Slow starts on offense in the last two games have put the Green Bay Packers in major holes. Against the New Orleans Saints, they were able to dig their way out — but just barely. That wasn’t the case against the Detroit Lions on Thursday night, and in general, starting slow and consistently playing from behind is no way to live in the NFL.
At halftime against the Saints, the Packers trailed 17 to 0. At halftime against the Lions, Green Bay was down 27 to 3. That’s a grand total of 41 points that the Packers have been outscored by in the first two-quarters of each of the last two games. As you would guess, the yardage gap between offenses is quite massive as well.
Buy Packers TicketsAs the scores reflect, the Packers’ offense has come out stagnant and mistake-prone, to say the least, in these opening quarters–struggling to pick up yards or even a first down, leading to short possessions and quite a few punts.
“I think it’s something we’ve just got to work on throughout the week of practice,” said Jordan Love following the Lions’ game. “I think offensively as a whole, we’ve just got to start faster. When we don’t start fast and we kind of get behind, it’s hard to run the ball. You get put in situations where you’ve got to throw the ball, so I think we’ve just got to start faster.”
A lot of these issues on offense stem from the Packers’ inability to run the ball effectively and an overall lack of success on early downs. This puts their young offense behind the sticks and in obvious passing situations, allowing the defensive front to be aggressive and the defense as a whole to get into favorable matchups. As LaFleur said on Thursday night, that’s a recipe for losing football.
“We weren’t executing,” added Love. “To start the game, getting the ball in scoring position right there and I think we went three-and-out right away. So just not executing, not converting on third downs and just not putting ourselves in great positions to get positive plays going forward.”
This inability to move the ball, resulting in short drives for the Green Bay offense creates a lack of complimentary football and can put the defense in difficult situations. The Packers’ fourth-quarter performance against Atlanta is a prime example of this, with the offense running only 10 plays and holding the ball for just three total minutes. The first halves of the New Orleans and Detroit games have played out similarly–although the defense was able to get stops against the Saints.
Now, this is also not meant to be an excuse for the defense’s play, specifically against Detroit. The Lions dominated the line of scrimmage, and it was another fairly passive approach from defensive coordinator Joe Barry, but when there is also a huge discrepancy in time of possession and the number of plays ran, a defender’s job only gets more challenging. Detroit ended up running 20 more plays on offense than the Packers and held the ball for nearly 16 more minutes because of the lack of complimentary football from Green Bay.
“I think there’s a lot to that,” said LaFleur about the lack of complimentary football. “You know, we were three-and-out, what, five possessions in a row or whatever it was. It’s very humbling. And sometimes that happens, but we can’t continue to go backwards. We keep going backwards on third and long situations.”
There isn’t just one player or only one position group on offense that has to improve if the Packers are going to overcome these slow starts. All 11 have to play and execute better, and the coaching staff needs to be able to adjust more quickly on the fly.
With that said, being able to move the ball with some sort of consistency will go a long way in fixing this big problem. If anything, it will eat up some clock and give the defense some additional rest, but it will also open up opportunities in the passing game as well, taking some of that playmaking burden off of Love’s shoulders.
“No, I think it’s everybody on offense, the pass game included,” said Love about the team’s slow starts. “We just weren’t executing in the pass game, and we’ve just got to collectively as a whole find out what it is and just, like I said, start faster. On that first drive, I don’t think we ran the ball at all, so that was all passes, but it’s something we’ve got to do better at.”
