The Green Bay Packers are in a free fall right now, having lost their third straight game, with the schedule only getting more challenging moving forward.
Unfortunately, there is no one reason behind the Packers’ issues – it’s a collective team effort. However, the offense’s inability to move the ball and put points on the board is at the forefront of these problems.
Currently, the Packers are 23rd in points per game at 18.3. They rank 22nd in yards per pass attempt with 6.6 and 20th in total yards per game at 331 – which, honestly, is higher than I would have guessed.
As the offense sputters, something has to change. The usage of certain players, the run-pass mix, personnel decisions, and the plays that are called and schemed up have all been brought to the table as potential solutions. And while those are all areas that can be improved upon, none of it really matters if the Packers don’t start doing the little things correctly.
This has been a Packers offense that has been plagued by little mistakes this season, from drops to not lining up correctly. Wrong routes, along with the pass catchers not making the proper adjustments based on what the defense is doing. Green Bay has also not yet won the turnover battle, Aaron Rodgers has been inaccurate, and there have been missed blocks.
“There have been seasons where we averaged four or five, six, maybe seven at the most, kind of mental errors or missed assignments per week,” said Rodgers on The Pat McAfee Show. “Some weeks you have like four, you have two sometimes. This season, a lot more than that every single week. It’s double digits every single week.”
In Green Bay’s most recent game against Washington, many of these minor miscues were prevalent. The Packers entered the game as one of the least penalized teams in football but were flagged nine times on Sunday, two of which came from not being aligned correctly pre-snap and an illegal motion–things that should have been ironed out in training camp.
The Packers were also credited with five dropped passes, one week after having six against the New York Jets. Rodgers would also point out after the game that there were several times when the wrong routes, stems, or releases were ran by receivers.
To make matters more challenging, Rodgers himself has had accuracy issues as well, and not only on downfield passes. He threw a ball at Romeo Doubs’ feet against Washington and is still struggling to accurately hit Aaron Jones in the flat.
And while the offense didn’t give the ball away, Amari Rodgers lost a punt that eventually resulted in three points for Washington in a game the Packers only lost by two.
Lastly, we’ve heard Rodgers on a few occasions reference that the playbook on paper and what happens on the field aren’t always the same. We saw that in action on the deep pass to Doubs that wasn’t particularly close to being caught. Matt LaFleur confirmed that Doubs ran the correct route, but there was a busted coverage that resulted in a lot of green grass where Rodgers threw the ball, hoping that Doubs would take notice and adjust.
In just one game, that is a laundry list of items that went wrong for the Packers, and none of the problems discussed really have anything to do with what LaFleur and Rodgers dialed up schematically. Individually these errors don’t look like much, but together they amount to way more than what this current Packers team can overcome.
Green Bay should absolutely continue to search for answers when it comes to trying to correct things on offense, but truthfully, play design doesn’t matter when the little things aren’t being done the right way. Any sort of improvement begins there.
