Hi, everyone, Welcome to Packers Unscripted from Packers dot Com. I am Mike Spofford, joined alongside as always by Wes Hodkowitz. Were coming to you here from our studios at lambeau Field and West. We're here to review a twenty two to nothing victory for the Green Bay Packers over the Buffalo Bills in Week four Sunday at lambeau Field. Proves the Packers to to one and one at the quarter pole.
But with this one, you might as well start with the defense because anytime there's a zero on the scoreboard at the end of the game, that's a pretty good day. First time at lambou Field since two thousand nine, first time period since two thousand ten Halloween at the New York Jets, and nine to zero victory for the Green Bay Packers. Yeah, that was a shutout without a touchdown by the offense as a matter of fact, and it was very interesting. Mike. Obviously you wrote about it for
your game story. I wrote about it for our locker room report. A lot of guys mentioned afterwards. Actually, Kyle Fraker was the first one to bring this up after
his three sack game this past week. I should say even I think it was actually on Saturday, Mike Petton sat down all of his defensive players and he put up a slide for them, showing them the breakdowns of their production and points allowed per quarter and just the drastic difference between where they were in the first and where they've been in the third, and kind of reiterating to the guys with the main point being, you can do this. You can play a full sixty minute game
without mistakes. You've done it in quarters, why not do it for sixty full minutes. Certainly, playing against Josh Allen helped the young rookie quarterback for the Bills. Things did not go well for him on the day and the Packers were able to take advantage of it. Though, And I know I got a lot of comments people saying, well, I mean, this is what you expected the Bills. This is the team they were other than that that game
against the Vikings. But the thing is, Mike, is so often we want to throw teams, we want to throw coordinators under the bus after a rough performance. When you play well against an opponent you're supposed to beat, that comes with the territory. That's a part of the process. So when you look at the weight of a season
in sixteen games, there's going to be those instances. And for the Packers, and credit to Mike Petton and his guys, they were able to take advantage of that, and you know, really were the number one reason why the Packers were able to get out of there with a win because the Bills did not score any points. And when you look at you mentioned Josh Allen. Obviously, what I saw out there and as I as I always remind everyone, I am no XS and OS expert when it comes
to this stuff. But what I saw out there was a quarterback to me who was dropping back in the pocket and he wasn't sure what he was seeing, and whether it was the the guys up at the line of scrimmage dropping into coverage, whether it was the back end covered switching to different coverage patterns man versus zone after the snap, whatever it was that was going on, I don't think Alan could quite decipher. He wasn't entirely
sure what was out there. And when he's not sure, then the passes aren't accurate because because the confidence, the um, the belief that everything is the way it should be, it's not there. And so then so then you have some wild inaccuracy. He ended up less than fifty completions, turn the ball over three times, two interceptions, also got stripped by Kenny Clark was sacked seven times. His passerating ends up thirty six point three total yards for the Bills,
mostly thanks to losing sixty plus yards and sacks. Total yards for the Bills a hundred and forty five yards. That's the fewest total yards the Packers have given up in a game since down in Tampa Bay when they held the Buccaneers to just a hundred and nine. So a really solid all around defensive performance. This isn't one of those Factral had a great game with three sacks.
But even with that, with a couple of those coming at the end, this isn't one of those where you're saying this one guy for the Packers just went off and had this amazing day. I thought as a unit, as as a group, these guys played solidly. We talked about it last week. It was time to put together a four quarter game, and they did that. Yeah, and Jr. Alexander comes up with a big interception there. Uh and and certainly it was a bad to throw by Josh Allen there at the twenty. He gets pushed out of
the pocket by Reggie Gilbert. He has Blake Martinez kind of breathing down his neck and he throws this in advised ball into the end zone. Alexander makes the play, but you have to make that play. That took points off the board. He returns it out. Yeah. That that that's just a terrible decision by Alan. It clearly falls in the category of a rookie mistake. I mean, I know things weren't going well, but it's thirteen to nothing.
If you get a field goal there, if you just throw the ball away, kick the field goal, it's thirteen to three. Year down by ten on the road, you know the game is not over. He throws that interception, the Packers get another field goal the other and it's sixteen nothing at halftime. You're in a much bigger hole.
