Packers-Bears Week (Finally) in Week 12

Fumbling the Game Away, photo by Michael Conroy, AP

After losing to the Colts last Sunday, 34-31, the Packers find themselves at 7-3, and in the driver's seat in the NFC North.  But they also find themselves only 3-3 in the last 6 games, after their impressive 4-0 start.  The Colts game was maybe not the most disheartening of the three losses; to me that was the loss to the clearly inferior Vikings team.  The Colts were 6-3 going into the game, and had the number one defense in the league.  The Packers were underdogs, so you can't say that a loss was shocking or even unexpected.  

But what was both shocking and unexpected to me was the way that the Packers blew a 28-14 halftime lead to lose this game, by sleepwalking through most of the second half, and then fumbling the game away in overtime.  You don't win many games when you give away three or four turnovers, but the Packers were in position to win this game until the fourth turnover, a fumble by Valdes-Scantling in overtime.

The Packers have been vulnerable to the run game all year, but in the first half, they kept Nyheim Hines and Jonathan Taylor in check, giving up only 43 yards on the ground.  They gave up some bigger gains through the air, and those plays combined with the Packers' two first half turnovers, kept the Colts in the game at halftime, trailing by 14.  

The second half and overtime were very discouraging.  The defense started getting gashed in the running game.  The offense had way too many 3 and outs, leading to the defense getting tired out and being gashed some more.  Throw in a special teams turnover, in the form of a Shepherd fumble on a kickoff return, add in one final turnover in overtime, and you have the perfect recipe for blowing a lead and losing a game you should have nailed down in the third quarter.  I think both sides of the ball, and you can throw special teams into the mix, too, let up in the second half, thinking they were going to coast to victory.  And then at the end, they could not convert for a touchdown in their final drive, and had to settle for the field goal to send the game to overtime.

Needless to say, this business of winning and losing on alternating weeks is not going to result in a successful season.  The Packers will almost certainly make the playoffs, but they need to play 60 minutes of every game if they want to avoid being bounced out of the playoffs in their first or second game.  But that worry, which is a real one, will have to wait just a bit.  It is now finally Packers-Bears week.  Can anyone remember a season where the Packers and Bears have not met until Week 12 of the season?  I couldn't, and I could not readily find the answer as to whether this is the latest first meeting between the two teams in history.

This will be the 201st meeting between the two historic teams, with the Packers leading the series 99-95, with 6 ties, including their two playoff games.  The game is being played in prime time on Sunday night, with one of the Packers' fan favorites, Mitch Trubisky, back behind center for the Bears.  This will be an excellent shot for the Packers to win their 100th game against the Bears.   

The Bears come to town, as usual, with a very good defense, and a much more questionable offense.  Before their current four game losing streak, they were at 5-1.  I had seen enough of their games to think that the 5-1 record was a mirage, and the fact that they have dropped to 5-5 tends to confirm this.  However, you can toss out there every cliche in the book, and most of them are true in Packers-Bears games, including the fact that the records don't matter when these two ancient rivals play each other.  The Bears are a dangerous team because they are desperate.  If they are going to turn their season around, it needs to start Sunday night.  And if they can't turn their season around, then Sunday night is still a big game, because beating the Packers makes a bad season palatable for the Bears.  Given the Bears strong defense, and the Packers' vulnerabilities on defense, I expect a close game, but one that the Packers should win.

Big Test Coming up Against the Colts

Using the Ref, Photo by Mark Hoffman, Milw. Journal-Sentinel

Well, the good news is this: the Packers' win over the Jaguars 24-20 last Sunday, combined with the Seahawks' loss, leaves the Packers with the number one seed in the NFC playoffs (as they always say, if the playoffs started today).  The bad news is, the way they played on Sunday, that number one seeding might not last long, maybe not past the upcoming game at Indianapolis on Sunday.  

For the second time in three weeks, in windy and cold conditions at Lambeau Field, the Packers seemed to play without energy or emotion, especially on offense.  And for the second time in three weeks, they played down to the level of an inferior team.  At least this time the Packers were close enough in the fourth quarter to be in a position to be able to rally for the go-ahead touchdown, and then the defense shut down the final Jaguars drives to preserve the win.  I'm sure I was not the only one who was having flashbacks when the Packers had the Jaguars at 4th and 26.  But unlike the more famous 4th and 26 in January of 2004, this time the pass was incomplete and the game was over except for a couple of kneel-downs.

