#733 Packers Unscripted: Double duty

Packers Lions. Review one game, preview another. We'll start with reviewing Sunday's game at Lambefield And I don't know where you want to start with this, but I'm going to start right here because last week we spent a good portion of our Tuesday show talking about how one bad quarter of football can wipe out three pretty good quarters

of football. Well, now, one awfully good quarter of football wiped out three very very struggling quarters of football for the Green Bay Packers, and they came out of these two games games at one on one because they pulled off a seventeen point fourth quarter comeback against the Saints.

it was a slow start. And then afterwards, after that fourth quarter I sent both the text going, now ENVM

turned out cool. Yeah, uh, it's funny. Mike. As many years as I've covered this thing, and you obviously have a couple more of these games under your belt than I do, I always feel like I see something new and this game, as much as there were some parallels to what happened in twenty eighteen, the only other time the Packers have come back from a seventeen point deficit in that win over the Bears in the beginning of the hundred six, this one just felt different because this one,

it's not like the quarterback was out, it's not that anybody was injured. While other than the people that were injured at the beginning, it was just a matter of the Packers just really were not executing early on, and there were too many penalties they were thrown in a bunch of third and long situations. As good as you know, Jordan Love has been on third and longs. It's difficult when it's third and nine plus.

guys stepping up and making plays. But if there was ever a situation that shows you what a young quarterback's medal is made out of, it was that with Jordan Love, the kids stepped up routinely and made a bunch of plays that I don't know a lot of NFL quarterbacks could make.

game from start to finish. But when you talk about a comeback like this, and I mentioned this an insider inbox other conversations I've had with people, I've seen a lot of comebacks in my day, both by the Packers, by the other team, whatever it may be. I don't know if I've ever seen one that felt like it came completely out of the blue, that it just you just had felt like there was nothing that you were going to hang your hat on and say, Okay, yeah,

there's still a chance. There's still a chance, you know, even going all the way up to the first play of the fourth quarter, the Packers are in the red zone. They've got fourth and two at the thirteen yard line. Seventeen to nothing at the start of the fourth quarter is not insurmountable. It's three scores. It's a tough hill to climb, but it's not insurmountable. But then on fourth and two from the thirteen yard line, they the Packers

can't connect. Love and Patrick Taylor are just not on the same page with when the Saints, in essence, we're giving them the first down, the way they were lining up defensively, you don't execute that pass, you turn the ball over on downs, and you know, you're just like, what do you even have to go on here? And then suddenly, you know, the defense was holding up it's and kept getting the ball back to the offense to

give them chance after chance after chance. And then suddenly those chances turned into field goal, touchdown, touchdown, a gutsy two point conversion on the middle score after the second touchdown or after the first touchdown, the second score, which which turned out to be a tremendous play by Jordan Love, just off schedule, improvising finding samai toure when he starts to scramble and buy some time, but he's got no way to get to the goal line himself, and he

just whips a pass across across his body, and you know, you could feel the energy in the stadium. The defense was getting its job done. You know, you know, Jayden Reid makes a diving catch for thirty yards just a couple of plays after Jordan Love scrambles twenty four yards up the sideline. I mean, it was just it started to compound itself, but it it just it felt like it came out of the blue, and and I give credit. You know, there have been some discussions in Matt Lafleur's

press conferences like is this is a young team? Are they just too young to know any better? That you're not supposed to be able to do that. You're not supposed to just flip a switch and go win a game that you kind of had no business winning. But they found a way and it certainly puts the team in a much better place mentally, psychologically and everything going into a short week with a division rival coming in here for Thursday night football.

you know, it's we're almost getting long winded. I'm definitely getting long winded talking about his poise and his confidence and just his composure in those situations. But the kid is the guy's just built for red zone situations and situational football. Yeah, that played a two ray although it

wasn't technically in the red zone. I mean he's dancing, he's scrambling the pocket, he's stepping tall, he's seeing through the clutter, and he's finding his receiver on an extended play that you don't typically see happen on a two point conversion. Usually you got to hit your mark right away or you're not going to get the points. They made. Play happened, though Matt Lafloory even said he didn't feel great about the play call going into that, but Jordan Love made the Packers look really smart.

timing on the motion is off. He almost gets hit by the shotgun snap because he either he goes too far doesn't get their I don't know what exactly his assignment was in terms of the motion, but the snap on the two point conversion almost hit him in the leg and would have completely wrecked that and obviously would have changed everything going down the stretch if the Packers

are down eight as opposed to being down six. I mean, there was so much that the Packers had to do to overcome to kind of get out of their own way. When you talk about the penalties and the pre snap stuff and the holding and the special teams was committing penalties and putting them in bad field position and all of that kind of stuff. Somehow they just you know, Matt Lafleur talks about resilience, but it wasn't just resilience.

