Paul Bretl | 9/6/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Ultimately there were too many miscues and missed opportunities that the Packers had to overcome in what became a Week 1 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. However, all that matters at this time is Jordan Love’s health.
As always, and now for the first time during the 2024 regular season, here are my instant takeaways from the Packers’ performance.
Win or lose, the No. 1 priority is Love’s health after he exited the game with an apparent lower leg injury. When Matt LaFleur was asked post-game about Love’s injury, he did not have an update at that time.
“I don’t know,” said LaFleur afterward when asked about Love.
Missed opportunities. At the end of the day, there were too many missed opportunities by the Packers. The offense was just 1-for-4 in the red zone. While the defense forced three turnovers, the Packers scored only nine points off those. Contributing to those missed opportunities were penalties. In total, the Packers were flagged 10 times in this game.
“All of us are responsible – myself, it starts with me, it goes down to our staff and then to our players,” LaFleur said. “I challenged everybody. We’ve got to learn from this because, just watching the tape, and I’m not trying to take anything away from Philly – they battled and they played their game – but I think there was a lot of opportunities that we didn’t capitalize on.
“When you don’t do that, you get beat. Specifically, the red area was a huge problem tonight. I would say a year ago we were pretty damned good in that area and we got destroyed in that area tonight.”
Overall, and this can be the case in Week 1, there was rust to shake off. Love completed 50 percent of his passes, including some off-target and off-balanced throws. There were what looked like some dropped passes as well and, in general, the offense could never quite find a consistent rhythm. The defense, meanwhile, was playing in its new system for the first time against a high powered Eagles offense, and that showed.
“It was definitely a sloppy game, I think, from us,” said LaFleur. “There was some uncharacteristic things that we did as a staff, quite frankly, and that trickled down to our players. So, ultimately, we’ve all got to look ourselves hard in the mirror and find ways to get better because tonight, obviously, wasn’t good enough.”
Rotation at right guard. Sean Rhyan took the bulk of the right guard snaps, as expected, but the Packers also had rookie Jordan Morgan worked in every few series as well. As I wrote about earlier in the week, this always felt like the path the Packers were going to go down as it gave Morgan an opportunity to get live reps after missing the entire preseason without having to put it all on his plate.
The offensive line play wasn’t good enough, particularly against the run. After a slow start for Josh Jacobs, the offensive line started to carve some more running lanes for him after halftime. Where the offensive line did struggle was in the red zone–a more condensed part of the field. Where they found some success on the ground was when the offense had the ability to spread the Eagles out, along with using Rhyan as a pulling guard from the right to left side. Without a consistent run game to lean on, it made moving the ball more difficult because of playing behind the sticks and then being in predictable passing situations.
“They was just shooting the gaps,” said Josh Jacobs. “They had a great game plan for the calls that we was calling and once we made adjustments, we kinda did a little better.”
We are going to see a lot of two tight end sets this season, but Tucker Kraft seemed to out-snap Luke Musgrave by quite a bit. Kraft is likely considered the more well-rounded of the two, able to impact both the run and passing games.
For the most part, the Packers defensive front did well containing Jalen Hurts and not letting him get outside the pocket to create many big plays. However, against a stout Eagles’ offensive line, the pressure on Hurst from the Packers front wasn’t all that consistent. We also saw Jeff Hafley send a number of linebacker and nickel cornerback blitzes, but they weren’t all that effective for the most part.
The honeymoon phase is over for Hafley and the new defense. One game–whether it was good or bad–wouldn’t make or break what this 2024 Packers’ defense can be, but against a very good Eagles’ offense that can win on the ground or through the air, they were able to spread the Packers out at times and take advantage of that spacing. Inconsistent pressure plus having to cover AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith resulted in some big passing plays. Missed tackles didn’t help things either.
“I think we’ve just got to be better all around the board execution-wise,” Xavier McKinney said. “I don’t think we, I really don’t think we executed well today and we kind of gave up just little things that, it was like, very uncharacteristic from us. So, we’ve just got to be better all around the board, myself included. So, like I said, we’ll get it fixed once we watch the film and be critical of ourselves, we kind of already know what we could have been better with.”
Coming into the season, the linebacker unit seemed to be the big positional question mark for the Packers and that group took some lumps in this performance. Playing mostly from nickel, Quay Walker and Isaiah McDuffie played the bulk of the snaps with Eric Wilson the Will linebacker in base–which we saw all of training camp. Edgerrin Cooper saw a few defensive snaps and flashed his speed.
A positive for the defense is that the Packers forced three turnovers, two of which were interceptions. The Packers came away with only seven interceptions in all of 2023. They also were able to get off the field on third downs with the Eagles converting only four of their 14 attempts.
“I thought our defense, to force three takeaways against a really good offense, I feel like you should win the game,” LaFleur said. “The stats will tell you it’s about 90 percent win ratio when you have plus-2 on the ball, but we didn’t capitalize on those opportunities. To come away with nine points off three turnovers, that’s not good enough. That’s not going to get it done.
“Do I think we need to play better defensively? Absolutely. We can’t give up 30-some-odd points a game (garbled audio). That’s usually a recipe for disaster. When I look at it, I think it’s a collective loss.”
With all of the options on offense that the Packers have, we saw a healthy variety of formations and play calls from Matt LaFleur. Jayden Reed led the team in receiving with 105 yards. Reed very much came on strong at the end of training camp, and don’t forget, he led the team in receptions and yards through the 2023 regular season. His speed coupled with how LaFleur uses him in motion makes him a difficult matchup, and he draws a lot of one-on-one matchups with help from the other Green Bay pass catchers.
“Man, with this room,” said Jayden Reed, “it’s any given week, anybody can make those plays I made today in the room. So we’re very dynamic in that room, so I don’t look at it as a wide receiver 1 thing. I think we all are 1s if you ask me.”
Brayden Narveson was 3-for-4 on field goal attempts in his debut and 2-for-2 on extra points. This one game with a miss isn’t going to end Narveson’s tenure with the Packers, but GM Brian Gutekunst did mention that he doesn’t have the patience that he probably needs when it comes to specialists. The Packers know the opportunity in front of them this season and have to get the kicker position correct.