My favorite play on offense has to be the 78 yard TD pass to Valdes-Scantling, depicted in the photo.  He made a little cut that sent the ref flying into the path of one of the pursuing defensive backs.  I laughed at least the first 5 or 6 times I watched this play.  On defense, my favorite series was the final one, when the defense (Rashan Gary and Preston Smith) rose up on back-to-back plays and sacked QB Jake Luton to set up the 4th and 26 play.

I am not as despondent as some other Packers fans I know.  "We suck."  "We'll be one and done in the playoffs."  Yeah, they might.  I am pretty sure they will be one and done if they play like they did against the Jaguars.  I am trying to figure out which playoff-caliber team they could beat with an effort like they made on Sunday, and I am coming up blank.  But look, if the Packers lose all these poor effort games in the middle of the season, maybe they end up with a 9-7 record, playing on the road (if they make the playoffs at all).  But if they win ugly games like the Jaguars game, maybe they get a good enough record to host a home game, and maybe if things break right they end up with home field advantage.  The Packers certainly rode some ugly wins last year all the way to the NFC Championship Game.  And if (and it is a big if) the Packers can use the next seven weeks to get their act together, maybe they become the proverbial team that nobody wants to play in the playoffs.  

One of the things they ought to take a look at is creating more unpredictability in their offense.  This past week, Lamar Jackson of the Ravens complained that defenses are calling out the Ravens' plays at the line of scrimmage.  I wonder if some of that isn't happening with the Packers, too?  I understand the idea of sticking with the run, even if it is not working.  But if the Jaguars have been stopping the Packers' run game all day long, why, on 3rd and 1 with the game hanging in the balance late in the fourth quarter, do you just run Aaron Jones up the middle for no gain?  And how many times can you call a straight-up run on second and ten before the defense knows what to expect?  Four times on Sunday the Packers found themselves at 2nd and 10.  Three times they ran the ball in conventional running plays.  The only first down they gained on 2nd and 10 was the one time they passed the ball.

Anyway, I feel as if we will have a much better feel for who the Packers are after the Colts game.  The Colts lead their division at 6-3, so they are no joke.  They certainly looked good last Thursday in beating the Titans.  I think the Packers are a much better team on offense than the Colts, even if they don't look like it every single week.  I would not trade any of our starting "skill position" players to the Colts for their players at those positions.  But I think the reverse is true on defense.  I think the Colts have a better and more consistent defense than the Packers.  

Having said that, when I re-watched the Jaguars game, I realized that the Packers' defense looked better than I remembered.  While the final drive was the one that initially caught my attention, with the back-to-back sacks, actually the defense played pretty well the entire game.  They only gave up 13 points (the other 7 was on the punt return TD).  The only TD they gave up was on a short, 16 yard drive set up by Adams' fumble.  They gave up no long drives during the entire game.  They kept pretty consistent pressure on Luton, frequently without having to blitz.  Now, you can say, "well, sure, but the Jaguars aren't that good on offense."  Which is true, but in other games this year, all you had to do was hand the ball off and gain a lot of yards.  The Jaguars have a pretty good running back, in James Robinson, and yet he wasn't able to run all over the Packers.  In other words, on further review, it was the offense, with its two turnovers resulting in 10 points for the Jaguars, and the special teams, giving up another 7 points, that were the problems on Sunday, not the defense.

The Packers are actually underdogs this week, and maybe that sort of perceived slight can be used as motivation for the offense to go out and prove something.  We'll see, but if the defense can play as well as it played against the Jaguars, and again show some energy, and if the offense, in the absence of wind and cold, can play a clean game with more energy than they showed on Sunday, then I think the Packers will win this game.

The Second Half of the Season Starts Now

Preston Smith Causing an Interception, Photo by Packers.com

The three best things about the Packers' 34-17 win against the 49ers last week: (1) beating the 49ers, regardless of circumstances; (2) getting a mini-bye to get healthier before their next game; and (3) moving up the playoff seeding chart to the 3rd NFC seed, (as they say) if the playoffs started today.

