GREEN BAY, Wis. — No statistic better tells the story of Green Bay’s dreary loss to Detroit on Sunday at Lambeau Field than this one: The Packers had six drops. The Lions had four incompletions.
For all the talk entering Sunday’s supposed heavyweight bout between arguably the NFC’s two best teams about how the Lions hadn’t yet played outdoors, it didn’t matter during a consistent downpour. The Packers were far too sloppy to beat any respectable team, let alone one that might be the league’s best.
Six drops. Ten penalties, which tied a season-high. Three botched snaps. A dismal pick-six. A turnover on downs after the Packers couldn’t gain 1 yard on three consecutive plays. Don’t blame the rain because it didn’t hamper the Lions (7-1) in their 24-14 win over the Packers (6-3) that dropped Green Bay to 0-2 in the NFC North. The sea of Honolulu blue turning up to “Jump Around” and chanting “Ja-red Goff” in garbage time displayed as much.
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“A lot of self-inflicted wounds, a lot of momentum-killers, a lot of drive-killers,” running back Josh Jacobs said. “That’s just on us, man. I feel like we’ve been getting away with a lot of it because we’ve been kind of masking it with the wins, but when you play a good team, all the little things catch up to you.”
The Packers didn’t waste any time shooting themselves in the foot. Keisean Nixon returned the opening kickoff to the 40-yard line, but stuffed his right hand in Lions cornerback Kindle Vildor’s face on the sideline well after the play to earn a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty.
“Totally unacceptable,” head coach Matt LaFleur said of Nixon’s penalty.
That was only a foreshadowing of the opening drive and, for that matter, the entire game. On third-and-5 from the Lions’ 12-yard line later in the drive, quarterback Jordan Love threw behind running back Chris Brooks short over the middle, but Brooks still should’ve caught what would’ve earned a first down. The Packers settled for three points instead of seven on their third consecutive opening drive that hasn’t ended in a touchdown after choosing to receive to start the game.
Green Bay couldn’t go its first defensive drive without a costly mistake, either. The Lions lined up as if to go for it on fourth-and-goal from the 5, seemingly with no intention to do so and only to try drawing the Packers offsides. It worked. Defensive tackle T.J. Slaton jumped, moving the ball halfway to the goal line while still fourth down. Instead of kicking a field goal after taking a delay of game, which the Lions seemed inclined to do, quarterback Jared Goff hit wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown on a fade with cornerback Keisean Nixon in coverage for a touchdown to take a lead the Lions wouldn’t relinquish. Nixon followed St. Brown across the formation on jet motion and St. Brown faked a stop route before running the fade and making a phenomenal catch on the left side of the end zone.
I’ve got sunshine, on a cloudy day 😎#DETvsGB 📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/ZuMG3uJuMa
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) November 3, 2024
St. Brown wore a sweatshirt walking into the stadium on Sunday that read, “GREENBAY SUCKS.” Nixon was asked about St. Brown’s sweatshirt after the game and said, “I didn’t see it. I mean, he’s a clown. It’s just the way it is.” Nixon may think St. Brown is a clown, but the message on his sweatshirt, at least pertaining to the football team’s sharpness, wasn’t wrong.
The Packers had a chance to respond and started their next drive with a 37-yard Jacobs run. But a false start on right guard Sean Rhyan with the Packers facing third-and-3 from Detroit’s 32-yard line preceded an incomplete bomb to wide receiver Christian Watson in double coverage. The Packers punted instead of trying a 55-yard field goal in the rain.
LaFleur has lamented his team’s pre-snap penalties this season and there were several more on Sunday, including Slaton’s costly neutral zone infraction and a whopping four false starts.
“I think you can definitely lump those in the focus category, where we’ve got to be better,” LaFleur said of the false start penalties. “Some of those are totally unnecessary. We’re going on a double cadence and that’s an advantage for an offense. I never want us not to do that. I think that’s an important part of it. That is your one advantage on offense is that you control when the ball’s snapped. That’s a great advantage when you’re at home when there’s not as much crowd noise.”
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The Packers couldn’t even take advantage when the Lions tried to gift-wrap them a scoring opportunity. Detroit safety Brian Branch was flagged 15 yards for going helmet-to-helmet on wide receiver Bo Melton on a second-and-20 pass Melton dropped deep down the left sideline. Branch was flagged another 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct after he was ejected for targeting. That gave the Packers a first-and-10 at Detroit’s 32-yard line, but wide receiver Romeo Doubs committed another false start on first down and tight end Tucker Kraft dropped a pass on third down before kicker Brandon McManus missed a 46-yard field goal wide left to keep the score at 7-3.
