That certainly was a game of football, barely. The Green Bay Packers, who were the betting favorites to, at minimum, represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, and coming off two beatdowns of fellow NFC contenders, went and laid an egg in northeast Ohio. It was, truly, the dumbest game. Starting right tackle Zach Tom, who was to be tasked to face either the best or second-best defensive player in the league, had to tap out after just one play due to an oblique injury that he suffered on a play that technically doesn’t even exist. Starting left guard Aaron Banks had to leave due to a groin injury, though apparently not even the same groin issue that had kept him on the injury report during the week. This combination left the Packers down two starters up front and having to use 1.5 backup offensive linemen, depending on how you count Jordan Morgan, though Morgan was playing out of his typical position at right guard the entire game.
There would be games where Green Bay could survive this. They will play defensive lines this season, where Jordan Morgan and Anthony Belton could slide in and get the job done. Cleveland does not have that defensive line. The Browns as a whole stink because their offense is dreadful. But their defense, and particularly their front, is very good. We saw in the first half, where the Packers tried to give their offensive line some extra help, but didn’t go full gimmick, and the results were pretty disastrous. Love had no time to throw, and the line was blowing protections in just about every way imaginable. So, in the second half, the Packers got extremely conservative in the passing game, and understandably so. If you can’t protect the quarterback, and you’re up by ten, it is a rational move to structure your passing game in a way that looks like you don’t trust your offensive line. You shouldn’t trust it! And that’s how you end up with a passing chart that looks more like Bo Nix than Jordan Love.
On top of an offensive line debacle, partially due to injuries, but significantly due to the fact Cleveland has an immensely talented front, the Packers also had their most penalized game since 2010.
You’re just not going to win many games, racking up 14 penalties. A lot of fans, understandably, have noted that the Packers seem to always commit a ton of penalties. Part of this is just the problem with watching your team so much. Like how every baseball fan thinks their bullpen stinks, no matter how good they are. The Packers have been mildly more penalty-prone than average over the past couple of years, but not to a dramatic extent. They ranked sixth in penalties-per-game each of the past two seasons, but it’s worth noting that they’re only committing one half of a penalty more than league average in both of those seasons. Teams obviously want to minimize penalties. Penalties are bad. But I don’t think the Packers have a penalty epidemic, per se. Even after that diabolical performance on Sunday, the Packers are still only fourth in penalties per game this season.
Aside from the general REDACTED up front and the penalties, the third primary complaint seems to be that of Jordan Love. Now, I’m not going to tell you that Love played super well yesterday. You can’t make a back-breaking throw like that and say super well, but even despite the nasty interception, Love’s aggregate numbers for the week are… fine?
And through three weeks, the Packers’ passing game as a whole looks as good as you’d expect. From Packer fans in particular, who had nearly two decades of Brett Favre, thinking that you can’t win with a quarterback who makes a dumb decision/throw sometimes is pretty funny to me. This was also Love’s first regular-season interception since the middle of November.
On the interception itself, this is a combination of a play call I just don’t like, pretty much regardless of situation, Love not seeing the defender, and a good disguise of showing Cover-0 but changing the picture post-snap.
And even despite this, the Packers were lined up to win the game with a field goal with just a handful of seconds left. If it’s a normal field goal and it splits the uprights, all everyone is talking about is that it was a dumb game, a grimy game, but a win. Instead, because Shelby Harris blocked it, Matt LaFleur is a coward for doing the obviously correct thing given the state of his offensive line and the clock (playing for the field goal to win the game), Jordan Love isn’t clutch, despite leading the would-be game winning drive, and the Packers are actually terrible, despite being #1 in both offensive and defensive DVOA coming into the game, after being 3rd in DVOA last season. Maybe Matthew Golden stays in bounds here and Green Bay goes up 17-0, and the game is over.
Everybody plays like s— sometimes. Yes, even that really good team that you thought was perfect.
The Packers played poorly. The Packers had injuries that were extremely problematic given their opponent. The Packers got got on a critical third down. Jordan Morgan had one of the worst games I have ever seen for a starting-ish offensive lineman. Matthew Golden stumbled out of bounds. Brandon McManus didn’t get a ton of air on a relatively short-ish field goal. And then the ref spotted the last play about two yards too far back, allowing them to actually get a play off despite spotting it improperly. Sometimes you just play bad and the breaks are bad and it doesn’t really mean that much in the larger scheme of things. This team is still very good. The sky didn’t fall on Sunday. It’s mid-September. I’ll let Micah take us home:
