Packers Must Fix Giant List of Problems on Short Week Before Buccaneers
GREEN BAY, Wis. – For the Green Bay Packers, this week is akin to putting 20 pounds of flour in a 10-pound sack.
“There were mistakes in every phase,” coach Matt LaFleur said of Monday night’s loss to the New York Giants. Cleaning up those mistakes won’t be easy. The Packers didn’t land in Green Bay until about 3 a.m. on Tuesday and won’t hold a true practice on Wednesday as they flip the script to Sunday’s home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Upon watching the film, what went wrong? Here is LaFleur’s full, lightly edited answer.
“We had a turnover on punt return. You muff a punt, you’ve got to just stay down, cover it up. We had a couple penalties, although the one we’ve got to get clarification on – the Anthony Johnson [blindside block]. We’ve just got to get clarification from the league so we can coach that better. Certainly, we never want our players to commit a penalty or coach them to commit penalties. But I thought that was a tough one.
“And then the other one, we mis-hit the punt, and Rudy (Ford) is flying down there and it looked like he’s trying to push his man into the returner. The returner, I don’t think he saw him, because I’ve never seen a returner fly that fast. He almost hit Rudy. And I know he’s got the right of way, it was just one of those freak plays. Certainly, there was no malicious intent there by Rudy. So, it’s just one of those things that happened, unfortunately.
“And then when you look at our defense, I thought, for the most part — I’ve got to be careful how this gets phrased or comes out — for the most part, in terms of run efficiency when Saquon was back there, we did a good job. The problem was, we gave up four just brutal runs that accounted for I want to say 109 yards where we had missed tackles, missed assignments, and you can’t have that.
“The one, obviously, didn’t hurt us as bad because Saquon fumbled on the play — the 34-yarder — but we still missed two tackles. The first one was right in the hole, and then he made Sav [Darnell Savage] miss down the sidelines. And then a couple of those zone reads, you need 11 guys on the same page. And if one guy’s got dive responsibilities, let him take the dive and the other guy has the quarterback.
“You’ve got to give them credit. There was a couple they schemed up that they did a nice job, and you’ve just got to limit those when they are in open field. The one where (Tommy} DeVito pulled it and went for 26 yards down to the 1-yard line, we just have to get him down and maybe it’s a 7- or 8-yard gain. Instead, it’s a 26-yard gain.
“Teams are going to get plays on you. You just can’t make a bad play worse by whether it’s missing a tackle or missing an assignment and we have a couple of those that really, really hurt us in the game.
“And then offensively, I think there were a couple things where we messed up in protection that are inexcusable, quite frankly. Just not ID’ing the structures, and that’s a credit to Wink [Martindale, the Giants’ defensive coordinator] and that defense just in terms of all the different looks they present to you. You’ve got to be on top of it at all times. They present a lot of different looks and it causes confusion, and there were a couple situations where it really hurt us where we had opportunities to get maybe some chunk plays that it didn’t happen.
“And then just being able to throw and catch. There was some throws I know that Jordan would like to have back. I did think he did a nice job down the stretch, despite how the game had been going, to show resiliency. I thought specifically the last drive he did a really nice job making some tough throws; some we made the plays, and some we didn’t.
“But, all in all, every phase contributed. We had two turnovers on offense; we can’t have them. So, when you do that, and you have three turnovers in a football game, you’re probably not going to win the game.”
Time is of the essence. Having played in the early game on Sunday, the Buccaneers have about 32 hours more rest/recovery/preparation time than the Packers.
After losing six of seven, the Bucs have won two in a row. At 6-7, they lead the NFC South. After facing the Giants, who are second in blitz percentage, the Packers will be challenged by a Buccaneers defense that’s third in blitz percentage.
On the other side of the ball, the Bucs have the veteran quarterback (Baker Mayfield) and veteran receivers (Mike Evans and Chris Godwin) that the Giants lacked.
“You absolutely go over everything,” LaFleur said of the short-week approach. “You’ve got to get some of this stuff cleaned up, no doubt about it. The big ones are some of the unforced errors.
“We’re going to have another great challenge in front of us in all three phases again against a Tampa team that went into Atlanta and found a way to come away with a last-second victory. You’ve got to clean up your mistakes but, ultimately, you’ve got to learn from every situation that you’re in, both positively and, unfortunately, when you lose. Otherwise, I don’t know what we’re doing if we’re not learning from those situations.”
