With 49ers Up Next, Packers’ Defense Shows Signs of Trouble

After falling flat against the feeble Bears on Sunday, the Green Bay Packers’ defense had been crank it up a notch for the stretch run.

Chicago Bears running back D'Andre Swift (4) runs the ball against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. / Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers should have beaten the Chicago Bears because of their defense. Instead, they won in spite of it.

Chicago’s offense was one of the worst in the NFL. During a three-game losing streak, Caleb Williams was last in passer rating and the Bears were last in points per game with just six third-down conversions.

Instead, an offense that hadn’t found the end zone in two weeks found it twice. Williams completed almost three-fourths of his passes and had more than 300 total yards. The Bears moved the chains nine times on third down and gained more yards than the previous two games combined.

It was an alarming performance for Green Bay’s defense entering a stretch run filled with top offenses.

“The thing I make out of that is we’ve got to be better,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “Just after watching the tape with the guys, I would say we’re all in agreement with that. There were opportunities to get off the grass, and for one reason or another, we didn’t make the plays.”

There were a lot of factors in play. Among them: a new offensive coordinator to better utilize Williams, the No. 1 overall pick of the draft, and a talented group of skill-position players.

“It’s a credit to them, I thought they had a good plan,” LaFleur said. “I thought Caleb played as well as he’s played. He was very decisive in terms of hitting the top of his drop, getting rid of the football, going to the spots where he needed to go with it.

“And then he was effective using his legs. …. It’s so critical that when you’re playing guys that can move, you can’t let them get out and make plays with their legs, whether it’s picking up the first down scrambling or creating those off-schedule plays because there were some big-time plays in that game.”

Troubling for the Packers is they were coming out of their bye week, which provided an opportunity to show some new wrinkles. Instead, the pass rush was typically feeble. Rashan Gary played perhaps his best game of the season and Brenton Cox provided a lift in his season debut, but Kenny Clark and Lukas Van Ness didn’t make a single statistical contribution.

The Packers gave up a season-worst 179 rushing yards. The nine third-down conversions allowed matched the total from their previous three games.

Even more troubling for Green Bay is the offensive firepower filling the rest of the schedule. That starts with Sunday’s home game against the rival San Francisco 49ers, who are in desperation mode with a 5-5 record after losing in last year’s Super Bowl.

Week 12: San Francisco 49ers – 8th with 25.0 points per game. Brock Purdy is 14th with a 95.9 passer rating but is third in yards per attempt.

Week 13: Miami Dolphins – 27th with 18.1 points per game. but eighth with 27.8 points per game in four games since Tua Tagovailoa’s return from a concussion. Tagovailoa is eighth with a 101.6 passer rating.

Week 14: at Detroit Lions – 1st with 33.6 points per game. Jared Goff is second with a 112.1 passer rating.

Week 15: at Seattle Seahawks – 16th with 23.0 points per game. Geno Smith is 23rd with an 88.1 passer rating but is fourth in yards and seventh in completion percentage.

Week 16: New Orleans Saints – 12th with 23.8 points per game. Derek Carr is fourth with a 106.4 passer rating.

Week 17: at Minnesota Vikings – 10th with 24.4 points per game. Sam Darnold is 10th with a 100.0 passer rating.

Week 18: Chicago Bears – 22nd with 19.4 points per game. Williams is 28th with an 82.3 passer rating but posted a mark of 95.0 vs. Green Bay.

The defense will face a big challenge on Sunday. With Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, the 49ers’ offense is as powerful as any in the NFL.

Purdy’s right shoulder was sore following the loss to Seattle and McCaffrey is averaging only 3.7 yards per carry after missing the first eight games due to injuries, but Purdy was fourth in NFL MVP voting last year and McCaffrey led the NFL in rushing yards, total yards and total touchdowns last season to win NFL Offensive Player of the Year.

“We’ve just got to clean it up, man,” safety Xavier McKinney said after Sunday’s game. “It’s tough because I think that we can play way better ball than what we did today, but it’s hard to win in this league. When you do win, you’ve got to be somewhat happy about the win because it’s hard to win.

“But also, you’ve got to know that there’s a lot of things to improve on and we’ve got to do that moving forward.”

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