“You’ve seen in the past when we shoot ourselves in the foot in critical games what happens,” Kraft said. “The Lions are too good of a team for us to make the mistakes that we made.”
Oh, you thought the back-breaking mistakes were done? Not even close.
The Lions scored three points after McManus’ miss and the Packers got the ball back with 58 seconds remaining and one timeout at their 30-yard line in a 10-3 deficit with the Lions receiving the second-half kickoff. On the second play of the drive, Love tried checking the ball down to Jacobs over the middle on second-and-2, but safety Kerby Joseph pick-sixed it to give the Lions a 17-3 lead. Love’s second confounding pick-six in the past month was his league-leading 10th interception this season.
“I was moving out of the pocket. Obviously, Josh was blocking, protection, and I saw him trying to get out and was trying to dump it down,” Love said. “It was a check-down to him and the ball did not go where I wanted it to. They made a good play on it … I didn’t see (Joseph) when I threw it. Like I said, I just saw Josh kind of trying to get out of there. Like I said, the ball didn’t go where I wanted it to. And yeah, critical error.”
Jordan Love says his throw on the pick-six didn’t go where he wanted it to. Saw Josh Jacobs on the checkdown but didn’t see Kerby Joseph on the play. pic.twitter.com/sYO6XlLnMB
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) November 4, 2024
What has already been written are enough words for a full story, but that was only the first half of the Packers getting in their own way.
Nixon’s third-down holding penalty on the second half’s opening drive turned a punt into a first down. On the next drive, Love’s third-down pass that would’ve earned a first down hit wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks square in the chest before falling to the grass. Love dropped two consecutive errant snaps from left guard-turned-center Elgton Jenkins on second and third downs (starting center Josh Myers missed the game with a wrist injury), the latter forcing the Packers to settle for a field goal down 21.
“The ball was wet. My hand was wet. It was wet,” Jenkins said. “It slipped out of my hand.”
The Packers didn’t seem to use the weather as an excuse postgame, more so a justification. Even so, a team that hadn’t yet played an outdoor game braved the elements. The team that calls Lambeau Field home crumbled in them.
Perhaps the most egregious self-inflicted wound — which is saying something on a day littered with them — came from Love and Wicks on third-and-1 from Detroit’s 9-yard line with the Packers trailing by 18 and clinging to life. Love perfectly executed Aaron Rodgers’ patented guitar fake and had Wicks wide open in the end zone. While rolling to his right, Love threw slightly behind Wicks — still a more-than-catchable pass. It went right through Wicks’ hands, again, and Jacobs got stuffed on the ensuing fourth-and-1 to essentially seal the game.
The Lions had one drop entering the game, according to Pro Football Focus. Wicks now has six on the season after his two costly ones Sunday. Wicks was far from the Packers’ only hindrance on Sunday, but that comparison serves as a microcosm for what we saw at Lambeau Field.
These teams entered the game as relative equals, but the final margin of 10 points doesn’t tell the story of how far apart they truly seem. Not because the Lions dominated with their play. They didn’t. But because great football teams don’t do everything the Packers did wrong — the six drops, the 10 penalties, the three botched snaps, the head-scratching pick-six.
Jordan Love gets up after throwing an interception returned for a touchdown by Lions safety Kerby Joseph on Sunday. (Mark Hoffman / Imagn Images)
They didn’t just commit pre-snap penalties on Sunday. They have the second-most in the NFL with 30 as of Sunday night. They didn’t just drop passes because it was raining. That’s been an issue before Sunday, too. And Love didn’t just throw an isolated costly interception against the Lions. He’s put the ball in harm’s way far too often since the beginning of the season.
If the Packers clean up all those mistakes, can they contend with the Lions? Of course. Last season, they suffered a similar defeat to Detroit at Lambeau Field and then beat them convincingly on Thanksgiving in their own house before coming a quarter away from meeting them in the NFC Championship Game in Detroit. There’s plenty of season left and there are worse places to be than 6-3. But that requires the Packers to heal all that ails them right now, specifically of the self-inflicted variety, and doing so isn’t as simple as it sounds.
“As players, we just keep making the same mistakes and we gotta figure it out,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “I can’t keep saying it. We just gotta figure it out. We gotta do it and we gotta stop having all these mistakes because we play other good teams, we can’t afford those type of mistakes. We can’t afford penalties. We can’t afford having turnovers and not getting turnovers. It’s just a lot of things that’s built up and we just gotta make corrections, man. That’s all I got for that.”
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(Top photo: Dan Powers / Imagn Images)
