Green Bay Packers v. Oakland: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The Green Bay Packers put together a dominating offensive performance against the Oakland Raiders. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly from today’s game.

Although this was a fairly close game for much of the first half, an untimely fumble from Oakland Raiders’ quarterback Derek Carr along with a red-hot Aaron Rodgers, resulted in a dominating 42-24 victory for the Green Bay Packers.

With the win, the Packers now move to 6-1 on the season and still sit alone in first place within the NFC North. Today’s game came with a number of positives from the offensive side of the ball, while the defense, on the other hand, had some issues but as they’ve done all year long, they may bend but they rarely break.

As always, after having some time to reflect on Sunday’s game, here is the good, the bad, and the ugly from Green Bay’s performance against Oakland.

The Good

Aaron Rodgers

As expected, we knew it would take some time for the new Matt LaFleur offense to click, but over the past couple of weeks, it has been picking up some steam. Well, on Sunday against Oakland this offense was nearly unstoppable and that was in large part due to the masterful play of Aaron Rodgers.

While some of the Packer wins this year have come from the defense and others from the running game, this game was all Rodgers. Without his star wide receiver Davante Adams once again, Rodgers would finish the game 25/31 for 429 yards, with five touchdowns through the air, as well as one on the ground, and a perfect passer rating of 158.3 to cap his performance off.

That’s right, Aaron Rodgers had as many touchdowns as he had incompletions.

Although prior to this game he may have been on the outside looking in at the MVP race, Rodgers should now find himself right in the middle of the conversation. Through seven weeks, Rodgers has completed nearly 65 percent of his throws for 2,019 yards, with 13 touchdowns to just two interceptions and a passer rating of 103.7.

The Bad

Run defense

The Green Bay Packers run defense has been suspect all season long. However, to their credit, after being ripped apart by Minnesota, Denver, and Philadelphia, they would bounce-back and hold Ezekiel Elliot to just 62 rushing yards and Kerryon Johnson to only 2.6 yards per carry. Unfortunately, today’s performance was quite bad once again.

Coming into this game, rookie Josh Jacobs had dropped 123 rushing yards on the Chicago Bears’ defense and was averaging 4.9 yards per carry this season. So we knew this was a matchup that Oakland could exploit, and boy did they ever.

Jacobs would start the day by throwing Adrian Amos into the turf and two plays later he would rip off a 42-yard run. In total, he’d finish the day with 124 yards on only 21 carries for an average of nearly six yards every time he touched the ball. But the Packers were able to keep him out of the endzone at least.

This is a Green Bay defense that entered the game ranked 23rd in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game with 124.5 and it looks like it could very well remain an issue for the remainder of the season.

The Ugly

Covering Tight Ends

Oakland Raiders’ tight end Darren Waller went absolutely off today as the Green Bay Packers’ defense had zero answers for slowing him down. Waller would finish with seven receptions on eight targets for a whopping 126 yards, including a long of 48, and two touchdowns.

However, Waller isn’t the first pass-catching tight end to burn the Packers this season. A few weeks ago, Zach Ertz of the Philadelphia Eagles would catch seven of the eight passes thrown his way for 65 yards and was another huge problem for the defense.

When facing these more athletic tight ends, the Green Bay linebackers struggle to keep up in coverage, while safety Will Redmond has made some mental mistakes and lacks the size to match up with these tight ends as well. It’s crystal clear that the Packers need Darnell Savage back as soon as possible, but even then, the issue could still remain and they’ll need to find a remedy for this problem.

Oh, and did I mention that next week they will have to go up against Travis Kelce? Even with backup Matt Moore in at quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, it looks like Kelce has the potential to put up some big numbers on this Packers’ defense.