There was also a persistence in this game. This team, This team showed a persistence, whether you're talking about the defense going out there and just continually getting stops to get the ball back to the offense, or whether you're talking about Jordan Love trying to hit Romeo Dobbs against Isaac Yadam the one on one coverage on the outside because Marshaun Lattimore's on the other side. You don't really

want to mess with the all pro over there. He kept after it and then sure enough they finally connected for what turned up out to be the game winning touchdown.

They make the adjustments there and then honestly, what sort of picked the Packers up during that final stretch, to my eye, it was that play that they ran on the special team's kickoff coverage where you had Darnell Savage knifing inside of Keishawn Nixon making an open field tackle and making Rashid Shaheed, who actually had that punt return for touchdown, right dropping him at the seventeen and making the Saints take over the ball at that spot. There

were some unfortunate things. Derek Carr goes down with the ac joint sprain on one of the sacks that Rashawn Gary had, but then Gary down the stretch made some big plays, four quarterback hits, three sacks. I don't even know how many pressures he got accredited for with like Pro Football Focus, but the guy was constantly around the football it was my story after the game. You touched on it as well, the complimentary football aspect of this.

It's everything that was missing in Atlanta. It was President Lambellfield on Sunday.

Jamis Winston steps in, He's still got Chris o'lave and Michael Thomas and these guys to throw the ball to it, and the Packers defense just kept kept getting the job done. You know, I pointed out in my in by what you might have misfeature that's on the website, there were two, you know, really two defensive sequences that not a lot of people are talking about because they weren't in the

fourth quarter. But you look at the end of the first half, when Derek Carr is still in the game, They've got first and goal in the seven yard line with a chance to go up twenty one to zero, and the Packers defense held made him kick the field goal. It was only seventeen to nothing at the half as opposed to twenty one. And then on one of Winston's early possessions, he actually gets a first down or two and they have a first down at the I believe it's the thirty seven yard line. For green Bay. No,

I'm sorry, forty one yard line of green Bay. So they moved the chains one more time. That field goal is under fifty yards and they're looking at potentially adding three points even with Winston not doing a whole lot. But the defense rose up and got a three and out there, made them punt. The Saints didn't get to didn't get any more points on the board. And then, of course, you know Packers catch a break when when the Saints rookie kicker misses from forty six yards.

You didn't have Christian Wattson, David Baktiari or Aaron Jones. Again, they needed young guys to rise that occasion. Whether or not they know enough to know not what they know in these matchups, it's irrelevant. It's about what do you do when you go out there. I thought that team followed the energy of Jordan Love, the twenty five yard scramble that he had to kickstart one of the series, the thirty yard pass to Jaden Reid. We saw a

number of different DPI calls. Again, for as much as people have been talking about oh, he throws downfield so often, the Packers are generating yards, They're generating points off those opportunities. It's exciting. Packers are playing an exciting brand of football right now.

Jaden Reid he got his hands on some passes that he'd like to have back that he feels he should have caught. Everybody feels he should have caught those, but Jordan Reid kept going to him. Not that he had a whole lot of choice with Aaron Jones and Christian Watson not in the game, but Jayden Reid just kept

plugging away. He was persistent, He stayed with it, and he makes the big thirty yard diving catch down the field that you know, whatever the next gen stats say was thirty percent catch probability or whatever, but he he makes the play when he had some other plays earlier in the game that maybe were a little bit more routine, so to speak, and he he doesn't come up with him. But they just these young guys that had that had to step up into big roles. They just kept playing

and they just kept fighting. And Matt lafleur Scher was proud of him after the game.

the Packers didn't give up. They believed, and now they have to enjoy it very quickly and then prepare for the Detroit Lions.

subs fifty years of better. All right, there's a lot of challenges here facing the Packers on a short week west. Not only is there obviously the limited preparation time and everything, which which is the same for both teams coming off of a game on Sunday, but the Packers have they have so much about their operation on offense and on special teams in particular, that they need to clean up. There were all the penalties on offense. There was the

there were penalties on special teams. There was the punp return allowed for a touchdown. You have so little time right now to try to straighten that stuff out. I mean, you have to review it in some fashion. But at the same time, you've got to move on and prepare, specifically for a Detroit Lions team that's coming into lambeau Field with the same two and one record. Both the Bears and the Vikings are zero to three. So this is for first place in the NFC North at this

early stage of the season. The winner is going to walk off that field on Thursday night, you know, sitting on top of the division. Big game here that you know, both of the Packers and Lions games this year are in short weeks on Thursdays, right the one in Detroit will beyond Thanksgiving Day. This is the first one, and for a Week four game, it feels awfully big.

played excellent. They stopped that running game. Jared Goff through thirty three passes and targeted four receivers, just ridiculous, kind of like it's a'm and Ross Saint Brown And it was Sam Laporta in this game, and that was pretty much the passing attack. And then Jamior Gibbs I think showed a lot of the flashes that we've seen with him. But I'm telling you right now, Michael I am going to telegraph what my final thoughts player to watch for this is going to be.

