway point of this season compared to last, the Packers are in a much different spot. Although the opportunities for improvement this season aren’t nearly as stark as what they were in 2023, this is a team that did have a pretty spectacular turnaround a year ago, and from a process standpoint, at least, the coaches can draw on those experiences to help the 2024 Packers find a second-half spark.

“I think that’s kind of one of the things we’re going to talk about as a staff,” added LaFleur, “is just some of the things we did the back half of the season to allow us to develop and continue to get better. And I think a lot of it just started with our approach to practice, how much competition we had in practice. I thought it made practices have more energy and I thought it reflected  in our play quite frankly.”

Paul Bretl | 11/3/2024

GREEN BAY, Wis. — To varying degrees, the play we saw on the field from the Packers in Sunday’s loss to Detroit is one that we’ve seen on a few occasions this season.

It was another game where self-inflicted mistakes played a major factor in how this game unfolded. However, unlike in previous games in recent weeks against Los Angeles, Houston, and Jacksonville, the miscues were far too much to overcome against a team of the Lions’ caliber.

“It’s disappointing when you have a big game like this against one of the best teams in the league and you don’t feel like there was just too many mistakes,” said Matt LaFleur after the game. “You can’t overcome those against a good football team. That’s exactly what Detroit is.”

It’s hard enough to win in the NFL as it is. In part, the Packers were able to overcome their mistakes in those previous performances because of splash plays, whether it be quick scores or turnovers, that helped mitigate the impact of their own blunders–although in two of those games, it still required a last-second field goal to secure the victory.

However, over the course of an NFL season, operating that way regularly–which the Packers have–is a tough way to live, especially against a well-oiled machine like Detroit.

“We’ve just got to be able to grow form it, learn from it and not make those mistakes again, because it’s definitely been a trend up until now,” said Christian Watson. “Pre-snap penalties and penalties in general, we’ve just got to find a way to eliminate those.”

Penalties have been an issue for Green Bay for much of the season. On the opening kickoff, which would have set the Packers up with good field position, Keisean Nixon was flagged for an unsportsmanlike penalty, and from there, the penalties would snowball and continue throughout the game.

In total, Green Bay was penalized 10 times for 67 yards. In comparison, the Lions were penalized just five times. Several of these penalties occurred pre-snap on the offensive side of the football, which put Green Bay behind the sticks and at a disadvantage against an already stout Lions defense.

“I think you can definitely lump those in the focus category, where we’ve got to be better,” said LaFleur of the false starts. “Some of those are totally unnecessary. We’re going on a double cadence, and that’s an advantage for an offense. I never want us not to do that. I think that’s an important part of it. That is your one advantage on offense is that you control when the ball’s snapped. That’s a great advantage when you’re at home, when there’s not as much crowd noise. We’ve just got to dial in and be better focused.”

While the pre-snap penalties are an annoyance and hinderance, on the other side of the ball were two particularly hurtful penalties. With the Lions facing fourth-and-goal from the five-yard line to begin the second quarter, everyone in the press box seemed to know that they were trying to draw the Packers’ offsides–and it worked. TJ Slaton was flagged for a neutral zone infraction, putting the Lions at the 2.5 yard line. They then scored on the next play.

Then on the Lions’ opening possession of the third quarter, and already with a 17-3 lead, a third-down holding penalty on Keisean Nixon extended what ended up becoming a touchdown drive.

To make matters worse, in addition to the penalties, on a rainy and windy evening in Green Bay, the Packers receivers dropped what I counted as six passes, including a few that came on third downs, along with two botched snaps.

“Obviously, catching footballs in the rain is not ideal for a receiver, but it’s not an excuse for us all,” said Romeo Doubs at his locker. “But again, we will let this be a learning experience and get right watching the film, adjusting to whatever weather we have coming up through the rest of this month and the course of this year. Yeah, man, we’ll just learn from it.”

The back-breaker was a Jordan Love interception at the end of the second quarter on an ill-advised throw. Under pressure and rolling to his right, Love tried to dump the ball off to Josh Jacobs back across his body, but the pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Love entered the game tied for the league lead in interceptions.

