Latest Special Teams Disaster Ends Packers’ Season

All year, Green Bay Packers special teams coordinator Maurice Drayton said his units would be solid for "when it really counts." Instead, the special teams ended the season.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers’ special teams imploded in a gruesome three-act play on Saturday night. The 13-10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers ended not only the season but perhaps an era.

For Green Bay, first-year coordinator Maurice Drayton’s proclamations throughout the season were empty words. His units were bad for most of the year and saved the worst for last. For San Francisco, its special teams were bad for most of the season, too, but bullied the Packers’ unprepared, mistake-prone units.

Act 1: A 75-yard pass to Aaron Jones put the Packers in position to add a key touchdown just before halftime. A first-down sack put an end to that, but a 39-yard field goal by Mason Crosby would have made it 10-0 at the break. Instead, Jimmie Ward blew past Tyler Lancaster and blocked the kick.

“We’re really close,” Drayton said in October. “To the uninitiated, and what I mean by that is those who do not study special teams and understand it, they think it’s still the same old Packers. That’s not the case on some of these units. We’re really close, but if you don’t the trained eye to see where that’s really close, you’ll think we’re in the same spot. But we’re really close. … We’re going take these baby steps and just keep going on it, making it bigger. And by the end of the season, we’ll be where we need to be, when it really counts.”

Act 2: On the second-half kickoff, Deebo Samuel wove his way through Green Bay’s kickoff coverage and got to midfield. That set up a field goal that pulled the 49ers within 7-3.

“Over the last three weeks, we’re definitely trending up,” Drayton said after the Packers finished last in Rick Gosselin’s annual rankings. “I think I mentioned before that our practices have been on point and the guys are now transferring what they’re doing in practice to the game field, so we feel very encouraged, they are very encouraged and I’m excited to see what they’re going to do here on Saturday night.”

Act 3: The Packers were clinging to a 10-3 lead when Corey Bojorquez lined up to punt a few years in his own end zone with less than 5 minutes remaining. Given the way the defense was playing, a good punt would have gone a long way toward ensuring the Packers advanced to next weekend’s title game. Instead, the punt was blocked and recovered for the tying touchdown.

“My No. 1 goal is to not lose on special teams,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said this week. “It means I'm not just going into games trying to dictate the flow games through fakes. I usually want depend on offense, but special teams, the starting point is to not lose it, to not turn the ball over, to make sure we get the ball back.”

The game ended with San Francisco kicker Robbie Gould blasting a 45-yard field goal through the snow to win the game. Green Bay had only 10 players on the field. Not that it would have mattered. The odds of the special teams making a game-saving play are about equal to the Packers winning an NFC Championship Game with Jordan Love at quarterback on a 70-degree day at Lambeau Field.

“It’s extremely disappointing, especially when you look at what happened tonight,” coach Matt LaFleur said after the game. “These are things I’ve got to do a better job, obviously, in being more involved to make sure that those types of things don’t happen, that we’re putting those guys in the right position and coaching them the right way. And, ultimately, it all falls on me.”

Usually, LaFleur is simply being a leader when he falls on the sword for whatever failures take place. Not this time. LaFleur hired Drayton. He stuck with him through the units’ struggles. All season, the potential of a catastrophic performance in the playoffs hung over the team. Sure enough, with a trip to the NFC Championship Game at stake, the special teams gave up two blocked kicks and two long returns. The special teams gave away 13 points in a three-point loss. You don’t need a calculator to handle that math.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers rightly took the blame for his performance in leading the team to only one touchdown. Still, that one touchdown should have been enough.

“We just would like to play even,” Rodgers said. “Make some plays, kind of have a wash in the special teams. That’d be good. But in crucial, critical situations, we had obviously some issues.”