And as Mason I asked Mason Crosby about this the game after the game too, not only being able to turn the tide there and get them off the board in the last minute of halftime, being able to march down the field and set up a fifty two yard field goal for Mason Crosby. When you're getting the ball going into the second half, that's really demoralizing for a team to to be able to have to weather that. But then ha ha, Clinton Dix also makes his third
straight interception in three straight games. You look at the past rushing packages claim Matthews got to the quarterback, there were no flags thrown, which actually I say that facetiously, but some of the guys even said Matthews even mentioned to a couple of hits on Matthews or on Aaron Rodgers, not that he wants to see his quarterback get hit, but he said he agreed with it. It was good to not see the laundry flying. And I think as the Packers the game war on, they got more comfortable
in their assignments. The pressure packages were where they needed to be. They started getting contributions from Jermaine Whitehead as a blitzer, Blake Martinez got a sack, the it was all across the board for the Packers. And as to original point, when you get that many different people contributing, Kenny Clark had a force fumble and recovery late in
the game, it's it's gonna lead to good things. And the Packers they've been waiting for a performance like this were from beginning to end, they stitched together a complete showing six three and outs. I believe it was seven if you count them just giving up at the end of the game after factors last sack. It was. It
was a type of performance I think that group needed. Yeah, and you mentioned the no laundry on the field, and it wasn't just not getting the roughing the pastor calls, but with the past interference and defensive holding and the stuff that the Packers were troubled without in Washington, it was really good to see that those penalties weren't happening even happening either. And I'll say this with regarding the
roughing the pastor stuff. We saw what Antonio Morrison did when he got a free rush up the mill and I saw the same thing when we were kind of finishing up our website coverage late in the day towards the end of the Oakland Cleveland game. Hit on Oakland quarterback Derek Carr. What you're seeing rushers doing now they're dropped. They're just gonna drop the shoulder and drill the quarterback in the mid section and they're not going to wrap
him up. They're just gonna use their shoulder to knock him down because then you can't get the falling on top of him and this and that or lift and scoop and all these other calls we've been seeing. So these quarterbacks are gonna take I think they're gonna potentially take some harder hits because defenders don't want to wrap up. So another thing that falls under unintended consequences potentially of
this rule. Will see how that develops. But for the Packers to get seven sacks, I actually went into the week saying this is not a week you have to sack the quarterback a whole lot, keep Josh Allen in the pocket, don't let him run. They ended up doing both. He didn't get away to run and they also sacked him a bunch. Yeah, Kyler Factrol. Another question I asked after the game to him is how much of an
emphasis was that for them? And that really sounded like it was their biggest primary objective after seeing what Alan had did with his feet, and ultimately I think that game against the Vikings we've talked about a numerous times now. They got a couple of turnovers they capitalize on those turnovers. Offensively, Buffalo had a really good drive to start the game, and from there Josh Allen just kept moving the chains with his feet and doing what he had to do
to keep the ball in the Bill's hands. The Packers didn't allow them to do that in this game. He had five carries, I think, for nineteen yards all told, and Shady McCoy didn't become a big you know, part of this thing. They were able to keep uh, Chris Ivory and check out he went off for whatever it was the eighty or ninety receiving yards last week. All in all, the Packers did exactly what they needed to do to win this game. And I think if nothing tells you more about the week to week nature of
this thing. The Packers entered the game twenty three in total defense. They were six by the end of the night. I mean, it's just it's not just Green Bay either. That shows you across the league how much things can flip this early in the season. Mike McCarthy said it last week. You don't really know what you are until you get through that first quarter, until you get through
maybe those first five or six games. I'm not saying, you know, the Packers gotta put together another strong performance next week against Detroit, but at the very least, it showed these guys what they're capable of when everything comes together. Yeah, alright, Well, before we switch gears to talk about the offensive side, excuse me a little sponsored business here west at home or here in the stands. We all know that Green Bay fans give it their all and that takes a
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Two touchdowns within the first I believe nineteen to twenty minutes of the game, but then they couldn't find the end zone after that, settled for some field goals, had a couple of turnovers here and there. Aaron Rodgers clearly not happy with the way the offense performed. Mike McCarthy trying to stay a little bit more upbeat and saying Hey, of course, we know we have things to work on. You know, there, there's there, There always are, and it's always great to work on things after a victory as
opposed to after a loss. But Packers had to play without Randall Cobb. If there's one thing that stood out to me in this game, it's what we talked about last week. You wrote about it as well with regards to the running backs. This three headed backfield a hundred and eighty three yards from scrimmage. If you combine the rushing and receiving yardage of all three guys, boy, you
take that any day of the week. Yeah, And I think time Montgomery was a big part of this thing too, because you don't have Randall Cobb available in the slot. So the Packers actually, I thought ransom concepts that helped not only get the ball in Montgomery's hands, but allow him to make plays in the open field. I go back to that forty three rd catch, which ended up
being the longest play from scrimmage of the day. He motions out lines up in the slot, finds a soft spot in that secondary of Buffalo catches, it brings it up field forty three yards. Explosive play, Packers get moving. You look at Aaron Jones his first play, checking in right away, same exact game plan is last week, right where you had Jamal Williams start, you had Time Montgomery come in. Third series, goes to Jones. Jones gets the ball, h back. Gotta give a lot of credit to to lane.
