Hi, everybody.
Welcome to another edition of Packers Unscripted from Packers dot Com. I am Mike Spoffor, joined as always by my trusted colleague West and Hodkoitz. We're coming to you here from our studios at lambeau Field, Wes. A few days removed from Thursday Night Football at lambeau Field, and it was not an enjoyable evening for the Packers. The final score
thirty four to twenty. The Detroit Lions come in and take over first place in the NFC North, and quite frankly, there was not a lot that went right for the Packers in this game. It got off to a rough start, and other than a brief interlude in the third quarter with a potential comeback being mounted, this was a game that the Packers just got beat by a better team.
Yeah, and it happened quick and fast. One of the things you and I talked about a lot, a lot last week at Nauseum is the fact that Packers need to set the tone early. Now they kind of did that. You know, you come out and they get the TfL on the first play, the stop on the first play, you get him into third and passing and Rudy Ford picks off Jared Goff, Right, everything's looking really solid. Unfortunately Green Bay's offense not able to do anything with the opportunity.
You still bang in the field goal, but you don't get as many points out of that as you would have liked off a turnover in their territory, and then after that, the Lions offense just got rolling in time and time again, Mike, I talked about it. I don't care what Jared Goff stats look like. I don't care what the passer rating reads. If you allow him to get comfortable in a game and allow them to run their offense the run to set up the play action, it is going to be a long afternoon for you.
Green Bay, as you mentioned, kind of rallied again coming out of the halftime break, but going down twenty four on answer to end the first half, it's not a recipe for success.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
The Packers' offense just really struggled for the duration of the first half. Quite frankly, in this game, they want five consecutive possessions without getting a first down. One of those was a I believe it was first play of the drive interception that set up the Lions for a short field and a touchdown, and a Packers defense that was struggling just kept getting sent back out on the field right away with no break, with no chance to regroup, with no real opportunity to figure out how to turn
the tide in this game. And neither side for the Packers was able to turn the tide. And you know, as Matt Lafleur likes to say, you have to give the opponent credit. The Lions. The Lions were better up front on both sides of the ball, the Lions defensive line and the Lions offensive line. That's where Detroit took command of this game and then for the most part
kept command of it. I think what was kind of funny when you think about it, and funny is not the right word, but the fact that when the Packers did rally in the third quarter, they got early in the four fourth quarter, they get a second touchdown, It's twenty seven to seventeen, there's about fourteen minutes left in the game, you're down by ten points. The Packers were actually in a better position than they were against the Saints the previous week, when they were down seventeen with
well under fourteen minutes to go. But the difference in this one was two major differences. One, the Lions, as I said, were just so stout upfront on both Lions that they kept command of the game. And the Lions, unlike the Saints, did not lose their starting quarterback to injury. And when the Lions needed to have a drive to
put the game away, they came up with it. And now, yes, it was going to be a field goal and it turned into a touchdown because of the penalty on kay Walker and all that, but the Lions still they took a ton of time off the clock in the fourth quarter. They were going to add points to the drive. That
was something that the Saints were unable to do. And the Packers kept the momentum all the way throughout the Lions just the Lions proved in many many ways in this game that they are the team to beat in the NFC North.
Moving forward for.
Now, the Detroit Lions, all five of their longest plays in this game happened in the first fifteen minutes. That was the biggest thing that stood out to me on paper. Jared Goff was incredibly effective in the first half and they were able to generate points off that they didn't just get field goals, they scored touchdowns. Then you go to the second half and they effectively ran the four
minute offense for the better part of thirty minutes. Yeah, and David Montgomery gave you the quintessential like Eddie George type game where it's thirty two carries, one hundred and twenty one yards, three point eight yards per carry. And while those numbers might not pop off the screen at you in terms of what is average yards per carry were, they continually moved the chains. They kept themselves into second and third in manageables and Green Bay just was not
able to stop it from there. And actually some of Montgomery's better runs than happened in that fourth quarter when Green Bay's defense started to tire out a little bit. This is gonna be an issue here for green Bay in that they need to find ways to start faster, because what happens is, as we talked about last week, when you start that slowly, it's not that you just fall behind and now you have to play catch up. You're allowing the opponent to dictate the pace of the game.
