Just another special teams fiasco
GREEN BAY – The moment anyone associated with the Green Bay Packers long feared, and should’ve seen coming for months, finally arrived with 4 minutes, 50 seconds left in what was supposed to be a Super Bowl season.
Snow softy fell inside Lambeau Field as Corey Bojorquez stood 2 yards deep in the end zone for the most important punt of his career. The Packers, clinging to a 7-point lead in the fourth quarter of Saturday night’s NFC divisional playoff game, needed Bojorquez to uncork another bomb with everything on the line.
To that point, despite a slump in the final five weeks that derailed what once was a special debut on the frozen tundra, Bojorquez hadn’t had a punt blocked all year.
Then 49ers defensive lineman Jordan Willis burst through the middle of the Packers’ offensive line, making long snapper Steven Wirtel look like a child blocking a grown man. Wirtel, offering almost no resistance, might as well have not even been on the field as Willis pushed past him, outstretching his left arm to easily block Bojorquez’s punt and prematurely end the Packers’ playoff hopes.
The football bounced with nobody around it momentarily, leaving in suspense a chance the Packers might at least recover, until 49ers safety Talanoa Hufanga scooped it at the 6-yard line and waltzed into the end zone. It was the 49ers’ lone touchdown all night, capping the doom that loomed over the Packers’ special teams unit’s head throughout the season in a stunning, 1310 loss.
“I heard the block,” Hufanga said, “and then I think you saw all of us look for it. We were struggling with the snow and the dark, we couldn’t see, but then I heard it bounce to my left and I turned around. I wasn’t gonna jump on it. I wanted to score.”
As the Packers’ overwhelmed special teams bumbled through this 2021 season, a worrisome trend becoming a problem, the problem eventually growing to unfathomably incompetent depths, there was foreboding that terrible special teams play might be the team’s demise.
The Packers had tried to fix their annually dismal special teams since the end of last season. General manager Brian Gutekunst drafted receiver Amari Rodgers to specialize as the team’s returner last spring, but the third-round rookie was a bust. Gutekunst released punter JK Scott, a former fifth-round pick, and traded a sixth-round pick for Bojorquez before Week 1. He released long snapper Hunter Bradley, a former seventh-round pick, and signed Wirtel at the beginning of November.
None of the moves made a dent in improving the Packers’ special teams play. Veteran kicker Mason Crosby missed 12 kicks in 18 games. The coverage units were routinely abysmal, including a 32yard return on the Packers’ first kickoff the 49ers nearly broke for a touchdown before starting corner Rasul Douglas made a tackle at San Francisco’s 40yard line. They finished last in the NFL according to former Dallas Morning News sportswriter Rick Gosselin’s definitive rankings.
For a general manager who did so much right this season, Gutekunst’s inability to solve the special-teams riddle leaves a stain.
“You could argue,” coach Matt LaFleur said of the blocked punt, “that was the difference in the game, but I think it was more than just that play. I don’t know exactly what happened – I’ll have to go back and look at the tape – but we had two blocks in this game, and that obviously played a big part in us coming up short.”
It was, you could argue, the difference in this Packers season.
The fact they had not one, but two blocked kicks on the playoff stage only emphasized the special teams’ inability to field a professional product. Though the blocked punt will be remembered much like the 49ers’ 285 rushing yards in the 2019 NFC championship game, a scar cemented in Packers lore, that first block represented the difference on the scoreboard.
With three seconds before halftime, Crosby lined up for a 39-yard field goal. A 39-yard field goal is a layup in the NFL, just 6 yards further than an extra point, but these are the Packers’ special teams. So a 39-yard field goal instead became another disaster, 49ers safety Jimmie Ward splitting linemen Tyler Lancaster and Dean Lowry untouched to block Crosby’s kick.
Those three points would have given the Packers a 10-0 lead entering the third quarter. Who knows what a twopossession advantage might have done for a team that played like it felt the weight of expectations as the NFC’s top seed, only amplified by the uncertain offseason ahead.
“It changed the momentum,” Ward said of his blocked field goal.
It should have never come down to special teams Saturday night. The Packers’ offense bulldozed its way to a touchdown on its opening drive, but it did almost nothing after that. The succeeding nine possessions yielded six punts, one fumble and just two scoring opportunities, one the blocked field goal.
There is nothing to absolve the offense’s shocking failure – quarterback Aaron Rodgers rightly said a team won’t win many playoff games scoring just 10 points – but there also is no question terrible special teams left less margin for error.
“You’d just like to play even, you know?” Rodgers said of the special teams. “Make some plays, kind of have a wash in the special teams. That’d be good, but crucial, critical situations we had obviously some issues.”
With Rodgers at quarterback, the Packers merely needed “even” special teams play. A wash on special teams would have been enough to advance to the NFC championship game. If the Packers had simply recovered the block punt, it might have been enough to survive and advance, given how their defense played.
They couldn’t even get that.
By the end, the Packers’ special teams unit was in such disarray it couldn’t even line up properly. As veteran 49ers kicker Robbie Gould prepared for his game-winning field goal from 45 yards, only 10 Packers players were on the field to defend it. A fitting tribute to that unit’s season. At this level, teams are at least expected to present 11 players.
In an offseason of certain change, one of the Packers’ easiest decisions is likely the future of coordinator Maurice Drayton. If you can’t fix special teams over the course of a season, you can’t coordinate it. LaFleur did not leave any hints Saturday on what he’ll decide with Drayton, but he acknowledged the necessity of changes, starting with paying more attention to that phase himself.
“It’s extremely disappointing,” LaFleur said, “especially when you look at what happened tonight. These are things, I’ve got to do a better job obviously of being involved, to make sure those type of things don’t happen. That we’re putting these guys in the right position, that we’re coaching them in the right way.
“Ultimately, it all falls on me.”