I keep on it. But the first thing I watched in the first two games with the Lions is Gibbs is a very talented back and he looks like he needs some seasoning in terms of the other aspects of the position. Packers have to make that count. You have to put on pressure to Jared Goff because, as we've seen so many times, including last season, when he gets into a rhythm and he protects the football, it's a pretty efficient offense and it can be difficult to stop.

can't read too much into it. But there's a lot of there's a lot of sort of thumbs up thumbs down kind of things when you try to make the comparisons. Because the Detroit Lions, for as much as they control old that win over the Falcons, they only scored twenty points against Atlanta's defense in their own stadium. The Packers had twenty four points against Atlanta in three quarters before things kind of fell apart in the fourth quarter on

the road there. But then the flip side of it is that Atlanta running game that the Packers could not handle. The Lions completely shut it down. I believe they ended up as a team the Falcons with only forty four yards rushing on twenty attempts. So that turned the game over to Desmond Ridder, the Falcons quarterback. It was all in his hands, and the Lions just made his life miserable in the pocket. They were getting after him. Play after play after play. They end up with seven sacks

of Rittter in the game. So when I look at this one, and I totally agree with you with regard to Rashaan Gary, the flip side of it is true for me. If you're the Packers, Aiden Hutchinson is the guy you can't let dictate what is going to be going on out there. And the Lions have a good defense, and they have other good defensive players aside from Aiden Hutchinson, But to me, it feels like he's the you know, the old Reggie Jackson New York Yankees line. He's the

straw that stirs the drink on that Lions defense. I think we saw it against the Chiefs in the in the kickoff opener in Week one, on that Thursday night game. Aiden Hutchinson is the guy who makes that defense go, I think, And if the Packers can whether David Baktier is gonna play, we don't know, you know, Zach Tom injured his knee, you know, at right tackle. We don't really know where the Packers are going to be on

the offensive line for this game. But man, you've got to keep Aiden Hutchinson from taking command of this thing because he can wreck a whole lot offense.

not even about playing them off the edges. They'll play him anywhere now at this point, and the guy can actually wreck the game from there because it's not just about the sacks that he gets, it's the way in which the defense around him adjust to that. I'll tell you this, man, at the end of last year, I know the Lions statistically we're not very good. I think we saw two of the best performances that they had against Green Bay, both at their place and then here in the finale.

first round pick on a safety. He's reminding everybody about how impactful that position can be. And again, Michael, that is a spot in that secondary that they really have struggle gold in recent years. To Phill they had some decent pass rushers, they had some good linebackers, but they didn't have defensive backs. They're starting to find some defensive backs.

your defense kind of unfairly in that respect. And yeah, I mean holding the holding the Atlanta Falcons, a two to zero team that had a lot going for him, holding those guys to just six points last week. These short weeks, you never you never know what's gonna happen. Both teams are up against the same limitations quickly before we go. Aside from anything that we've already talked about, anything else that jumps out at you as a key to victory for Green Bay in.

controlling the temple, those things, the tempo of it. Khalif Raymond involved in that, and you mentioned it Michael a couple weeks back with that pick six. That's the one thing that Green Bay I think is going to need in this game to succeed. I'm not saying you have to go and score a touchdown, but I'm just saying you need to find ways to take away the football and generate points off those takeaways. That's been one area outside of the you know, the kuway Walker interception that

they've kind of struggled with here early on. But if you can win the turnover battle, you can win the time of possession. I think the Green Bit Packers can get out of this thing. Three and one.

a huge boost in that regard. But as much as the ground game is struggling, You're still going to have to find a way to be effective in some fashion on the ground, because the Falcons found out last week what it's like if you become one dimensional against this Lion's defense, it's lights out. I mean, Desmond Ritter just had no chance back there. He was getting buried every other play when he's trying to throw, and the Packers can't get into Packers can't get into that kind of game.

You've got to find a way to get something you can rely on, something that can be consistent on the ground so that Lion's defense has to play You, honest, I agree with you.

matchups you want to be able to do. Because I'm telling you, Michael, the way the schedule's lining up, things are favorable for Green Bay. They needed to get out of this first stretch of the season. Okay, you know this wasn't advantageous to go two weeks on the road and then come back home if you go, if you split on the road, and when your first your first two at home, you go into that Monday night game against the Raiders feeling pretty good. Yeah.