Green Bay Packers @ Chargers: Gut Reactions & a Highlight or two

The Green Bay Packers suffered an incredibly disappointing loss to the Chargers. Here are the gut reactions and a highlight or two from their performance.

There isn’t a whole lot of good things that we can say about this game. The Green Bay Packers came out incredibly lethargic and the Los Angeles Chargers punched them in the mouth. All three phases of the game struggled mightily in what ended up being just a sloppy performance.

Here are the gut reactions, along with a highlight or two from what we saw on the field during today’s game.

• Coming into the game, the Chargers were one of the worst teams at running the ball this season and as a team, they hadn’t broken 40 total yards on the ground in four straight games. However, today against the Green Bay Packers, they totaled160 rushing yards and couldn’t be stopped.
• Penalties. Penalties. Penalties. It is quite difficult to move the ball or get anything going offensively when holding or false start calls derail any sort of momentum that you’re trying to build.
• Speaking of holding calls and false starts, what an awful day for the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line. David Bakhtiari continues to make mistakes that we have rarely seen from him in the past, Elgton Jenkins had a few penalties as well, and Bryan Bulaga got worked.
• That Chargers’ pass-rushing duo of Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram is an absolute force. Aaron Rodgers had hardly any time to pass the ball today.
• The big play continues to hurt this Green Bay defense as they gave up two more huge plays today.
• It was quite clear that the Packers came out quite flat and they were never able to recover. This was the dictionary definition of a trap game.
• Opposing teams continue to attack the middle of the field against this Green Bay Packers defense. Mike Pettine needs to find an answer.
• Most Packer players had a bad day but Blake Martinez really struggled.
• It was another solid game for Allen Lazard who caught three of four passes for 44 yards.
• Perhaps the lone highlight of the game was the Za’Darius Smith sack followed by his “gravedigger” celebration as a tribute to Gilbert Brown.

• The Chargers were able to move the ball fairly easily the entire game, but the Packers’ defense did hold Los Angeles to just 2-4 on red-zone trips.
• Davante Adams was back for the first time in four games and hauled in seven receptions for 41 yards.
• Aaron Rodgers was fairly efficient completing 23 out of his 34 pass attempts, but he was held to just 160 passing yards.
• Moving forward, Mike Pettine needs to send some pressure. In the last few weeks it has been a lot of three and four-man rushes allowing the opposing quarterback to sit back pick this secondary apart.
• This Packers’ special teams unit still cannot figure it out. A new coach, new players, but they still struggle.
• By the end of the game, this Green Bay Packers’ defense was gassed. The Chargers held the ball for more than10 minutes longer than the Packers and ran all over them.
• At least Green Bay came out of this game relatively healthy.
• Lastly, burn the tape and move on.

To put it simply, this game was just ugly. However, Green Bay still sits at 7-2 on the season and they are still alone at the top of the NFC North. Next week they’ll be back at Lambeau Field for a date with the Carolina Panthers.