Week 12 Recap: The Packers Can't Handle the Eagles
The following is an adapted transcript of Episode 600 of Blue 58. If you like what you read here, consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you prefer to listen.
If you’ve been a long-time listener, or maybe even a short-time listener of Blue 58, you know that the great Dan Carlin is one of my favorite podcasters. His shows are some of the greatest influences on me, and a couple of weeks ago he did an episode about boxing on Hardcore History: Addendum.
He’s a big boxing fan, in part because of the great history behind boxing and all the culture that goes into it. So because of that, I’ve been thinking about a lot of boxing-related things lately. And that’s appropriate for the Packers playing in Philadelphia because there's a pretty famous fictional boxer connected to that city.
There have been a gazillion Rocky movies and we’re coming up on Creed III, and they’ve all been varying levels of “pretty good.” (Except for Rocky V.) The first Rocky movie, though, is not even about Rocky winning. Ultimately it’s about Rocky going the distance with Apollo Creed, and as this game wore on, I felt like that was the situation we were seeing play out.
Early on, it was different. It felt like the Packers were trying to just knock the Eagles out — seeing if, as an underdog boxer, they could just land a big one on the champ and knock him out.
But as the game wore on, it kind of transitioned to a situation where the Packers were just going to try to hang around and see what happened. The game was never really in doubt for Philadelphia, but the Packers were right there at the end. They were an onside kick away from getting a chance to drive for a tie. That’s a tall order, sure, but the Packers were right there. A win wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
And yet, the result is still the same. They lost They’re still 4-8. Aaron Rodgers is hurt. The Packers have a 3% chance of making the playoffs according to 538. It's not technically over, they're not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. But if there's a fat lady that sings, she is warming up and preparing to take the stage.
Three good things
1 - Jordan Love makes an appearance
We did get to see some Jordan Love, and if you want to talk about things that went well in this game, I think you have to start there, because he looked really good.
Some caveats apply, of course: he was playing with nothing to lose, because nobody was expecting anything there. If he plays well? Good. Great. We love that. If he plays bad? Well, who cares? Nobody expected anything from anybody on this team, and that’s especially true if you’re coming in to play in garbage time with long, long odds of success.
But Love delivered the ball with authority, with confidence, and with accuracy. You don't want to make too much of just two drives, especially ones where Philadelphia's playing pretty soft defense, but he moved the ball well. They're a dropped Randall Cobb pass in the end zone away from two touchdowns on two drives.
Yes, Christian Watson did a lot of the work on one touchdown, but that's the offense. Love did exactly what he was supposed to do on the play, so you can’t ding him too much for Watson just being faster than everyone else.
2 - Dillon and Jones show up
Among other good things, AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones played probably their best game of the season together. It wasn’t necessarily their best statistical game, but they ran hard and ran well. Dillon, in particular, looked like a different player than what we've seen in the 11 previous games.
Jones, meanwhile, is so much fun to watch, because the things he does don’t seem like they should be possible for a guy who looks like he does, and that’s not just that he's small. He runs through contact and runs off of contact and stays upright. And if not upright, he gets horizontal, and still goes forward.
He has all those intangible sorts of things, too, that you just love to see from guys. He plays with a kind of infectious joy, too. If he was on my team, I feel like I would want to play hard just because of how hard he plays all the time. Even though he's maybe 5-foot-10 and maybe 195 pounds, he goes out there and gives it his absolute best. He cares so much and I feel like you’d want your effort to match his.
3 - Keisean Nixon returns well
Finally, the good things finish with Keisean Nixon running hard and fast on kickoff returns. Every return feels like it could be something big, which is a different soft of feeling from what we had with Amari Rogers, where it felt like every kickoff or punt return was going to be something bad.
Nixon had 172 return yards in this game, and I throw that out there because that is more than Amari Rogers had in 10 games. Rodgers had 122 return yards in 10 games. Nixon had 172 in this game alone.
I don’t think we should go too far down the road of saying the Packers have something special in Nixon, because I think his skills are fairly easy to replicate. But Nixon has been great, and the fact that there are other guys out there who could do the job shouldn’t diminish the fact that Nixon is out there actually doing it week in and week out.
Two bad things
Usually we go with three bad things, but I’m not even going to bother counting that high this time. There are just two bad things, and they were really bad.
1 - The Packers can’t stop the run. Like, at all.
We’ve used and abused the phrase surprised by the obvious on Blue 58. This goes beyond that.
Remember a couple of years ago when the Packers lost a bad game to the Vikings on a cold day at Lambeau Field? It was super windy and the Vikings won just because they did a great job running outside zone and then falling back into their play-action passing. They ran the simplest possible version of their offense, and the Packers were just completely unable to stop it.
This is orders of magnitude worse than that because it's not just being surprised by the obvious, it's just getting gashed by the obvious again and again and again and again. It's not even that you’re saying “hey, the Eagles like to run.” It’s that they ran and ran and ran and ran and then ran some more. It’s hard to even know what to be mad at! They just kept running. They’re just going to run the ball. Have a little pride!
350-something rushing yards is more than just getting caught by a team that likes to run the ball. How does that happen? I realize the Packers are hurting up front. I realize that Dean Lowry has been a liability against the run since he came to the Packers. But they’ve just got to be better. You can’t allow 350 yards on the ground in a single game.
2 - The Packers fail at situational football
Situational football was just as bad as the run defense. One series in particular really sticks out.