Let's be honest.  You can't draw any firm conclusions from the Packers' win against the 49ers.  They are simply too beat up, with players lost for the season, players temporarily on IR, and players on the Covid list.  I am sure I am missing some of them, but among the key players not available last Thursday night were Nick Bosa, Richard Sherman, Jimmy Garoppolo, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Raheem Mostert, Kendrick Bourne, and Brandon Aiyuk.  The 49ers had 13 players on IR, the most in the league.  Not a single player who touched the ball on offense for the 49ers in the NFC Championship game last year was in uniform Thursday night.  So as much fun as it was to watch, and as satisfying as it always is to this former Bay Area resident when the Packers beat the 49ers, I don't think we can just assume that all is now well again with the Packers.  And judging by the 14 point pointspread this Sunday when the Jaguars come to Lambeau Field, a dominant win in that game won't answer any questions about where the Packers are, either.

Still, all the players in the league are professionals, there are no easy wins in the NFL, and you don't get to pick when and where you play your opponents.  The undefeated Steelers almost lost to the reeling Cowboys on Sunday, and the not-great Patriots almost lost to the worst team in the league (the Jets) Monday night.  So you can't take any game for granted, as I think the Packers might have done before playing the Vikings two weeks ago.

On offense last Thursday, the two most encouraging developments were the successful return of Aaron Jones, and the re-emergence of Marquez Valdes-Scantling.  The Packers' medical/training staff is notoriously conservative, for example in holding out Davante Adams a week longer than he wanted to be held out.  So it was great that Aaron Jones played, despite reports earlier in the day that he would be held out.  It was a big boost for the offense, even though they were a bit on the cautious side in how much they used him.  

And just when everybody has had about enough of Marquez Valdes-Scantling and his drops, he gets single coverage, makes a great move on the DB and finds himself all by himself waiting for a 52 yard TD bomb.  I swear, if he had dropped that ball, people would have been calling for him to be cut at halftime.  But he hauled it in to make it 21-3 just before the half.  And he added another short TD later.  Maybe he can play well enough to be a second WR option (or maybe the third option after Lazard returns).  I laughed out loud when I saw this in one of the Packers Facebook groups during the game:

"Bears dropped Ted Ginn, Jr.  Gotta be better than MVS.

Update: maybe not."

On defense, I loved seeing the return of the "Smith Brothers" as impact players in the game.  Preston Smith created the first turnover of the game, and it seemed to change the momentum of the game.  Before that play, the Packers were sitting on a 7-3 lead early in the second quarter.  I wasn't worried about the outcome, but a big play here or there for the 49ers could easily have turned the game in their favor.  Instead, pressure from Smith led to a Raven Greene interception, which led to the TD pass to Marcedes Lewis.  From that point on, the game never seemed in doubt.  And then in the third quarter, Za'Darius Smith's strip sack and recovery put a bow on the win.  The score was 28-3 at the time, but for all practical purposes, it was over then, if not before.  

Anyway, next up are the 1-7 Jaguars to start the second half of the season.  They are obviously not going anywhere this year with their 1-7 record.  But last week and this week, their second year QB Gardner Minshew will be out, so they will be led on the field by rookie QB Jake Luton.  I found him impressive in his first start.  His first completion was a long bomb TD to DJ Chark.  He threw for over 300 yards, while rookie running back James Robinson chipped in with 99 yards on the ground.  The Jaguars came within a botched 2 point conversion of taking the Texans to overtime in Luton's first start.  On the other hand, the Jaguars defense gave up some big plays, especially in the passing game, yielding long bomb TDs to Will Fuller and Brandin Cooks.  It seems to me as if a year or two ago, the Jaguars had a strong defense, giving up few points and generating turnovers.  Whatever has happened to the defense, it didn't look that good last Sunday.  So Rodgers and Adams (and hopefully other receivers as well) ought to be able to do some damage on offense.  And rookie QBs make rookie mistakes, and I will be disappointed if the Packers don't come away with some more turnovers on Sunday.  

On paper, the Jaguars game is the easiest game remaining on the schedule.  After that, the Packers will have to face the Colts, the Titans, the Bears twice, the Lions, the Panthers and the Eagles.  But "on paper" means nothing if you don't go out and win the game.  "Sufficient unto the day . . . ," and all that good stuff.  So let's go get a win on Sunday, and worry about next week's game next week!

Trap Game Blues (or Worse)

Photo by Trevor Ruszkowski, USA Today

How about talking a little Packers football, as a distraction on Election Day?  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of happy talk to lift the spirits of Packers fans.

