MINNEAPOLIS — The story of Sunday’s Packers loss to the Vikings can be told with a quick Gmail search.
I typed in “earn the right” in my search bar, looking for that exact phrase in my myriad emails containing interview transcriptions for Packers players and coaches.
“We’re going to have to earn the right to potentially come back here and it’s not going to be easy.”
“We’ve got to earn the right to play these guys again and it ain’t going to be easy.”
Those quotes, both from head coach Matt LaFleur, came 24 days apart. One on Dec. 5 after the Packers’ 34-31 loss to the Lions, one on Dec. 29 after their 27-25 loss to the Vikings. Both after games in which the Packers started flat on offense and committed too many self-inflicted errors, both of which came back to bite them in a narrow loss against an elite team, something the Packers are not.
LIVE: Head Coach Matt LaFleur meets with the media following #GBvsMIN 🎙️ https://t.co/pImiFAF4NJ
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) December 30, 2024
Against teams currently with a worse record than the Packers, who are 11-5, they are 11-0. Against teams currently with a better record, the Packers are 0-5. Forgive me for writing the same story once again this season, but the same thing keeps happening. Signs of promise and fight against the NFL’s upper echelon from a good team — that’s what the Packers are — but ultimately, too little too late.
That’s how we’ve arrived at nearly identical quotes from a head coach harping on what the Packers must earn in the future instead of what they’ve already earned, which does not include a single win against a team better than LaFleur’s own.
“We gotta take it upon ourselves to change that narrative,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “We already went through this feeling. Either we change it or we don’t. If we don’t, it’s not gonna be good for us. We gotta take initiative. We gotta be better. I gotta be better. That’s what it is. Like I said, we here now. It’s no turning back. We’re gonna be in the playoffs. We got another game to play and we gotta be better in order to get to where we want to get to.
“Right now, the story is we haven’t beaten those teams, so I can’t sit up here and say we’re on the same level if we ain’t beat them.”
GO DEEPER
Vikings edge Packers 27-25 for shot at NFC’s No. 1 seed: Takeaways
Much like the first game against the Vikings in Week 4, like the first game against the Lions in Week 9, like the second game against the Lions in Week 14 — OK, you get the point. The Packers have a bad habit of starting slowly in these games. LaFleur once coined the term “hot piss” to illustrate what the Packers must wake up with. In terms that aren’t medically concerning, he’s saying they need to start on fire, once again not what they did on offense Sunday in Minnesota.
LaFleur attributed the slow start in part to Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores playing more man coverage than the Packers anticipated.
“They had shown that a couple games,” LaFleur said. “Didn’t think we’d get it … we gotta be able to adjust quicker and have some plays in there that can attack that coverage and that falls squarely on my shoulders.”
Quarterback Jordan Love was a meager 7-of-12 for 45 yards in the opening 30 minutes, while both Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson and wide receiver Jalen Nailor had more receiving yards themselves during that time. The first half featured a litany of miscues that teams truly contending for a Super Bowl don’t make. Let’s quickly run through a few, and this cluster doesn’t even include the Packers getting flagged for 12 men in the huddle in the second half.
On the opening drive after Green Bay chose to receive, running back Josh Jacobs lost a fumble at the end of a 7-yard run to Minnesota’s 41-yard line.
“I feel like it drained the energy out of the team just starting early,” Jacobs said. “I take it personal on getting the team to start fast and things like that. Yeah, that’s on me.”
On fourth-and-2 from Minnesota’s 23-yard line, wide receiver Jayden Reed was open on a slant, but Love threw it a touch out in front and Reed didn’t come down with a catchable ball.
“J-Reed won on his route and we just missed,” Love said. “We both missed. I missed on the throw. He missed making that play.”
A third-and-1 conversion was called back for illegal formation on receiver Dontayvion Wicks and the Packers punted after Love’s bomb to a tightly covered Bo Melton fell incomplete on the ensuing third-and-5. Linebacker Edgerrin Cooper was called for offsides on a 55-yard field-goal miss to end the half, so rookie kicker Will Reichard of course hit his second chance from 50 in a game the Packers eventually lost by, yep, two points.
LaFleur made it crystal clear postgame that he disagreed with the latter two calls.
“Obviously, the official disagreed with what I saw,” LaFleur said of Wicks’ illegal formation infraction. “I saw our tight end clearly signal he was off the ball and I saw Wicks take the ball.”
Of Cooper’s costly offsides, LaFleur said, “I’m not going to make excuses for it. We put ourselves in a bad position, ultimately. I was standing right down the line for that. I didn’t see it that way, but I’m not an official, either. That’s not my job and that’s not what I get paid to do.”
Added Cooper, “I didn’t think I was (offsides). If anything, the people outside of me were in front of me … I’ve just got to get back.”
Jacobs lamented postgame that the Packers shot themselves in the foot too many times, a familiar refrain for them against an elite team. It’s Week 17. Do great teams really commit self-inflicted mistakes of this magnitude this late in the season?
“I think great teams,” Jacobs began before changing course. “See, the thing about it is in this league, in the NFL, it’s hard. Every team is good. The worst teams are good. So you’ve got to play to a certain ability every game. You’ve got to come out and play your best every given Sunday, whenever you’re playing. For us, we’re not going to say, ‘Oh, we’re not a great team because we didn’t play good.’ We’re just going to lock in and figure it out.”
On Sunday, just like they did against the Vikings in Week 4, the Packers figured it out. That Sunday afternoon at Lambeau Field, Green Bay turned a 28-0 deficit into a 31-29 loss. At U.S. Bank Stadium, they turned a 27-10 deficit midway through the fourth quarter into a 27-25 ballgame with 2:18 remaining. The Packers had all three timeouts, needing just one defensive stop to potentially pull off a miracle.
MALIK HEATH TD!#GBvsMIN pic.twitter.com/u74Wa9TgtU
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) December 30, 2024
But just like in Week 4, figuring it out came too late.
The Vikings boldly abandoned the run on second and third down on their final drive, but the Packers couldn’t stop consecutive Sam Darnold rollouts. Backup running back Cam Akers rescued the ball from hitting the turf on a short third-down lob pass, a symbolic end to yet another matchup between NFC playoff teams in which Green Bay fell short by the narrowest of margins.
Love was asked postgame what separates the Packers from the Lions, Vikings and Eagles, three teams that compose all five Green Bay losses this season.
“Not much,” he said. “Just got to come out there and when we play these teams, it comes down to execution and making plays.”
The Packers are running out of time to make those corrections. They’ll either be the No. 6 or No. 7 seed in the playoffs, potentially traveling to Philadelphia in the opening round and likely visiting Detroit or Minnesota if they advance. At some point, the Packers can’t just keep a game against one of those three teams close and hope they get another chance to right their wrongs.
Are they far off? The scores wouldn’t suggest so. Their five losses have come by an average of 4.4 points. But zero wins against those teams are zero wins. Their next shot in a meaningful game will be their last. If the slow starts and self-inflicted mistakes persist, there’s no silver lining that one more shot might result in one more catch or one less fumble. The Packers’ season will be over if those persist.
“In order to be on the same level, you gotta beat these teams,” McKinney said. “We gotta be more on our details. We gotta play cleaner. We gotta start faster. That’s just what it is … We have the players to do it. We have the coaches to do it. We can. Player-wise, we gotta be better and we all know that. It’s not rocket science. We understand what we need to do. We just gotta go out there and do it.”
(Photo: Dan Powers / Imagn Images)