Dan Campbell's teams, Mike, even when they were a three win ball club, they did a good job of kind of pulling the opposition into the mud and making them play a hard nosed football game. They did it in this one. I was so incredibly impressed by Aiden Hutchinson.
You know, there's a lot of issues Green Bay was dealing with, you know, injuries were a big part of this game on the short week, But Aiden Hutchinson, for as much as we watched him, and him coming off of a Defensive Player of the Week award, the guy is versatile but impactful at multiple positions. I don't know if I've ever seen a guy that goes what six ' five two in the seventies to and you can put him at a three nose tech and he looks like he's a you know, Aaron Donald inside. How he's able
to move guys a lot of edge rushers. You got to kind of pick your poison there. Zadarius did it to an extent, although a lot of it was kind of selling out for the to get after the quarterback. Hutchinson can do it all. And I just feel like since he's been infused in this Detroit defense and as he's emerged over the last year calendar year, that Detroit's defense has gone along with him.
Yeah, they're building They're building that defense around Hutchinson, and it's not as though they don't have other good players. But you know, the Aaron Donald comparison isn't totally out of bounds here. I mean, no, they're not the same player, and Aaron Donald does not I would even say Donald maybe doesn't move around quite as much as as Hutchinson does. Right now with the Lions. Now, they did Hutchinson's two sixty, by the way, they didn't do that with Hutchinson as
much as a rookie. But you can see as he's as he's getting his NFL legs under him and you know, becoming the dominant player that he's expected to be as one of the top picks in the draft of the year he comes out. The Lions are using him. The Lions are using him in ways that dictate to try to dictate what the opposing offense is going to do. You mentioned the Packers need needing to start faster, and
I totally agree with you. I mean, with where the Packers offense has been these last two games in terms of how the first half, the first three quarters went against the Saints, the first two quarters went against the Lions. It's not a recipe for success. It can't it can't continue.
But I'll say this too, even if you're not going to be able to find a rhythm offensively, like really early in the game, you have to at least be able to have an answer, to have something that's going to stem the tide sooner before you get into these massive deficits. Be down seventeen against the Saints that proved to be surmountable. The Packers were able to come back from that, but down by twenty four against the Lions
before your offense can can find itself. You're just you know, it's going to take a miracle to be able to be able to do that. And there are going to be fits and starts and everything with the first year starting quarterback and all the youth the Packers have on offense. Everybody understands that, but boy, you've got to be able to put something together. You have to have an answer.
You have to have a.
Response to the adversity sooner, even if it doesn't mean you've got it figured out and okay, here we go into a rhythm, but you've got to have some kind of an answer to stem the tide. Before the snowball starts rolling too far down the hill.
Well, and it goes back to the complimentary football thing. And I know some people in inbox kind of push back on that. Well, they said, that's team football. It's true. Whatever you can throw any kind of you know, definition descriptor on it that you want. It's about all three phases kind of picking themselves up and if if one isn't quite hitting all the notes, somebody else, for at
least the time, being able to set the tone. Green Bay just struggled in this thing because what happened was even when they were defending the run well early, you give up the forty yard er to Khalif Raymond, you have some of these downfield opportunities come to fruition for the Lions. And then when you do get in the red area, when you do end up having these ends of the drive scenarios, they weren't able to get off the field. You weren't able to contain those to three points.
So where a situations where you could have been nine to three, twelve to three, whatever, it suddenly becomes twenty seven to three, and now you're kind of having to figure out where you're going to be at in the second half. I give Jordan Love a lot of credit the fact that Green Bay again showed the mental fortitude and toughness to come out in the second half in battle and not just kind of curl up. They kept swinging.