The Eagles were driving right before halftime, and the Packers got them into a 3rd and 14. IN response, the Packers played extremely soft coverage. On the TV copy, Jaire Alexander was out of the picture at the bottom of the screen. Rasul Douglas was nearly that far off at the top of the screen. And lined up like that, you can see what the Packers are thinking: “They've gotta go 14 yards. All we gotta do is hold them to 13 and they're either gonna punt or kick a field goal.”
But that is not how the NFL works anymore, because what happened? The Eagles get 13 yards on third and 14, and then on fourth down, they run a sneak. First down. Shortly after, they scored a touchdown.
Teams are more willing to go for it than ever. You can't just hold them to 13 yards on 3rd and 14 and feel like you've done your job. This is just basic Madden football game management strategy. The Eagles aren't going to kick a field goal there. They know that if they get into 3rd and short or fourth and short, they can run the ball and get the first down that they need. Why would they kick on 4th and 1?
What does it mean? And what happens next?
The Packers are 4-8. Aaron Rodgers is hurt, but he said post-game that he doesn’t think he’s going to shut things down unless he has to. Jordan Love played pretty well.
So how much more “over” does this season need to get before Love is the guy?
Like we said, the Packers are currently looking at about a 3% chance of making the playoffs at this point, and even that feels a bit high. As exciting as this game was, the end result still puts the Packers that much closer to mathematical elimination. So in the grand scheme, it means about the same as a 40-7 loss.
The Packers, as a result, have to start making some tough decisions. I think Aaron Rogers is going on injured reserve sooner or later. I think the news before the game that his thumb injury was more serious than initially suspected was strategic, because if the Packers lost, they could say “well, it looks like the injury’s pretty bad. We want to preserve Aaron for as long as he wants to play. We're going put him on injured reserve and let him get completely healthy because playing doesn't allow him to do that.”
Now he’s got a second injury, and it’s time to take the decision out of his hands.
I don’t think you should call Aaron Rodgers selfish or say he’s trying to be a hero for wanting to play. We spent nearly 20 years with Brett Favre playing through any number of injuries and it was always, spun as him putting his body on the line for the team.
Whatever else you think of Aaron Rodgers, you can give him that same benefit of the doubt. It's okay to acknowledge that he wants to play and he has some pride there. And to that point, has has put a lot on the line for the Packers injury-wise. He’s had two broken collarbones, a broken foot, a tibial plateau fracture, a serious calf injury, and now a broken thumb that he's dealt with for a couple of months.
I think he should get some credit for that. He hasn't played particularly well with that injury, but he's been tough. He's put it all out there. I think you have to do him a favor and take that decision out of his hands — or off his thumb, as it were.
I think you go Jordan Love from here on out. Let's see what he looks like with a week of preparation. Let's see what he looks like on the script and off. Let's see what that looks like next week because the Packers, I think, have an eminently winnable game on the road against the Bears.
Uniform Review
Packers - 3.5 out of 4
The Packers’ road uniforms always look their best under the lights, and playing on natural gras, you get some nice-looking stains on there. That always looks good, and this is about as good as the Packers can look on the road.
Eagles - 3 out of 4
I don't know what's happening with me. I like the black alternates. I like the black helmet. It's almost a little bit too much of a good thing. Maybe you need to change it up a little bit with a matte black helmet, maybe some Kelly green accents on the uniform. Still, as far as alternates go, I really liked it. I think it’s better than the Eagles’ green over green alternates. The Eagles also have one of my favorite uniform features in the NFL: asymmetrical pants striping. Usually you see stripes like the Packers have: two stripes of the same color on the outside and then one on the inside. The Eagles go with just two stripes total: a green stripe and a white stripe. That’s pretty unusual.
Matchup - 2 out of 2
I thought the Pairing looked pretty good. Essentially you're looking at black and yellow and white. Not a lot to complain about.
Overall - 8.5 out of 10
Notes and Nuggets
Annoying rule bites the Packers again
The Packers were victimized again by the dumb defensive low-block penalty. It’s such an annoying rule. In this particular instance. Adrian Amos can either choose to get plastered by an offensive lineman who's coming down the field building up a head of steam, or he can just run himself out of the play entirely to avoid getting hit.
He has no recourse. He can take on the blocker high, which he's never going to win because he's giving up a hundred pounds at least, or he can go low and get a penalty. The defense should be able to counter that block. They should be able to go low and take the blocker out. It's football. Let him do that.
Hollins arrives
On the Packers' defense, one of the few bright spots was edge rusher, Justin Hollins. He’s one of the stranger stories for the Packers this year. Claimed on waivers on Wednesday, he practices with the Packers on Thursday and he gets a sack against Jalen Hurts on Sunday.
Watson’s weird consistency
Christiwan Watson has now logged four catches in a game for the third game in a row. He had four catches for 107 yards and three touchdowns agains the Cowboys. He had four catches for 48 yards and two scores against the Titans, and then four catches for 110 yards and a score against the Eagles.
Jordan Love’s historically rare night
Jordan Love’s performance was just the eighth time in Packers’ history that a player had 100 or more passing yards and a touchdown on 10 pass attempts or fewer. Bart Starr did it twice. In one game he had 201 yards, and two touchdowns on just nine attempts. Irv Comp managed to pass both of those thresholds on just seven attempts way back in 1948.
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