3 Big Things from Green Bay Packers Regular Season Finale

A lack of discipline by the Green Bay Packers defense

I’ll start by saying that we don’t want to read a ton into Green Bay’s defensive performance. They were playing some very vanilla coverages while the Lions were emptying the playbook. However, when it comes to the trick plays ran by Detroit, regardless of how complex the defensive scheme is, as Matt LaFleur would quickly point out following the game, there was a lack of discipline from Green Bay–a core defensive fundamental.

"“Defensive football in general comes down to discipline, and people owning their roles, and when you aren’t disciplined or you go outside the scheme, bad stuff happens,” LaFleur said via Packers.com. “We cannot have that. We need all 11 doing their damn job. And if they don’t, stuff like that happens.”"

The Lions’ offense would finish the day with 404 total yards and 111 of them came on trick plays. The first was a 75-yard touchdown from receiver Tom Kennedy to Kalif Raymond, and the second was a 36-yard touchdown from Jared Goff to Brock Wright that consisted of a few pitches.

Heading into the playoffs, it’s not likely that Green Bay is going to see a team take this same approach where they are going through every play that they have. But there is now tape of the Packers struggling with these types of plays, and teams like the Rams or 49ers could absolutely try to take advantage. In the playoffs, where everything is magnified, a lapse like we saw yesterday could be the difference between a win and a loss.

Overall, in addition to the 404 total yards allowed, the Packer defense allowed 37 points, 6.8 yards per play, and didn’t force any turnovers. It was also quite evident that they missed De’Vondre Campbell in the middle of the field–Goff found a lot of success there.