But as John Runyan was talking about in the locker room with all of us afterwards, that's just you can't do that to yourself. You can't put yourself in those spots. You can't expect to have a monumental comeback every single week. They did against the Saints, but you're probably facing a better team in the Detroit Lions, and they're gonna make you pay for it.
I think that's what stood out to me is just the Lions showed, even though they hit a lull in the third quarter, the Lions just showed they're a much
better team than the Saints. I mean, yes, it would it would have been very interesting and very exciting if Jordan Love had gotten the ball back again in the fourth quarter and the Packers were only down by ten, where then you have a chance to get it to a one score game and maybe there's still enough time on the clock, because as we know, anything can happen.
But the Lions were just too good. They built, they built a big lead, the Packers never got within one score, and the Lions put the game away when they needed to. The big topic of discussion, of course, probably the biggest topic of discussion right now with regard to the Packers is what are they going to do about the run defense. The Lions rushed for two hundred and eleven yards, the exact same total that the Atlanta Falcons had rushed for two games prior. The Packers are really struggling.
In that area.
Matt Lafleur had suggested after the game on Thursday night and again on Friday, They're going to look at some schematic changes. They're going to look at, you know, roles and responsibilities for certain players and whatnot. I'm not sure exactly what that means. We'll have to see. I personally, and I wrote this an insider inbox, I don't think it's going to be some sort of a wholesale change. I think it comes down to being more mindful of trying to take away the run in certain situations where
you try to dictate to the offense. Okay, we're not going to line up in a way that's going to invite you to run the ball, So I think it could end up being more situational, but that's just a
guess on my part. Whatever, whatever it is, the Packers have to start defending the run better because all they've done through defensively through the first four games of this season is with thirteen games to go, they're inviting teams to continue to pound the run at them because they haven't proven that they can stop it on a consistent base.
Yeah, and where Atlanta did a lot of the stretch stuff. You know, now you saw David Montgomery hitting him a little bit up the middle. I mean, I was really super impressed by Montgomery, the fact that this guy was coming off the thigh injury. He was actually questionable to play in this game, and not only does he play, they just continually feed him. I don't know if that was the smartest approach to handle a guy that's had some injury history.
But they're thirty two carries coming off of a coming off of a thigh injury.
He was a workhorse nine game, like.
You and I talked about. I mean, Gibbs is super talented, but you really don't know if you can trust him as much with the pass pro stuff and that's going to be big with the play action game and whatnot. So they felt like they needed to run Montgomery. You saw what happened when he wasn't out there for them change the complexion of their offense. There was a reason why they went out and got him and felt like he'd be a better fit for this thing than when
they had Jamal Williams and DeAndre Swift. That being said, for green Bay's standpoint, they have to find ways to consistently get the guy down on first contact. You can't get them either running into the second level free. You have to be able to have guys coming to the ball. Joe Berry is right. It's not just on one player or one position or one phase. It is about everybody
collectively coming together. But the thing that, as I wrote an insider inbox, that's the most disconcerting Montgomery, Gibbs, and Robinson they didn't have these performances against Green Bay because they knocked off an eighty yard touchdown run. They didn't even really have a run past twenty yards. It was just consistent needling that sort of worked green Bay down. You have to find a way early on in these football games to have that answer.
And I think that's the biggest challenge for the Packers defense moving forward, is trying to trying to come up with a way to change the opponent's mentality because you look at this game now, as Joe Berry said, you're not gonna necessarily be defending forty plus runs on a weekly basis. The Lions ended up running the ball forty two times. But watch when you watch the film is it is maddeningly frustrating to see how many times the Packers do play the run well, but they can't do
it on a consistent enough basis. I mean, I've put this statistic in a couple of stories that I've written. You look at those forty two runs for the Detroit Lions. Take out the three short touchdown runs which were all three yards or less. Take out the kneel down at the end of the game. There were fifteen standard running plays in that game where the Packers held the Lions to two yards or less, teen times two yards or less,
and another six that were three yard runs. So that's twenty one of the runs are three yards or less. But what is happening on so many of the other ones is six yards, eight yards twelve or thirteen yards, you start getting into the explosive run category even though it's not fifty or sixty yards down the field, and it's because the Packers are giving those up so often.