“It’s definitely disappointing,” said Love of the turnovers. “Putting the ball in jeopardy way too many times and definitely something I have to clean up. I’ve talked about it week after week, so something I’ve just gotta learn from these mistakes and clean it up, but definitely something that I’m gonna make a big focus on going forward, of just finding ways to take care of the ball better.”

The Green Bay offense has struggled to find consistency for much of the season, resembling a very boom-or-bust unit. They can score as quick as any team in the league and entered Week 9 as the best at generating explosive plays. But they also have a lot of short possessions or have routinely shown the inability to overcome setbacks, which then results in a stalled drive.

As high as the potential is for this offense, the lack of series-to-series, or even down-to-down consistency makes moving the ball with regularity a tall task. Oftentimes, and to varying degrees, the culprit for these issues are the aforementioned self-inflicted errors, whether it be penalties, dropped passes, turnovers, or off-target throws.

The trickle-down effect is the offense facing long down-and-distance situations, which puts them in obvious passing downs. From a coverage standpoint, the secondary has the advantage. In short, there are only so many routes that can be ran on 3rd-and-10, and the pass rush is then able to pin its ears back. Play-calling-wise, it becomes a real challenge to get into a flow, and the gameplan can become pass-heavy very quickly.

Even for the best offenses, having to overcome those situations often is a massive undertaking that has resulted in the up-and-down play we see on Sundays.

“I think it’s just trying to do too much,” said Sean Rhyan of the penalties. “We were talking about you can’t make big plays, you just gotta do your job. I think it kind of happened today, just trying to do too much. I think we just gotta, when we are out there, relax a little bit, know that we’re good enough to take on whoever and execute.”

The Green Bay defense would run into an incredibly efficient offense. Although it’s not as if the league’s highest-scoring offense dominated the game, they were effective going about their business. Behind arguably the top offensive line unit in the NFL, the Lions have a strong run game that routinely puts them in second-and-short distances. At that point, they have the entire playbook open to them, able to run the ball or pass, which forces the defense to spread out and defend the entire field.

From there, the Lions can run the ball behind that stout offensive line or run a series of slants and crossers into a spread-out defense, where Jared Goff can pick opponents apart. Penalties, or a lack of complementary football as we saw on Sunday, where the Lions can play with a lead, only magnify their ability to operate in this capacity and further stress defenses.

This wasn’t a one-off performance for the Packers. Nine weeks into the season and now heading into their bye week, a mistake-prone team is who they are. The good news is that there is still half a season left to change that narrative–I mean, look at what this group did in 2023. But as of now, this is who they are.

“I think we got things we gotta correct,” Xavier McKinney said. “I think as players we just keep making the same mistakes and we gotta figure it out. I can’t keep saying it, we just gotta figure it out. We gotta do it and we gotta stop having all these mistakes because we play other good teams we can’t afford those type of mistakes. We can’t afford penalties. We can’t afford having turnovers and not getting turnovers. It’s just a lot of  things that’s built up and we just gotta make corrections.”

Paul Bretl | 11/1/2024

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Up next for the Packers is a pivotal divisional matchup against the high-powered Detroit Lions’ offense, and Green Bay may find themselves short-handed in the secondary for this game.

Cornerback Jaire Alexander would sustain a knee injury late against Jacksonville, while safety Evan Williams exited the game with a hamstring injury. Based on reports, neither injury appears to be long-term, but as of Friday morning, neither player has practiced yet this week.

“It is what it is, said Matt LaFleur about game-planning with uncertainty in the secondary. “No different than what happened the other day. When you have installed a game plan, you’ve got to be ready to adjust. Bottom line is you’ve got to put in whatever plays or schemes or whatever is you’re trying to attack somebody with, whether it’s on offense or defense, to give you the best chance to win. You’ve got to use your best judgment in terms of the execution and how you’re going to go about that and have successful plays.”

Once Williams exited the Jacksonville game, there was a domino effect to the rest of the Packers’ secondary, setting off a chain reaction–forcing players to move to positions that they haven’t been getting game reps in. Javon Bullard to move back to free safety, a big jump mid-game for any rookie to make, especially without what I’m guessing are practice reps during the week in that role.