Lance Kendricks opens the lane there with being able to seal off the linebacker, and once you give Aaron Jones two free steps, he's off to the races. Gets thirty yards on that another seventeen office screen Jamal Williams. Although if you look statistically, I don't think it's gonna jump out to you. I thought, especially in the first off, was very important for moving the chains. I get it. You want to feature guys, you want guys to get twenty touches a game, but that isn't the way the
league has gone right now. You need to have multiple options to be able to keep guys on their heels, keep defenders not knowing what your next move is gonna be. I thought the Packers executed that brilliantly. Yeah, and the fans continue to ask when you see the explosiveness of a player like Aaron Jones, they continue to ask why is he not getting the ball more? Why is he not getting the ball more? Okay, against Washington, his first game after the two games suspension, he touched the ball
seven times. Yesterday he touched at twelve times, eleven rushes, one reception. I can see his workload continuing to increase here. But as we continue to say, this is about the long game. This is about still seeing on explosive dynamic Aaron Jones at Thanksgiving and beyond, hopefully setting yourself up for a playoff run, not just Okay, we're going to hand in the ball twenty to twenty two or twenty five times a game and then hope he holds up for the next three months, when let's be honest, as
a rookie his he didn't hold up. So all of this is part of the equation here, not to mention the production you did get from Time Montgomery and the reliability you get between the tackles from Jamal Williams, whose numbers I think would have looked better if not for those carries at the very end of the game when the Packers were just trying to run the clock totally. And the other thing too might to remember think about the last two times the Packers truly featured a running back.
It was Eddie Lacy in two thousand, thirteen and fourteen. Eddie Lacey ran like a bowl those two seasons, but he also ran hurt, basically down the stretch of both of the thirteen I think was the year we end up having the high ankle sprain, and he just pushed through it because of his running stone, his ability to absorb that contact. You want to have those guys right, you want to have them healthy for late in the season.
The Packers did not get that benefit last year. Just seemed like when one guy was up, another guy happened to be down. They're trying to extend this thing. They're trying to make sure that they have those matchup problems for defenses to really have to hone in on in the second half of the season. Aaron Jones off to a great start seventeen carries for I believe a hundred and seventeen yards or some thing like that on the season. They want more of that, but they also want more
of that through the next twelve games of the year. Yeah, also a lot of questions about Aaron Rodgers postgame comments. Fans are wondering what was he being critical the head coach. He didn't sound like he was happy with the game plan or the play calling or something like that. There was definitely some frustration in his voice with some of those issues. I want to hear what Mike McCarthy has to say later today after which will be after the taping of this episode, and perhaps we'll get into that
discussion more later in the week. But I will say this about the message that Rogers was sending. I think in some ways he's a little tired of the narrative of how inspiring he's being by playing on the knee. It's a month into the season now. I think Aaron Rodgers is sending a message that things need to switch a little from inspiration to execution, and this offense needs to execute more consistently and and find the rhythm that it needs for Aaron Rodgers, even with a bad knee,
to still be at his best. Yeah, because I think you've seen him be able to move the football yesterday. They had for nothing to sneeze that in an NFL game, Absolutely very important to have that aspect of it. But you also want to turn those points into touchdowns. You want to turn that production into touchdowns points on the scoreboard, and I think that was probably the biggest takeaway. Although they did move the ball, they again had to settle
for some field goals. They again, you know, had some opportunities where they just didn't quite hone in on everything when they got into gotten into the scoring territory. To be honest with you, I actually thought the offense responded pretty well considering they lost. They didn't have Randall Cobb for this game, and as I mentioned in our pregame periscope,
there's just nobody that replaces him. They actually they did some stuff that they do with Cobb, with Davante Adams work in the slot a little bit, but for the most part, you just don't have another player like that on your roster. And then you also lose Geronimo Allison late in the game and he's off to a really
good start ends up being diagnosed with a concussion. So yeah, for the Packers, depending on what happens here with Allison and Cobb, you have to feed Adams, you have to feed Jimmy Graham, who did get his first touchdown with the Packers. Those are your primary playmakers. I think that's gonna be a big focus for them here, trying to make sure that they feed those mouths, because give Davante
Adams a lot of credit. Eight catches for eighty one yards going up against Tradavious White, a very talented young cornerback, and Adams still found ways to get separation on fourteen targets. Yeah, and hats off to the guys in the trenches here for the Packers too, because going into this game, we're talking about Mohammed Wilkerson and Justin McCrae as two significant injuries in the trenches here for the Packers. On the offensive line Byrone Bell filled in just find no issue.