To me, it goes back to you're just inviting the opponent to continue to run the ball against you and to try to pound you into submission to the extent that the defense gets worn out and then when you're looking for though you're looking for that stop in the fourth quarter, it's really hard to come by because they've pounded away at you and warn you down with the running game, because it's a lot harder to defend the run.
It's a lot more physically exhausting to defend the run than it is to defend the pass.
Well, and the other thing too, Mike, you have to keep this in mind when you're factoring all this stuff together. David Montgomery Gibbs, these type of players, they are born into them that they want to be able to find a way to work the ball down field. It is the if a guy gets two yards three yards. You can hear it from Aaron Jones and aj Dillon too. They want to come back the next play and finally break that one right, because it really that's all it takes.
It just takes that one sort of backbreaking moment to turn it ahead a day completely on its head. We've seen those performances with Aaron Jones over the years where hey, maybe a team's doing a decent job against him, then he breaks a sixty yard touchdown and everything changes. That is where I think green Bay needs to figure this thing out. The analogy I keep using, and you're the big baseball guy. I'm not, but it reminds me of fielding percentage. You can go out there and catch all
the routine pop flies over and over again. Mike, I'm telling you right now, you're not winning the goal glove for one hundred and sixty two games for an entire season. If you go out there and misplay a ball and it hits your gloves and falls down, it changes everything.
Not that you have to be one hundred percent all the time, but it shows you how little the margin for ERA is and for green Bay's standpoint, As you said, that is the maddening thing because if you would not have just shown me the numbers, By and large, I think green Bay did do a good job of defending a run in this game. But it's about what those teams are able to do when they string plays together, back and forth, back and forth. Aaron Jones, AJ Dillon.
The Packers offense only twelve carries for twenty seven yards in this game. Why did that happen? A lot of people say, well, you have to run the ball more. But the thing is, if you don't get those yards right away and you go three and out, you don't get the plays to produce the yards. Yeah, and that's where the Lions won this game.
Yeah, and again you look at you know, we talked about it in you know, after the Atlanta game, the number of plays. You know, there's a difference of there was a difference to twenty in this game. The Lions ran seventy three, the Packers ran fifty three. That's not a recipe to develop any kind of balance or rhythm on offense. And it's not a recipe to be able to win games because you're putting you're putting too much on one side of the ball to try to keep
you in the game. As opposed to getting back to your point about complimentary football, team football, it has to be it has to be a team effort on both sides to get yourself to the fourth quarter with a chance to win.
It worked out.
It didn't work out against the Falcons, it did work out against the Saints, and they never really gave themselves that chance against the Detroit Lions.
The one thing I will say, so we're not just sitting here talking about all the sad, depressing stuff, is the fact that what I did enjoy about this game in the second half especially, was you started to see what is going to be the safety valves, the plays that you can always have in your back pocket. And Jordan Love and Romeo Dobbs. I mean, you're seeing all that reps, that timing, all that stuff that's built up.
It's taken them places. Now, it wasn't flawless. We know what happened with the interception late, but the fourth and nine play fifteen yards. How many times did Romeo Dobbs complete a first down with a quick out in these things, the plays that Aaron Rodgers would turn to for DeVante Adams. Yeah, you're seeing the roots of that right now between Dobbs and also with Jordan Love in the fact they finally got Christian Watson back in this game. He was on
the snapcount. He did get another touchdown. The guy's a magnet for the end zone. It happened again. And my goodness, I know Rob Damowski from ESPN dot com has written these stories already, But if you can just get Dobbs and Watson on the field together, both of these guys have flashed individually together collectively, my goodness, what the possibilities are for the passing game if they can both be with the Packers.
