Green Bay Packers: 13 Quick Observations from Wild OT Win

What a wild and just odd game that was, but in the end, all that matters is that the Green Bay Packers came away with the win to move to 4-1 on the season.

I’ve now had the opportunity to go back and rewatch Green Bay’s performance and have my quick observations from what I saw. This week I have 13 of them.

The CBs held up well

This is a Cincinnati offense with plenty of talent at the receiver position. They, of course, have Joe Burrow under center, and he has Tyler Boyd, Ja’Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins as pass-catching options. So naturally, with Jaire Alexander sidelined, wondering how the cornerback room was going to hold up was a valid concern.

But for the most part, Eric Stokes, Chandon Sullivan, Kevin King, and eventually Isaac Yiadom after King left with an injury, all held up well. Higgins was held to 32 yards, Boyd had just 24, and although Chase totaled 159 yards, it’s worth mentioning that a player of his caliber is very rarely ever going to be stopped; you just hope to contain him. Also, Chase’s big touchdown reception came with Darnell Savage in coverage–not any of these cornerbacks.

Mason Crosby

Well, we might as well address the elephant in the room. As this performance from Mason Crosby unfolded before our eyes, it gave me flashbacks to the 2018 season in Detroit, when he missed his one extra point attempt and went 1/5 on field goals. However, unlike this week, the Green Bay Packers were unable to win that game.

Against the Bengals, Crosby went 1/2 on extra points and was 4/7 on field goal attempts. Kicker is absolutely a position where things can snowball quickly, especially once a player gets in their own head–and it appears, at least to some degree, that that’s what happened on Sunday. However, Crosby deserves credit for shaking those misses off and eventually nailing the game-winner.

Also, credit to Matt LaFleur for sticking with Crosby, even when things had gone horribly wrong.

"“I went over to Mason, I could see the look in his eyes, and there was zero flinch from him,” LaFleur said via Packers.com. “I literally asked him. I walked over, he was in the kicking net … ‘Hey, what do you think?’ He’s like, ‘I got this.’ So I was like, ‘All right, you got it. Go do it.’ “If I would have felt anything, we would have gone for it (on fourth down). I did what I thought in my gut was the right thing to do.”"

More Special Teams Blunders

There were the obvious special teams miscues that occurred on behalf of Crosby, but there were a few other egregious mistakes as well. For starters, while no field goal attempts were blocked, the Bengals were still relatively close coming off that right side–something that we saw against San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Earlier in the week, Maurice Drayton mentioned that they had solved those issues, but to me, it still looks like a work in progress.

We also uncharacteristically saw Corey Bojorquez have what was likely his worst punt of the season, which set Cincinnati up at around midfield. The Bengals also had a big kick return, and Amari Rodgers is still struggling to put together a positive punt return.