#559 Packers Unscripted: Quick turnaround

Thursday Night football. This is a really interesting week around here because I think obviously the Packers were hoping to be heading to San Francisco with just the one loss on their ledger. Now you're in danger of actually picking up a third loss prior to the midway point of

the season. With this being game number eight. This is a tough one because underneath Matt la Fleur, up until Sunday, they only had lost one game by a touchdown or inside a touchdown, And I think, if everybody's just being honest with themselves, this was a game that Green Bay just shouldn't have lost. I mean, it's just the way that they finished it two in the fourth quarter that that was more I think indicative of the team that

this is um. They're more consistent moving the ball. Offensively, they had some guys while they didn't have al Lazar, they did have some guys step up. Davante Adams caught his third touchdown and the defense got too late stops. But the problem was everything that happened in that second and third quarter again for green Bay, and that's really told the tale of this game Minnesota. Mike. It's a lot like what you and I talked about last week.

It's a lot like Larry McCarn right over there on our three Things video last Wednesday mentioned defensively, the Vikings just don't have a ton of playmakers right now, whether it be through injuries or just you know, decisions and trades that they've made. And I gotta give a credit

to Mike Zimmer. He still made all the ends meet and in this matchup, after the first quarter that was largely dictated by green Bay, the momentum started to swing a little bit towards Minnesota at the end of the first half, and in the third quarter they took the ball and Dalvin Cook ran away with it. Yeah. I mean, you know, football is a team game, and I'm not trying to minimize that, but it feels like the Green Bay Packers got beat by one player. They got beat

by Dalvin Cook. On Sunday. He scores all four of Minnesota's touchdowns, the Vikings getting touchdowns on on their first four possessions of the game. He scores all four of them. He has two six yards from scrimmage, a hundred and sixty three rushing, sixty three receiving, including a fifty yard touchdown on a third and nine screen pass. I believe the two six yards was approximately se of Minnesota's total. And yes, I take nothing away from Mike Zimmer's defense.

They were really banged up at cornerback. The windy conditions certainly affected the passing game, but you thought the Packers certainly would the way they started the game, they would be more efficient on offense. But the bottom line is the defense gave up four consecutive touchdowns, and when the offense started to get some penalty flags in the third quarter to stall out some drives, suddenly the Packers couldn't

keep up. And you're playing from behind, and I tell you what, coming from behind two touchdowns against the Mike Zimmer defense, it doesn't matter who's on the field. He's got he's he's got the scheme and and the coaching to make that a really, really difficult scenario. And it was really hard for the Packers to come back. Yeah, and and this and again. You have sixteen regular season games you're not always going to be at and things

like this happened. But you really do get a feeling like it was the perfect storm for the Packers in this game. You go in without David back tr and without Aaron Jones, and Jamal Williams has been incredibly solid. You know my feelings on him. I've made that ambutdantly clear, especially over the last few weeks. But if you look back at the performances the Packers had last season, Aaron Jones is a big reason they won those two games, in one of which the Vikings didn't have Delvin Cook,

and you saw how the landscape changed. Then you have the windy conditions, which plays the game more into a run game type, you know, orientation. You have Alex Kemp's crew making some tiki tach calls here and there, you have just so many different things worked against the Packers in this matchup, and at the end of the day, he still ended up losing. You end up being five and two. That's the rubb of the Green over you know,

of course of a long season. The key is now though for Green Bay's you're gonna be going up against the San Francisco forty Niners team that's really banged up. Right now, I know what the record was last year in the Bay Area. I know they've had some problems on the West Coast. It really puts a big spotlight on Green Bay needing to get this wind now after you know what I think everybody would have agree was a disappointing performance on Sunday. Yeah, real quickly here West.

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Backslash Packers. All right, Well, obviously there were shortcomings on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball here for the Packers as they dropped to five and two, The good news is they stayed in first place in the NFC North because the Chicago Bears lost in overtime to the New Orleans Saints at Soldier Field. So the Bears are five and three, still that half game back of Green Bay. The Bears have not had their bye week yet. And you mentioned the San Francisco forty Niners being pretty

banged up, and yeah they are. They lost to one of their division rivals, the Seattle Seahawks. The Forts, now the defending NFC champions, are four and four, and here here's the list. Here's the list Wes on defense, the following players around injured reserve, Nick Bosa, de Ford Solomon Thomas, Ziggy Ansa and Richard Sherman. And on offense, Raheem Mostert and Jordan Reed running back in tight end or on

injured reserve. And in this past game, Jimmy Garoppolo and George Kittle have gone down with what appeared to be long term injuries at least a month or two for each of those guys. My point is, this team the Packers are going to play on Thursday night out in Santa Clara is not even going to resemble personnel wise the team that they played twice out there last year.