Nobody was even talking about it. And the same thing on the defensive line with Dean Lowry his snaps going up when the Packers were in those three defensive line packages. Obviously, you know, over the long term, it's hard to replace a guy like Mohammed Wilkerson who is on injured reserve, and it doesn't sound like we'll be seeing him again this season. But at least the early returns, the Packers didn't look any different upfront in terms of defending the run. Yeah,
they didn't. They actually defended really well, I think it was fifty six total yards, and that's including the nineteen scrambling that they got from Josh Allen as well. Yet, Kenny Clark, I'm curious to see how they handle this because I think I don't know the exact stats in front of me. Actually, you know what, I can look it up. He played a lot again, and that's sort of been the path for him so far this season.
Yet snaps out of the eighty one. All told, he's been a bell cow for them in the middle, certainly Dean Lowry jumping in there. But on the offensive line, Mike, I thought they had a whale of a ball game Byron Bell moving in there. Brian Bloggett got a little nicked up for a second, but stayed in the game. I thought played well at that right tackle position. And for my money, and I'm not Larry mccare and he knows the stuff a lot better than I do. I
thought David Backyard was exceptional in this game. Obviously, we know what he does as a pass blocker and all pro in that regard, but he's getting down the field with his athleticism, taking on you know, linebackers and defensive backs, you know, being able to make sure you get a hat on a body. And Jerry Hughes the Buffalo defensive end. He was the guy who changed that game in Minnesota.
The previous week. We didn't even hear about Jerry was yesterday and that that's that's a huge credit to David bat He's playing like the all pro that he is. Two sacks and obviously you know you can go and diagnose those and make of it what you will, but a hundred forty one yards on the ground, and that's exactly the target that you're looking for. Tip your captain Byron Bell, as you said, he's a veteran. He's been through the wars there in the trenches. I think he
looks great as a guard. I've always liked him as a guard. Certainly he gives you the flexibility at tackle, but I think that guard position really suits him well. He was getting downfield on some screen opportunities. Looked like the guy had been playing in that scheme all this summer. He looked like he was a guy that could be counted on in that spot. Yeah, I agree with you. Well, before we go today, West, a quick look at where things stand in the NFC North at the quarter pole here.
Everybody has four games in. The Chicago Bears on top at three and one. They're on a three game winning streak after the Week one loss here at lambeau Field. Packers next at two, one and one, the Minnesota Vikings at one, two and one, and the Detroit Lions lose on a walk off field goal by the Dallas Cowboys. So the Lion are one and three, the Packers opponent next Sunday in Detroit. I'll say this about the Bears.
I said it after the Week one game here when we saw Matt Naggie and that offense with Mr Drabinsky, I said, if they start attacking and throwing the ball down the field and True Whisky starts getting that part of the game figured out, watch out for this offense. And boy, they really attacked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And I'll say this, looking at the highlights, those guys were
so wide open down the field. It was as though the Buccaneers came out with a defensive game plan to take away all of the horizontal college like stuff that I had talked about. They it was as though they weren't even prepared for True Whisky to push the ball down the field and his receivers were just wide open the entire first half. They got out to a huge lead,
absolutely demolished the Buccaneers at Soldier Field. Chicago. Bears are three and one and that right now they are the talk of the NFC Nors and it's funny too much because you look at what they're doing with Terri Cohen now too. It all was sort of reminds you a little bit. You know, Creem Hunts a different player, but just reminds you of those those running backs and the guys that you know, they were able to make into huge playmakers during his time with Andy Reid in Kansas City.
Had a phenomenal game yesterday, hundred and twenty one yards receiving, Taylor Gabriel fitting in really nicely with that offense. Allen Robinson got a touchdown. So, yeah, you have to respect the Bears. And the other thing that's really interesting too, Mike, you know, you can perseverate. I think that's been a word you and I've been throwing around lately. You can perseverate on what happened in the second half against uh and even the last, you know, thirty minutes against Minnesota.
You can talk about the slow start against Washington. Depending on how this year works out for the Packers in the NFC North, the final thirty minutes of that game, which Chicago, could have huge ramifications for the season if if the Packers continue to, you know, go upon this pace, if the Bears continue to find ways to get those victories,
if they get Mitchell Robinsky more confidence. A game like that is going to go a long way in that young man's confidence being open it up with six touchdown passes, three fifty four yard It's it's gonna be very interesting because all those games we talked about all the time. Division games have huge ramifications for your season. Packers coming back to beat the Bears, man, that could be one to follow once we get to week seventeen, Yeah, no question about it. With that, we will call it a
wrap on this edition of Packers Unscripted. Be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team on Packers dot Com on Twitter. He's at west Hot, I'm at Mike Spofford at Packers for the team account. Thanks for tuning in, everybody, See you next time.