Yeah, this last game, you got Watson back on a snapcount. You got Aaron Jones back on a snapcount. Hopefully maybe those snapcounts will either rise or perhaps be lifted entirely. With a little bit of the extra break before the Monday night game coming up against the Raiders, Packer's still trying to figure out exactly how things are going to be pieced together. On the offensive line. David Baktiari is now on injured reserve, so he is out somewhat indefinitely
at this point. Rashid Walker is the guy who is filled in at left tackle. Zach Tom is dealing with an injury to his knee. He gutted it out, you know, played played the whole game at right tackle against the Lions, but definitely was not himself in that regard. John Runyon injured an ankle during the game against the Lions. We'll see where he is, you know, come.
Come game time.
So Packers have Packers have some things to figure out there up front offensively, but you're hoping that maybe those those perimeter weapons health wise are going to start to come around.
And I love Zach Tom I love this dude. I love everything about him. I love his play style. I like his footwork, the fact that he's made this right tackle thing work. Even though you and I spent the entire summer saying, hey, he looks more like an interior guy to yeah, he finds a way. And for him to come on a short week, dude, you and I saw that replay of the Saints late, I mean that
was a funky sort of looking injury. For him to bite down on the mouthpiece and get out there and play as well as he did, given all the things working against him, and given that he had to line up a couple times against Hutchinson, your hat just goes off to him. I mean, this is the this is again. We talked about Elton Jenkins all the time, and they're different types of offensive linemen, but they're succeeding early on for the same exact way.
Yeah, a little bit of sponsor business here, West, and then I'm gonna throw one more topic at you. Serious XMNFL Radio delivers hard hitting analysis and up to the minute NFL news that true football fanatics need. Twenty four to seven, three sixty five and at Cousin Subbs, we have something for everyone like our Wisconsin cheese curds, mac and cheese, golden fries, and creamy shakes, all paired with your favorite sub or sub and a bowl Cousin Subs fifty years of better.
All right.
As I said much earlier in the show, the Lions have definitely shown that as of right now they are the team to beat in the NFC North. They are sitting atop the division at three and one, the Packers behind them at two and two, the Minnesota Vikings at one and three, the Chicago Bears at zero to four. That is where things sit in the NFC North right now. My question for you, because as much as I certainly believe that this is not the same old Lions, I
think Dan Campbell has changed the culture there. He has proven that this is not the same old Lions. You have a quarterback in Jared Goff who has plenty of experience, He's gone to a super Bowl, all of that kind of stuff. The question that's out there is how will the Lions handle success at this point? How will they handle being the team everybody's coming after in the division? Not the team that is, you know, the plucky underdog, you know, the team that can kind of sneak up
on somebody. You know, That's not who the Lions are now. They came into Lambeufield on Thursday Night Football and dominated the Packers and walked out in control of the division. So how do you think, how do you think the Lions handle this? Where do you think this goes for them?
We're gonna learn a little bit about it this week because now they're gonna be considerable favorites going up against Carolina. But you use the word plucky, and the team that I think has pulled up that moniker this year is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yes, they are the plucky team, and they're gonna see them in two weeks, and then after that they're gonna have a game against the Raiders, we'll see where the Raiders is.
That Buccaneers game that just got flexed actually to a larger like national audience. Not that makes sense, not that that matters necessarily to the players when they're out there on the field, but more of the country is going to start to see these Detroit Lions now.
And the Buccaneers have gotten back to what Baker Mayfield does well, and that is making games entertaining first and foremost, but keeping things interesting. What Baker did at the end of last season with the Rams, that wasn't an anomaly. That's Baker Mayfield football. And somewhere along the line in Cleveland, I think they kind of lost the plot a little bit.