This is going to be a completely different game and a completely different challenge for the Packers aside from the scheme part of things, because this is still Kyle Shanahan and his team and what he and Robert Salad on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. Well, and that's the big thing here. I think there's a lot of people that would agree that Kyle Shanahan's one of the brightest offensive minds in the game right now. Matt

the floor is up there too. But if there's been one coach over the last three and a half years that has shown he can do more with less, it's Kyle Shanahan. They've dealt with this before and they've won football games in spite of that. Now, all that being said, when you look at that injury report that they had coming out of that Seattle game with Tevin Coleman also dealing with a knee injury, now you've already lost Jeff Wilson who's on I R with a high ankle sprain.

Jerick McKinnon, who's battled injuries the last two seasons. He's been kind of held back a little bit due to what they determined was leg fatigue. So now they're onto basically their fifth string running back. So there's just so many different areas of this game where if you look at it on paper, the Packers need to go to work, they need to pick up this win. But then you also look at how the forty Niners finished that game

against Seattle. Now you can say it's garbage time. You can say that the decision was at hand, but Nick Mullins came in and put some wind at his sales a little bit. I finished with a U and twenty two passer rating. I don't care if you are taking out a bunch of Arena league football players. If you play that way in the fourth quarter and you up three touchdowns, you're going to feel okay about your chances. So much like you and I, for all of last week,

we're preaching Mike, you cannot take the Vikings. Lately, you most definitely cannot take the forty Niners. Likely because if we know anything, it's that an injured animal. Is that it's most dangerous. Yeah. And the forty Niners here, quite frankly, they're they're going to be about as desperate for a win as you could, uh you could find because they are four and four, They're in an incredibly tough division

in the NFC West. If they were to pick up their fifth loss at this stage of the season, when they still have games against their own division rivals in the Rams, the Cardinals, and the Seahawks, and then they also have a game I believe against the Saints on their schedule coming up as well. Five losses right now would be really, really tough for the forty Niners to come back from the Packers in some senses, can you know,

can land a pretty good hay maker here? In terms of the forty niners chances to repeat as NFC champions if they can get this win on Thursday night, What they're going to do offensively, I shouldn't say what they're going to do, but who they're going to use, Whom they're going to use offensively is what I'll be curious to see. Because you mentioned Jerick McKinnon, I think they're going to have to use him quite a bit, but they also now have been employing a rookie running back

from Baylor, Jamichael Hasti. Um. And as far as the tight end situation, yes, the Packers won't have to deal with George Kittle. But don't sleep on Ross Dwelly. I believe Ross is his first name, if I'm not mistaken. He scored a touchdown and you were talking about, you know, was it garbage time or not. Well, here's the thing. I went back to go through the the highlights of

that game. Dwell he scores a touchdown with I believe it was around four minutes left in the fourth quarter, and with a two point conversion, the forty Niners would have made that a one score game with four minutes to go. They did not get the two point conversion. Therefore, um, it was not a one score game at that stage.

But Nick Mullins brought them back and gave them a shot um against the Seattle Seahawks before Russell Wilson then drove the Seahawks down the field for the clinching touchdown with uh, you know, with around two minutes to go. So um this uh, this this for forty Niners team, this coaching staff, they're They're going to give the Packers

absolutely everything they can handle. And the Packers have their own issues to deal with here too, with A. J. Dillon, the rookie running back going on the reserve COVID nineteen list. At the time we're taping this on Tuesday morning, we don't know exactly if there are any other implications as far as other players, so I don't want to speculate on that. We will just have to see come Thursday at kickoff time who the Packers have available for this game.

But Packers kind of dealing with a strange week to begin with, and then you have the wrinkle thrown in with the first player since training camp being put on the COVID nineteen list. Yeah, and just to touch on this too really quickly before we move on to that.

As far as San Francisco is concerned, they had three touchdown producing drives in that fourth quarter that amounted to two and thirty nine of their one total yards I'm sorry, three one total yards in that game, So almost two thirds of their offense came with Mullins at quarterback there. And if you want to talk about garbage time, to tell that to Brandon Ayuk, I mean this is a young man too, just like justin Jefferson, the Packers saw

another rookie receiver. They're gonna have to be cognizant of. Back to your original point, a lot of challenges being thrown Green Bay's way this year that they haven't had before. They worked remotely on Monday. The one thing that maybe does work to their benefit is is Adrian Ames mentioned after the game this was going to be a heavily mental week anyway. They're not going to actually stand and have their actual normal practice on Tuesday. Maybe they get

on the field on Wednesdays. The way that that met La Flour kind of made it sound so this is a very unusual week, but it's an unusual week by the virtue of it also be and just a Thursday night football game. You got to go through your protocols. You have to be in the communication with the NFL, check all the right boxes. They did get permission to be in the building on Tuesday, and you would hope with the proper protocols being followed, they'd be able to

get out there and get on this game on Thursday. Yeah. What we heard from Matt Lafleur on Monday afternoon is that is that everything right now is still pointing to The plans are to fly to Santa Clara on Wednesday late in the day and the Packers will be kicking this game off on Thursday. Will be interesting to see. Packers have had three very very key players on offense out for multiple weeks now, talking about David bock Tr at left tackle, Aaron Jones obviously at running back in

