Three Overreactions From Packers’ Loss to Browns

Because the Packers couldn’t run it, they couldn’t throw it. When pressured, Love was 4-of-9 passing for 17 yards, according to PFF. He was sacked five times.

Here was the key to the game: Love dropped back 31 times and threw 25 passes. He didn’t throw a single pass between 10 and 19 yards downfield and attempted only one pass of 20-plus yards (the 34-yard strike to Matthew Golden). Contrast that to Week 1 vs. Detroit, when Love was 6-of-9 with two touchdowns on passes between 10 and 19 yards and 2-for-2 on deep balls, and Week 2 vs. Washington, when Love was 6-of-7 with one touchdown on passes between 10 and 19 yards and 2-of-7 on deep passes.

Green Bay’s offense is predicated on Love driving the ball downfield. With that element taken away, it stalled. If the Packers can’t figure out how to run the ball, the play-action attack won’t be as effective. When paired with the Packers missing Jayden Reed’s run-after-catch ability and Zach Tom’s excellence, their offense looked like one of the worst in the league.

Most weeks, Green Bay’s offense should be fine. Next week, the Packers will play at Dallas; the Cowboys have one of the worst defenses in the NFL. After the bye, the Packers will host Cincinnati; the Bengals have a bad defense, too.

But in the big games against the type of opponents the Packers hope to see in January, it will be imperative for Green Bay to build a reliable rushing attack to avoid a repeat of Sunday’s dismal showing.

2. Is Jordan Love Good Enough?

There has been an assumption that Jordan Love would be the next great Packers quarterback because he’s the next Packers quarterback. And, who knows, maybe he will be the championship successor to Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.

For an interesting parallel, the Packers in 2010 opened Rodgers’ third season as the starter with a pair of wins. In Week 3, they lost at the defensive buzzsaw that was the Bears, 20-17. That season started 3-3 before they hit their stride and won the Super Bowl. At that point, though, nobody thought Rodgers would become, well, Rodgers.

However, it’s possible that Love never will be that great quarterback, no matter what his arm talent and paycheck suggest.

That’s not to say Love is a bad quarterback. There is an entire spectrum between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen to Joe Flacco and Bryce Young. However, maybe Love is who he’s shown to be through 36 career regular-season starts – a quarterback capable of making the elite throws that win games but also guilty of making the confounding mistakes that lose games.

To be sure, Sunday’s loss doesn’t fall entirely on Love’s shoulders. Love does a lot of things well; pass protecting against a stunting defensive tackle isn’t one of them. Still, Sunday’s game was there for the taking. All he had to do was score 13 points. Heck, all he had to do was not throw the ball right at a Browns defender on third-and-3 with about 3 minutes to go.

The Browns didn’t win as much as the Packers lost. In embarrassing fashion.

On Sunday, as the Packers were falling apart in the final minutes, Love couldn’t come to the rescue. Also on Sunday, the Buccaneers fell apart in the fourth quarter, allowing three touchdowns to the Jets, including on a blocked field goal. With the game on the line, Baker Mayfield prevented an embarrassing defeat against a winless team with his third game-winning drive in as many weeks.

Yes, Love got Green Bay into scoring position on the final drive, but it never in a million years should have come down to it.

The Packers need more from their quarterback, especially in big moments in big games.

3. Or Maybe It’s Nothing

This might seem to be the opposite of an Overreaction with the justified hyperventilating after the Packers for just the second time since 1970 coughed up a double-digits lead in the final 4 minutes.

Good teams, however, have bad losses.

Before winning the Super Bowl in 2024, the Eagles lost at home in Week 2 to the Falcons, who wound up finishing with their seventh consecutive losing season.

In 2023, the Chiefs won their second consecutive Super Bowl. At one point, they lost five out of eight games, with two of those losses coming against teams with losing records, including at home against the Raiders.

In 2022, the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. In Week 3, they lost at Indianapolis. The Colts finished that season 4-12-1.

Heck, when the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2010, they lost back-to-back games to Washington (6-10) and Miami (7-9).

That’s not to sweep under the rug that Green Bay’s performance on offense was offensive.

A week earlier against the same Browns defense, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was 8-of-13 with four touchdowns on passes thrown 10-plus yards downfield; Jordan Love threw just one pass of that distance.

About the only thing working with consistency for the offense was getting Love out of the pocket against the Browns’ overaggressive ends. On the fateful interception, which came on a third-and-3 that could have clinched the game, it was a three-step drop and throw into a crowd.

New Packers President and CEO Ed Policy, who has long-term decisions to make about his coach and general manager, no doubt was watching with interest from the press box. He had to sign off on the trade and contract extension for Micah Parsons. He did it with the belief that this one move could put the Packers over the top.

Instead, Matt LaFleur, the team’s offensive guru and play-caller, couldn’t figure out a way to beat the Browns even with three additional days to prepare. Adding injury to insult, he put Zach Tom on the field, only to see his premier right tackle aggravate his oblique injury on the opening snap.

In the long run, the Packers probably will be fine. Fine isn’t good enough, though. Not in Titletown. Not with Parsons. Not with no cap space and no first-round draft picks. At this point, it’s fair to wonder whether LaFleur and Love will ever accomplish what Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers did in 2010.