Tampa Bay needs that type of performance out of him to be able to make that offensive work because there is a dearth of weapons there, I think, specifically in their backfield. Let's get back to the Lions, though, they're going to be taking on a team and the Panthers that they're going to be considerable favorites at and then they're going to have whatever happens in that game, they have to come back and face Tampa Bay. They are now going to be the team that people are going
to be gunning to beat. I even said to you afterwards. No disrespect to anybody else on this Packer schedule, but there's six games up until when the Packers play the Lions. I think you can make a really good argument that the Lions are the best team the Packers are going to face until they face the Lions again. I think that's all three phases, everything they bring. Oh, and then you're playing them on Thanksgiving in Detroit. That's a challenge.
But this weekend more than any other, Mike reiterated something that Darnell Savage talked about. It's something you and I have talked about in the past. It is not easy to win in the National Football League. Ask the Chicago Bears, Ask the Carolina Panthers, Ask these teams that have found themselves in these last minute scenarios and just are not able to pull that victory out. I give credit to the Detroit Lions. They've played competitive football and they've found ways to win so far.
They're only lost this season is in overtime. Yep.
Yeah, and it has now got them in a position where they can be in the driver's seat. How you handle that. It's going to be an obviously very interesting question.
To a Yeah, and it's also as we've seen in this league, it is Sustaining success is the toughest challenge that there is in this league. Just ask the New York Giants, just ask the Minnesota Vikings. Look where those two teams are right now, coming off of playoff seasons a year ago, when they completely re energize their fan bases with what they had going, and now a month into the new season, those same fan bases are going like.
Where where are we? Where are we headed here?
Sustaining success is extremely difficult. It's the biggest challenge there is in this league. The Lions have got something good going here, they can they keep it going. I think it's I mean, other than other than Jordan Love and the long term prospects for the Green Bay Packers with him as their quarterback. What's going on in Detroit is the other big story right now in the NFC.
Well, since twenty fourteen now they've on what was it five times at lambeau Field or however that stat went, and then years before that they went twenty four.
St Yeah, they went, Yeah, they went a couple decades without being able to win a game in the state of Wisconsin.
It just shows you again. I remember listening to Jason Hansen talk about how I've never beaten these guys yes day and the guy played twenty one years or whatever it was. When the mentality changes, the momentum changes, and just the psychology that goes into these games, that matters. It matters when you feel like you're a winner. And that speech. I know he's not on the team anymore, but I go back to Hard Knocks a year ago and that speech that Jamal Williams gave that football team
about how I'm tired of losing. I don't want to be a loser. I'm here to win. I think there's a lot of people in Detroit that have picked up on that. And then, lastly, just to further illustrate your point about how quickly things can change, the Miami Dolphins after completely running Denver out of the stadium, putting up twenty points to the Buffalo Bills forty eight in a game that could be a preview of an AFC.
Yeah, when in the NFL, I mean it's it's it's like college football scores. I mean, when in the NFL has a team one by fifty and then lost by twenty eight, seven days later. I mean, this, this league is this league is crazy. If you're the if you're the Packers, Okay, you got it handed to you, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, you get ready for the next one. And that next one is Monday night in Vegas against a Raiders team that you know,
they've got some injury issues. They're trying to figure some things out as far as where they're going and uh, and the Packers are headed to head to Vegas to play in a stadium they've never played in before.
And we're gonna be previewing this on Thursday. We'll get to it then. But Josh Jacobs is off to a very slow start. The Raiders run offense is off to an extremely slow start. Raiders are turning over the football way too much right now. Yep, But I can guarantee you down in Las Vegas right now, they're going, hey, this is an opportunity. We're going up against a thirty ranked run defense. Right, who's going to be the one that succeeds there?
Right?
Exactly which it's gonna be the one that responds right?
Exactly which team is going to be the one to turn the tide in terms of in terms of the you know, those negative vibes of a certain phase, the negativity that's going on. Which team is going to be able to turn it around. We'll definitely talk about that more on Thursday on our next show, but for now, we'll call it a rap on this edition of Packers Unscripted. Be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team on Packers dot com. For Wes, I'm Mike. Thank
you for tuning in everybody. We will see you next time.