The Green Bay Packers offense sputtered like an engine with a rotten spark plug in Monday night’s 10-7 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles at Lambeau Field.
Matt LaFleur’s offense struggled for the second straight week, giving up 261 total yards and managing to get inside the red zone just once in 10 possessions. The Packers scored a season-low 7 points and Monday night marked their third loss this season in which they allowed 16 points or fewer.
“We have to find solutions. We’re going to keep fighting,” LaFleur said. “I don’t feel for anyone – there’s a lot of frustration, obviously, when you’re not performing at the level of winning football. But I believe in the people in terms of finding solutions to try to balance it out. I’m confident we can find something.”
The question surrounding Green Bay is whether LaFleur’s offense has become predictable at times, especially when the running game fails to move down the field.
With a chance to complete a late comeback, the Packers faced 4th-and-1 at their own 44-yard line with 90 seconds left. After a 9-yard pass, the offense rushed to the line to save time on 4th-and-1.Green Bay made a zone play that quarterback Josh Jacobs said the Eagles knew was coming. Philly punted the play for a four-yard loss, causing an unnecessary fumble.
“Fourth-and-1, they called our play,” Jacobs said. “We ran it like four times and they called it… the clock was winding down, we hit it pretty fast, faster than we wanted to and they made a play. I tried to throw the ball back to Jordan, where there was a fumble, but at that point you’re playing backyard football, it’s 4th down. So yeah, that’s how it went.”
Jordan Love, who went 20-of-30 passing for 176 yards and three sacks, confirmed that the play call came from LaFleur.
“I think that’s a call we made a few times throughout the game,” the QB said. “They probably heard the call or were guessing. It was the D-linebacker saying something, but I still thought we had a light box and we could try to run it there.”
Offense going to one of its bread-and-butter plays is nothing new. In a big place, leaning towards something that works is generally beneficial. But with an injured offensive line, it changed how Jacobs attacked the line once they knew what was coming.
“As a runner, he’s never comfortable,” he said. “Never, I mean never when they know what they were doing, it doesn’t feel good because it changes my mind about how I’m going to run the ball. If we’re just being honest. It makes me second-guess what I’m going to do. Obviously, people are smart, if we have a code word or whatever, if you hear it a few times, like you’re going to think it’s football, it’s never good, but it’s never good.”
Jacobs added, “They called it out, we called our play and they said, ‘inside zone, it’s coming here.’ So I didn’t want to run there, you know. But that’s just how it was.”
Philly stuffed the play that would have been turned over on downs, regardless of the delays.
The Packers defense, which played tough outside of the fumble that led to the Eagles’ only touchdown of the night, got the offense back with 27 seconds left, but a 64-yard field goal by Brandon McManus came up short.
The loss dropped the 5-3-1 Packers behind the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears in the NFC North.
LaFleur, who acknowledged that “a lot went wrong” with his offense Monday night, dismissed questions about his employment status.
“I’ll leave that to everyone else to decide,” he said. “I’m just going to focus on day-to-day life and try to…I feel like you’re always training for everything in this league. You know, that’s just my mentality. It’s always been that way. You know, you can never breathe. You always have to push, and that’s just my mentality. So, that’s not going to be my mentality to coach anymore.
There’s still a big season left, starting with a Week 11 game against a New York Giants club that fired its head coach, Brian Daboll. If Green Bay turns things around, that two-game stretch will be on the radar — which most teams go through during the season.
With the Packers going all out after the Micah Parsons trade, if the struggles continue, the heat will turn up on LaFleur and his staff.