Green Bay Packers: 12 Quick Observations from Week 1 Blowout Loss
By Paul Bretl
Aaron Rodgers, what was that?
No, Aaron Rodgers is not the sole reason that the Green Bay Packers lost–that’s never the case for anyone player in football; it’s the ultimate team game. However, that was a rough performance, to say the least.
As I mentioned above, Rodgers completed 15 of his 28 passes for 133 yards, which averages out to a measly 4.8 yards per attempt. But the biggest head-scratcher was some of the decisions he made. At times he seemed to be trying to push the ball downfield too much instead of taking what was there. Also, Rodgers mentioned that he should have either thrown the ball away or checked down to Aaron Jones on that first interception and on the second one; even if the safety wasn’t there, Valdes-Scantling had no chance at that ball.
"“We played bad, I played bad, and uncharacteristic of how we’ve practiced in training camp, and obviously how I’ve played over the years,” Rodgers said via Packers.com. “This is hopefully an outlier moving forward. We’ll find out next week.”"
No preseason snaps
It’s easy to point at the fact that the Green Bay Packers sat 30 or more of their starters each preseason game as one of the big reasons why they played so poorly. And while rust was likely a factor in their performance to some degree, I’m not going to read into it much more than that.
Zach Kruse of Packers Wire brought up a good point; the outcome of this game doesn’t change if the starters played 15 preseason snaps. I’m going to circle back to observation No. 1, which is that there was no juice.
Now, if you want to point to this team being a little full of themselves, that may have played a bigger role. When asked that exact question, Rodgers replied with, “yeah.”
Where was the Green Bay Packers run game?
This is a very good Saints defensive front–running the ball was always going to be difficult in this game. However, the Packers abandoned it way too early. Even with being down two scores in the third quarter, there is still plenty of time to come back, and they certainly didn’t have to give up on the run game. Yet that’s what they did.
About halfway through the third quarter and down 17-3, Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon had six combined carries up to that point. The duo finished the game with only nine. As we know, that imbalance between the run and the pass is not how this LaFleur offense operates.
When the Green Bay Packers lose — which hasn’t happened a lot during the LaFleur era — forgetting about the run game is oftentimes a side effect.