Keisean Nixon then went from playing the boundary to the nickel, which then put Eric Stokes and Carrington Valentine on the boundary. Stokes’ playing time has diminished in recent weeks with up-and-down play, while Valentine has been a primary special teams player.

The end result was more pass-catchers were running open, there were breakdowns in communication, and missed tackles, resulting in chunk plays for the Jaguars’ passing game. Bullard, in particular, took his lumps, but a lot was being put on his plate in that situation. For any player, let alone a rookie, asking Bullard mid-game to make a complete position change when he didn’t get any practice reps during the week at free safety is a big ask and put a lot on his plate.

“Last week, Bull had to play both, which is definitely not easy for a young guy,” said defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley. “The thing with Bull last week, you give him a lot of credit, I said to Bull last week, I thought he had his best week of practice at the nickel position.

“And then what happens? Then he’s got to go play safety and he hadn’t really practiced at that position. For a rookie, that’s hard. It’s like everybody wants to ask and play the rookie here, play the rookie here, put this guy here. It’s not always the easiest thing to do. So, I give Bull a lot of credit for what we’ve asked him to do.”

The Packers coaching staff remains confident in the depth that they have in the secondary, including the cornerback position, but the play of Stokes in recent weeks and the lack of defensive snaps for Valentine gives pause to at least those on the outside.

In Week 5, against the Los Angeles Rams, Stokes allowed seven receptions on 10 targets for 65 yards and a touchdown, according to PFF. In Weeks 6 and 7, his playing time was significantly reduced, seeing just 23 total snaps. Then, this past week, Stokes surrendered two receptions on three targets for 43 more yards.

With Valentine, prior to the injury to Williams in Jacksonville, he hadn’t seen any defensive snaps since Week 5 when the team was without Alexander. Between those two games, Valentine played 33 coverage snaps and was not targeted. Despite the wide-ranging outcomes for Valentine and Stokes as of late, from the sounds of it, the game-to-game matchups are dictating playing time right now.

“I know he can handle it,” said Hafley of Valentine. “I have total confidence in him. I know you’ll start to see more and more of him. I think he’s practicing extremely well, I think there’s great competition in that room right now and depending on who plays, what packages we decide to go with, what personnel groupings they send on the field.

“Like last week, we saw again, there’s two weeks in a row we saw a lot of big people. So there’s less DBs on the field but I’m very confident in him and I’m excited as this season progresses to see what he can do and I’m confident. He’s got great energy, he’s competitive, he’ll tackle, so I have total confidence in him.”

Awaiting the Packers’ secondary this week is one of the more explosive passing offenses in football. As a unit, the Lions are averaging a league-best 33.4 points per game and have generated the sixth-most explosive plays. Leading that charge is quarterback Jared Goff, who is playing at an extremely high level, completing over 84 percent of his throws over the last four games while still averaging an impressive 11.4 yards per pass attempt.

“He’s playing the position as well as anybody in the game right now,” said LaFleur of Goff. “That’s, just look at the numbers. They tell you everything. And then you watch the tape and it backs it up. So, I think he’s doing a great job, he’s a guy that if you give him time, he’s going to make you pay.

“He’s going to find the right guys. If you give him a sliver of light to make the pass, he’s going to take advantage of that. So just always been a big fan of his; just won’t be a big fan of his on Sunday.”

Regardless of whether or not Alexander and/or Williams is available, any sort of success for the Packers’ defense is going to begin in the trenches with the pass rush. Disrupting the timing and rhythm of the play will be a must, and different pressures or disguises can help facilitate that, but ultimately, asking any secondary to routinely defend this Lions’ passing offense for 3-4 seconds at a time is a tall task.

“We’ve got a lot of competition,” said Hafley. “If you look right now in the corner room, we’ve played a lot of guys and we’ll continue to do so. There’s guys that have stepped up in practice and had a really good week, just like last week, and we’ll rotate those players as we see fit.”