Green Bay Packers v. Washington: 3 Bold Predictions

Before the Green Bay Packers and the Washington Redskins take the field on Sunday, here are three bold predictions that hopefully come true.

After going two for three on my bold predictions from last week’s game against the New York Giants, I’ve once again busted out my crystal ball for Sunday’s game with the Washington Redskins. Truthfully, this should be another game that the Green Bay Packers’ dominate, but Washington is on a two game winning streak and as we saw in week 13 with Miami and Cincinnati both winning, no game in the NFL should be taken lightly.

With that said, while the Green Bay Packers should be fully prepared so they avoid any sort of upset scenario, we will hopefully see them take an early lead and control the game from that point on. And if even two of these bold predictions are correct, it should be a fun day at Lambeau Field for the Packer faithful.

Aaron Jones rushes for over 100 yards

Above I mentioned going two for three last week on my predictions and my one miss was very similar to this one as I predicted that Aaron Jones would rush for over 115 yards. However, both he and the Green Bay Packers’ running game in general were bottled up, which unfortunately has been the case the past two games.

But this week the Packers and Jones have a prime opportunity to get back on track as they take on one of the worst run defenses in football. This season Washington is giving up nearly 132 rushing yards per game which ranks 27th in the NFL, including nine games where they’ve allowed at least 115 yards on the ground.

After not being able to move the ball against San Francisco and even though they put up 31 points in New York, the offense just hasn’t been clicking, so I expect Matt LaFleur to get back to a heavy dose of Aaron Jones. That coupled with Washington’s poor run defense should equate to a big day for the Packer running back.

And yes, I saw the article stating that the Redskins want to eliminate the Green Bay run game and put the ball in Aaron Rodgers hands. However, I don’t think they’ll be able to.

The Defense Dominates: 2 Turnovers & 5 Sacks

Although the Green Bay defense wasn’t able to generate any sacks last week they lived in the backfield pressuring Daniel Jones and came away with three turnovers. Now this week against the worst offense in football, I’m expecting a similar performance. Statistically, Washington isn’t just bad in a few areas on offense, but essentially in every aspect as highlighted by Zach Kruse of Packers Wire:

In recent weeks the Redskins have had success on the ground with the one-two punch that is Derrius Guice and Adrian Peterson, but their passing game is still struggling. Hopefully what this means from the Packers’ standpoint is that we see them play aggressively, with their primary focus being stopping the run.

In turn, this will put the game in Dwayne Haskins’ hands and behind an offensive line that has allowed the seventh most sacks this season with 40 and a rookie quarterback that has an interception rate of 4.5 percent, The Smiths should be able to wreak some havoc while this opportunistic Green Bay secondary capitalizes on his mistakes.

Punt Return total gets out of the negative

This may go down as my boldest prediction of the season, but with the new punt return man Tyler Ervin – as well as a few other reasons – I am going out on a limb and saying that the Green Bay Packers go from the red to the black in terms of total punt return yardage for the year.

In case you haven’t heard yet, the Packers are on a historically bad pace for the worst total punt return yards in a single season. Currently they sit at -8, and yes, you read that correctly. For some context, the Redskins, coincidentally, have the second worst punt return total in the NFL, however, they’ve at least managed to get 90 yards.

As a result of these poor performances, this past week the Green Bay Packers decided to shake things up by cutting Tremon Smith and bringing in Tyler Ervin. In his four-year career, Ervin has attempted 61 punt returns and has an average of 8.3 yards per return. Not to mention that they are going against a Washington special teams unit that is giving up 9.7 yards per punt return this season, the fourth most in football. And lastly, I just think the Packer defense is going to shut the Redskins down which is going to lead to a number of punt return opportunities for Ervin.

Through 12 games the punt return team for the Packers has done absolutely nothing. And if they can’t produce some positive results against this Washington team, then they probably never will in 2019. So, I’m shooting my shot.