Alan Lazard. All three of those players have um return to practice on some level. Um according to Yeah, according to the injury report, Um, it's it's it's a tough spot to be in. You'd like you'd like for David Baktr and Aaron Jones and Alan Lazard to get a full week of practice in before they make their return to the field for a game. I really don't know how Matt Lafleur is going to handle this and and what the opinion of the medical staff is going to be.

But certainly you could see as the Vikings made defensive adjustments on Sunday to what the Packers are trying to do with the jet motions with Tyler Irvin and some of the different things, and and that the Packers were missing their key guys offensively, and that also contributed to to the difficulties and coming from behind. It's it's easy

to make up for. It's easy to make up for missing pieces, uh key, missing pieces like that if you are if you are playing from ahead and your defense is in a different spot, and just the tenor of the game is different, which is what the Houston game was like the previous week. This one wasn't like that, and the Packers missed having a couple of their big offensive playmakers. Davante Adams might be the best receiver in the National Football League at three time Pro Bowler. I

think he's heading towards an all Pro type season. On Sunday became I believe it was the first time his career had three touchdowns in a game, only the third receiver in franchise history to have five touchdowns against the Minnesota Vikings in a season. So I'm not sitting here

trying to, you know, diminish what his return meant. But Green Bay, because of what Aaron Jones and Jamal Williams have done and how they've improved their own games, they were able to be able to navigate that absence of Adams by doing some things with those guys as receivers, some two back stuff in the backfield, though, you just can't replicate Aaron Jones what he brings as a threat as a ball carrier, his ability to motion out and

also now catch the balls receiver. He's made a number of spectacular catches this year that I as I've even asked him about. I don't think three years ago he makes. He's just become a really well rounded, explosive player. And while Davante Adams is the biggest up it in this offense, Aaron Jones undeniablies number two. So them not having him on the field I think has had an effect here. Jamal Williams steady as it goes, good running back, solid,

but Aaron Jones this isn't just about position. He's just a playmaker. So last this is such an interesting scenario because he got hurt in practice. Wasn't like it happened in the game. We don't know what it looked like or how bad it was, but it really seemed to me that that originally was going to be just to hold him out, be smart against Houston, get him back. I was sort of somewhat taken aback that he wasn't

on the practice field last week. The fact he was at least limited estimated limited on Monday, that would indicate he's making the positive strides there you want to make. But Mike, this offense, it's just different when Aaron Jones is on the field. And then from there you can talk about Davon you know, David Batr, Kevin King was limited as well estimated on Monday. So there's a lot

of playmakers the Packers want to get back. But Aaron Jones was doing some really special things before that calf tweek, and it's it's had an impact on the offense not having him out there. Yeah, well we we saw, you know, Davante Adams the first two possessions on Sunday against the Vikings, he makes a handful of catches, including two touchdowns down close in the red zone. The Vikings were having a

hard time with them. They make they make the adjustment to try to take him out of the game and Adams only makes a couple of catches in the second half, one of the third touchdown. I still don't know how he caught them. Yeah, he he wasn't. He wasn't open the ball. You know, the ball somehow drops in there and he's able to get it. Another one of those that you wonder how much he even saw the past before it got to his hands, and he makes that catch.

But Adams wasn't much of a factor in the second half, and and when the Packers were getting you know, these holding penalties, and you know, one series the Packers crossed, the Packers are well across the fifty yard line looking like they're in scoring territory. All of a sudden, two holding penalties. You're in first and thirty from midfield. Well, you know, they're on a whole lot of you know, like coaches say, they're on a whole lot of calls on the A sheet for first and thirty, um, so

that you know, a drive stalled out there. They had another one after the big passed to uh to Robert Tonyan. But then suddenly two incompletes the Tyler Irvin two incompletes the eq st Brown. You wonder, you know where was Davantae Adams in that sequence while the Vikings were doing their best to take him out of the game, because you know Aaron Rodgers is looking for him. I mean that that's definitely part of the equation here. So the Packers need to get the offense back to full strength

