FINDING A WAY
Flawed Packers performance isn’t easy on the eyes
GREEN BAY - There are six teams in the National Football League with 10 victories: the Baltimore Ravens (11-2), San Francisco 49ers (11-2), New England Patriots (10-3), New Orleans Saints (10-3), Seattle Seahawks (10-2 entering Sunday night) and Green Bay Packers (10-3).
If you were forced to identify the one team that does not belong with the others, you’d probably have an easy time picking if you lived around these parts.
To many of their faithful, the Packers
look like a flawed football team, not necessarily fortunate to be 10-3 under first-year coach Matt LaFleur but simply unable to perform anywhere near the level of the others.
If ever there was fodder for that argument, it was the cushy two-game stretch the Packers faced after their 37-8 debacle in San Francisco. The getwell phase of their schedule featured a game at the 2-9 New York Giants on Dec. 1 and at home against 3-9 Washington on Sunday afternoon.
(Until the Chicago Bears beat the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday night for their fourth victory in five games to improve to 7-6, their Lambeau Field trip next Sunday was considered the third leg of that R&R phase.)
But the Packers looked far from dominant in beating a young and injuryplagued Giants team, 31-13, and looked downright vulnerable in a 20-15 victory over young and injury-affected Washington. In both of those games, the Packers appeared disjointed offensively and just good enough defensively.
Special teams might be the one area where they got better.
“I’ll take a win at the end of the day,” left tackle David Bakhtiari said. “I’ll take an ugly win over a good loss.”
Still, the last time the Packers beat a team with both a winning record and a healthy starting quarterback was Oct. 20 against the Oakland Raiders (3-2 at the time).
Of the six teams with 10 victories, the Packers aren’t the only ones who don’t have a signature victory the second half of the season.
New Orleans fared far better against the 49ers than the Packers did, but they still lost in a barnburner Sunday, 48-46. They also lost at home to Atlanta (4-9) and haven’t beaten a contender since knocking off Seattle in Week 3.
New England has fallen flat and hasn’t beaten anyone of significance since a Week 4 decision at rival Buffalo (9-4). The Patriots are on a two-game losing streak after dropping a home game Sunday to Kansas City.
“It’s hard to win in this league,” right tackle Bryan Bulaga said. “I can’t overstate that enough.”
The Packers will find out more about themselves with a three-game stretch against division opponents, Chicago, Minnesota and Detroit. The final two games are on the road and the game against the Vikings (9-4) could be for the division title.
“I think we feel like a 10-3 team,” nose tackle Kenny Clark said. “We’re just battle-tested. We’ve played against some really good teams. The last two maybe weren’t good record-wise, but the Panthers were a good team. The Vikings and Bears are good teams and the Lions at the time were playing good.
“It’s just December football now. Our last three games, we want to play good enough football to win each week.”
From top to bottom, players admitted their performance against Washington wasn’t playoff worthy and you’d probably spit up your coffee if someone suggested they were playing well enough to be on the same field as the 49ers and Saints were Sunday.
So, if others don’t necessarily see the Packers as a legitimate 10-3 team, do the Packers really think they are?
“That’s a loaded question,” Bakhtiari said. “It doesn’t matter how you win. In the past, we’ve been a high-powered offense where we knew we had to score enough because we knew our defense was going to give some up.
“Now, we’re a balanced football team, putting teams in bad situations, making them go all the way down the football field to score. We’re taking time off the clock, as you see we did in the fourth quarter as an offense.
“If you haven’t taken a look, that’s our identity as a football team: Find a way to win. Take the hot hand no matter what phase, play to your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.”
There are a couple of ways to look at the Washington game.
On the one hand, interim coach Bill Callahan has his team playing hard. They had won two straight while at the same time elevating rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins to starter and giving rookies such as linebackers Montez Sweat and Cole Holcomb and receivers Terry McLaurin, Kelvin Harmon and Steven Sims prominent roles.
On the other hand, Haskins injured his ankle in the first half and looked like he couldn’t run. He hopped on one foot on a couple of hand-offs in which he had to move laterally, In the meantime, running back Derrius Guice, starting cornerback Quinton Dunbar, top pass rusher Ryan Kerrigan and backup linebacker Ryan Anderson all exited the game due to injury and did not return.
On paper, the Packers, whose only injuries of significance coming into the game were to cornerback Kevin King (shoulder, out) and Tony Brown (heel, out), should have blown out this team.
But offensively, only running back Aaron Jones excelled, rushing 16 times for 134 yards and a touchdown and catching six passes for 58 yards. If quarterback Aaron Rodgers hadn’t squeezed a pass between two defenders to Jones on third and 14 from his own 7, the Packers would have been punting from their own end zone, leading 17-9, with 8 minutes, 28 seconds left in the game.
“Winning’s the only thing that matters, and even in the midst of some of these games where it hasn’t been a great flow the entire time, we are winning,” Rodgers said. “So, that’s the encouraging thing. We expect to win games where our defense holds them to less than 20 points, but we’ll find our rhythm. I’m not worried about that on offense.”
Defensively, the performance was good enough. Four sacks, an interception, holding Washington to 4-for-11 on third downs, those are winning statistics. But they were not facing the 49ers, Saints, Vikings or Seahawks offenses.
They essentially did just enough to win.
“I think these games like this get misunderstood,” cornerback Tramon Williams said. “Washington always has a really good defense. And they’re playing a lot better ball the last couple of weeks. Someone might look at the score and go, ‘Oh, man, that was a tight game.’
“I felt like we controlled the game for the most part. It’s like one of those things where we play Chicago. We feel like we’re controlling the game and we look up at the scoreboard and we’re like, ‘Man, they’re still in the game?’ That’s just the way it is.”
Yes, the Packers are 10-3 and that’s just the way it is, people.