Mental Mistakes Frustrate Rodgers in Packers’ Loss at Vikings

The first-play drop by Christian Watson was a big deal but not nearly as concerning as the number of mental errors, Packers QB Aaron Rodgers said after a 23-7 loss at the Vikings.

MINNEAPOLIS – The Green Bay Packers lost their season-opening game at the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 on Sunday. Hey, at least it wasn’t 38-3, like last year’s opening dud against the New Orleans Saints.

“I feel like we had a much better performance,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said with a sarcastic tongue planted in cheek. “We scored four more points than we did that day. There’s a lot to build on when you compare the two. Look, it’s tough to win in this league, and it’s definitely tough when you get in your own way too many times.”

That would be Rodgers’ theme before heading to the airport for a return trip to Green Bay. He wasn’t going to blame Christian Watson for his opening-series drop of a 75-yard touchdown pass. And he wouldn’t use the absences of his bookend offensive tackles as an excuse, either.

Rather, Rodgers was miffed at the team’s poor execution.

“We had a lot of chances today,” Rodgers said. “I’m not taking anything away from their defense, but we hurt ourselves many times, myself included. We had a lot of opportunities to score more than seven.”

Rodgers wasn’t passing the buck. He pointed the finger at himself, too. On the fourth-and-goal failure in which AJ Dillon was stuffed at the 1, Rodgers said he should have kept the ball. He called his first-half interception a “dumb” decision.

“Obviously, it’d be great to have a 75-yard touchdown to start the game, but drops are going to happen. It’s part of the game,” Rodgers said. “It’s the mental stuff that we just can’t have because we’re hurting ourselves. Whether we’re going the wrong way on a block or missing a protection something or missing a hot or not running the right route, the right depth, there was just too many mental mistakes.”

Rodgers acknowledged, as he did throughout training camp, that there would be “growing pains” with rookie receivers Watson and Romeo Doubs getting considerable early playing time. Mental mistakes with rookies is a fact of life that Rodgers understands because every play can be a new experience.

“Look, we’ve got to have patience with those guys. They’re young. They haven’t been in the fire. The patience will be thinner as the season goes on but the expectation will be high,” Rodgers said.

Mental mistakes by the offensive line left Rodgers at a bit more of a loss for words.

Yes, premier starters David Bakhtiari and Elgton Jenkins were inactive due to injuries, but the five players who started on the offensive line – left tackle Yosh Nijman, left guard Jon Runyan, center Josh Myers, right guard Jake Hanson and right tackle Royce Newman – are young but not exactly rookies. Four of the five started games last season; the exception, Hanson, is in his third year with the team.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I wish I had the answer there,” Rodgers said. “It’s different when it’s real, I guess. I know for me, it feels different and the urgency goes up. But, hey, you’d love to be sitting here with very few mental mistakes in the first game because that eliminates you guys the opportunity to write about playing in the preseason or any of that stuff. But the truth is, we’re professionals. There’s an expectation of performance. It starts with preparation. There was just too many preparation issues. That was surprising.”

Would playing in the preseason have prevented some of those mistakes? Perhaps. But the Vikings – with a first-time head coach and new coordinators – didn’t play their starters in the preseason, either.

The urgency will be up next week for the home opener against the Chicago Bears on Sunday night. The Vikings, clearly, aren’t pushovers, and the Bears splished and splashed their way to an upset victory over the San Francisco 49ers.

“We’ll clean it up. It sucks. It’s a tough feeling,” Rodgers said. “But they’re a good team, for sure. They’re not going to be a three- or four-win team. That’s going to be a team that we’re going to be contending with in this division and we’ve go to turn around, head home, Sunday Night Football against a 1-0 team that’s probably riding pretty high. We’ve got to have a better performance.”