and on the defensive side of the ball. We talk about it all the time when it happens, but they've got to figure out a way to slow down the run game because this defense, they can get after quarterbacks, and when you get after quarterbacks, that's how you generate turnovers. Those things just did not happen against Kirk Cousins, the league leader in interceptions at quarterback playing, and simply because

the Packers couldn't stop the run right. And I'm not trying to bury Horowitz myself with like the pat on the back or anything here, but this is what I wrote in box, and you and I discussed it last week. That game was going to be one of the trenches, even before we knew full on what the wind was going to be like, just knowing that Dalvin Cook was going to be back, that's where that game was going to be played. In credit again to Minnesota. They achieved

what they needed to achieve to get that win. And I think you and I would both agree the Minnesota Vikings are a much different and much better football team when Cook is on the field. But you've got a rise to that challenge. I said it also an inbox last week. This was the test that that run defense needed because they had put together some solid performances in the past few weeks. They didn't. They weren't able to be able to grab that brass ring. That weren't able

to take advantage of the opportunity. And people asked us time and time again, Mike, well, what's the problem. What's the issue? It was everything. It was the fact that the gaps were too big. It was the fact that at the second level, not enough guys were making plays. And Adrian name has probably had the most salient point of all. You need multiple guys on a running back. You need multiple tacklers converging to the ball. The best tackling teams are the ones that don't ask one guy

to make the tackle all the time. That's the bottom line. And the other thing I'll say to sorry to interrupted, but I thought it was interesting. A couple of things that Matt Lafleur said on Monday afternoon struck me because he was talking about how the issues with the run defense it was a combination of a lot of things. A couple of things he mentioned. One he suggested, you know, guys trying to do too much, sort of trying to

make that hero play to stop Dalvin Cook. And when you're not just doing your responsibility, that you know, can throw everything off. And the other thing he said is if you're tired, we got other guys who can go in and play, suggesting that the Packers on D and the defensive front, they had guys that were getting tired, but they weren't subbing themselves out. They weren't going to the depth that was available because this defense was about as healthy as it had been in a long time

on that side of the ball. And uh and yet that didn't look like a healthy, fresh defense at all against Minnesota. That was the most bizarre thing. When I went and looked at the box score, I was one to actually count it up. It It end up being ten guys played at least the defensive snaps. That is a huge number because that's including defensive lineman, that's including

you know, your outside pass rushers. That that's a lot of work, even if it is only fifty two snaps to have set ten guys basically a starting defense almost playing that now. I think a part of that was probably because they ran so much base but still, I mean, you know you have Kingsley Keykey available montrevious Adams only played six snaps. I mean, there are opportunities there to get those rotations going. They weren't able to do it, and and certainly the Vikings made't pay for it. They

set it after the game. I'm gonna stick with it. There's They're not going to see a Delvin Cook here on Thursday night. But this is a very similar run oriented offense where things are built on the run and establishing the run. Kyle Shanahan isn't going to forsake that because he wants to get his backup quarterback going. I mean in terms of passing, I mean, they're gonna lean on that to get Nick Mullins going, and they have to be able to do it. And it's gonna be

a big challenge for Green Bay. Yeah, and you know, Kyle Shanahan is going to come out with all sorts of motions and misdirection and everything to try to get Mike Patton's defense get their eyes in the wrong place and they don't know, you know, you don't know who the ball, who the ball is going to, and then suddenly boom they hit you with. They hit you with a matchup where there's where there's a one on one in a certain situation and they're gonna try to hit

the big play. That's that's what Shanahan does. I'm gonna close on this as far as the Minnesota game. That will close the book on it. Yeah, I do have to For as much as we talk about things that went wrong for them, I have to give credit. It is the silver lining of silver linings. But I thought Adrian Name has played a whale of a ball game in that game. You want to talk about a guy that was playing to every single whistle from the beginning to the end. Adrian Name has earned his paycheck in

that game. He also came up with that strip of uh Delvin Cook on third and one that enabled the Packers to be ableok at the ball back late. Yeah, the Packers defense rose up late and gave and gave the offense a chance. And um, you hope that that's something that they can grab onto and carry over here on a short week when you know, quite frankly, both of these teams not feeling very good about themselves right now.

This is this is two teams that played for the NFC Championship last year, and they're both in different ways kind of in in a gut check scenario, you gotta get a win. You gotta get a win. You gotta get a win on Thursday night. And for Green Bay, if you're able to achieve that, then you have a week and a half by to come back, and then Pandora's box really opens up to you, especially with the Jacksonville team on the other side of it. That looks

like they won't have Gardner Minshew here for a while. Yeah, all right, Well, 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 and all of the coverage of Thursday night's game from San Francisco. It'll all be available for you on Packers dot com for West I Am Mike. Thank you for tuning in, everybody, See you next time.