The Green Bay Packers' trip to Arizona started on the wrong foot and continued in that direction until the fourth quarter.
A mechanical issue with their plane had already delayed their trip more than five hours, forcing the team to have their walk-through on the tarmac. How much of an impact this had on the Packers is obviously unclear, but the sloppy play throughout the game was obvious.
For much of the afternoon, it looked like it was going to be an uphill battle for Green Bay to turn things around, but the defense made huge clutch plays to set the offense up to come away with the improbable win.
While the way the team battled it out and fought until the end was enough to get the win, star safety Xavier McKinney was less than pleased with the way the Packers played. "We for d--- sure can't do this against good teams, because it's not going to work," per USA Today's Ryan Wood.
McKinney also said that it shouldn't have taken until the fourth quarter to secure the win, and that Green Bay was the better team, but failed to play up their standard.
Xavier McKinney Is Right in His Packers Criticism After Week 7 Win
McKinney certainly has a point. The Packers lacked discipline all game, getting called for ten penalties for 94 yards. Two pre-snap offsides calls on third downs, and personal fouls proved to be very costly, especially combined with simple errors in coverage that led to two Trey McBride touchdowns. The need for the Packers to clean things up was made very obvious against a team playing with their backup quarterback.
While sitting at 4-1-1 after seven weeks is good, even the most loyal Packers fans would argue that the team should have more wins. The inexplicable loss to the Browns and the disappointing tie against the Cowboys were both avoidable. And it's not like the Packers faced a murderer's row of opponents. Over the last four games, Green Bay has faced the Browns, Cowboys, Bengals, and Cardinals. Going 2-1-1 in that span against those opponents is far from impressive, especially considering that the two wins came down to the wire. A Super Bowl contender is expected to convincingly win these matchups, if not outright be blowing out the bottom-feeders in the league. It is fair to have some level of concern about this.
This is a great approach from McKinney. Winning shouldn't mean ignoring the problems with the team. The Steelers will provide a bigger challenge in Week 8, and the Packers can't afford to make the same mistakes they did on Sunday.