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Is the Packers' once-promising season about to come crashing down on their heads?  When the Packers lost in embarrassing fashion to the Buccaneers, I was able to keep a little perspective by noting that (a) the Buccaneers turn out to be better than I thought they would be; and (b) maybe the Packers are only vulnerable to hard-nosed, aggressive defenses like the Buccaneers - which is obviously a problem, but maybe a problem they could work on correcting.  And then came the second Vikings game on Sunday.  Before the game, I heard comments about how Rodgers was going to slice up the inexperienced Vikings' secondary.  And on the pregame show, the question was asked, how could the Vikings win?  And the answer was "if the Packers decide not to play."  Yeah, right.  Instead the Vikings won, 28-22.

We know the Vikings aren't any good.  They were 1-5 going into this game, giving up a lot of points (over 30 points per game).  So what do we make of the Packers losing to the Vikings, in a game that really didn't feel as close as the final score?  (Bear in mind, it was 28-14 until there were less than 3 minutes left in the game.)  I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that the Packers aren't as good as I thought they were.  They are 5-2, but only one of those wins was against a good team (the Saints).  Meanwhile, they lost, and didn't look good in the process, to one good team (the Buccaneers) and one bad team (the Vikings).  That sounds like a mediocre team to me.  Tell me where I am wrong (please!).  Speaking of the Buccaneers, when the Giants play the Buccaneers tougher than the Packers did, as happened in the Monday night game, that can't be a good sign (the Giants lost the game by 2 points, and a 2 point conversion would have sent the game to overtime).

In the Vikings game, the defense had to do only one thing, as some caller on Sirius XM Radio said Monday, stop Dalvin Cook, and force Kirk Cousins to beat you.  And not only did they not do that, they let Cook set an all-time record for any player at Lambeau Field by gaining over 200 scrimmage yards and scoring 4 touchdowns.  The entire first half was taken up with 4 drives, resulting in 2 Adams touchdowns and 2 Cook touchdowns.  So which team would be the first one to break serve?  Alas, it was the Packers.  The Vikings scored on the first drive of the second half, and never looked back.  On the ensuing drive, Rodgers threw a couple of bad passes, and Equanimeous St. Brown dropped a couple of catchable balls, and they turned it over on downs.  The Packers brought a little excitement to the last few minutes of the game, but it was basically over when they turned it over on downs on the first Packers drive of the half.  

So they are not as good as I thought they were, and they got trapped by a trap game on the way to facing the 49ers on Thursday night.  My concern is that this is worse than just losing a trap game, which can happen, but evidence of much deeper problems with the Packers, particularly on defense.  I laughed when I heard Rodgers says that the Packers didn't overlook the Vikings.  Instead, he says, they didn't play with a lot of energy on Sunday.  If that is supposed to make me feel more confident about the Packers' future, it doesn't.  How do you play without energy in a game against a division rival, at home (to the extent that matters in this weird year)?

Normally, given the way they played Sunday, I would give the Packers little chance against the 49ers.  If there is one thing they can't do, it is to stop a strong running attack, and the 49ers have certainly had that.  But their star running back, Raheem Mostert, is on IR and not eligible to return Thursday.  Their backup Jeff Wilson is also on IR and not eligible to return.  I told my 49er fan friend on Sunday that as long as the 49ers have somebody they can line up at running back, they should be fine.  But that is before I learned that both QB Jimmy Garoppolo and TE George Kittle will miss multiple weeks. 

So might the Packers get lucky and steal a win that they didn't really deserve?  No sooner did that thought cross my mind when I saw that A.J. Dillon has tested positive for Covid, will miss the game, and who knows if the Packers will have other positive tests.  As of Tuesday morning, there have been no new positive tests, but two more players, Kamal Martin and Jamaal Williams, have been ruled out of Thursday's game as "high risk close contacts" with A.J. Dillon.  This leaves the Packers, as far as I can see, with Tyler Ervin, fullback John Lovett, and practice squad player Dexter Williams as the only available running backs.  Meanwhile, if there are more positive tests, and the league postpones the game, it is easy to imagine the game being deferred until later in the season, maybe even a hypothetical week 18, when all of the 49ers players mentioned above would be back.  Hey, it's 2020, and anything can happen.

We will see what happens Thursday night, if the game happens at all.  I have lowered my expectations for the Packers for the year, but if they can pull off what is (in my mind, at least) an upset, they will have a pretty good 6-2 record at the midway point of the season, and they will have bought a little more time to address their weaknesses.