Raiders won the second quarter, driving 62 yards on 14 plays, the last a four yard run for a touchdown by Josh Jacobs. Jacobs led the league last year in rushing. The Packers defense held him to 69 yards on twenty carries.
Objectively, it was still Jacob’s best performance of the season. After the Raider touchdown, Jordan Love threw a truly ugly interception that gave the Raiders the ball back in the red zone. The Packer defense held firm, but an easy field goal put the Green and Gold down 10 at halftime.
The Packer defense held the entire Raider team under 100 yards rushing, a first for this 2023 Packer club. This occurred even though the Packers were without inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell for the whole game and Quay Walker for half the game with injuries.
Another injured player that left was Darnell Savage who succumbed to an injured calf. The Packers played Jonathon Owens, Rudy Ford, Keisean Nixon, Isaiah McDuffie and Eric Wilson up the middle. Ford had an interception that set up the Packers touchdown and the top tacklers were McDuffie, (10), Ford (9), Wilson (8), and Nixon (6). Instead of the potential blowout you might expect, the Packers battled on defense, forcing 4 punts, an interception, a blocked field goal and a missed 52-yard field goal by the brother of Packers kicker Anders Carlson, Raider kicker Daniel Carlson.
The blocked kick was possibly the best play Yosh Nijman has made all year. The 6’7” lineman stretched his arm as far as possible, just deflecting the ball with a finger.
The Packer offense scored 13 points, even though they were helped by a defensive interception that gave them good field position on their lone touchdown drive.
Except for one long pass on a roll out by Love where he found Christian Watson wide open on a deep crosser, the offense looked anemic. After the 77-yard catch and run by Watson, the packers had first and goal at the 3. Then second and goal at the 5.
Then third and goal at the 4. Then they kicked a field goal. While up 13-10, you could feel the momentum shift as the Raiders took the ball 75 yards in 10 plays for the go-ahead touchdown. The Packer offense responded with an interception, a 3 and out punt, and the final Love interception in the end zone on their final three drives of the game.
The Packers first drive started with three straight A.J. Dillon runs for a first down. The Packers relied on Dillon and short passes by Love but after 23 yards gained, Love went deep on third and three trying to hit a well-covered Jayden Reed.
Love played his worst game as a pro statistically, but he was not helped by his receivers. In the final drive, Doubs and Musgrave both dropped easy, uncontested catches.
On the final play and on Love’s second interception, Christian Watson was pushed around by a smaller defender making no play on either ball. He sat in the end zone looking for a referee flag that was not coming. He showed in those two plays how far he has to go before he is a complete NFL receiver.
The offense had no answer to stop Raiders’ defensive end Max Crosby. Multiple times tight ends and lineman failed in their assignment to slow him down. Rasheed Walker had his struggles, but overall, Love was only sacked twice for seven lost yards.
The offense, under Love, just can’t consistently drive the field. He has now gone from no interceptions in his first start, to one interception in his third, to now three interceptions in his fifth game.
Not all the faults of the offense should be placed on Love’s shoulders. A mediocre offensive line, tight ends that are young and still learning to block, a set of wide receivers that are too young to know what they don’t know, and a missing All-Pro running back all contribute to the inconsistencies.
But a number of passes by Love were to receivers that did not appear open or were under-thrown. The play calling by LaFleur seems conservative to a point that you wonder if he does not fully trust the offense, be that the offensive line, the receivers, or Love.
The Packers now have a bye week that is coming at a good time for a team wracked by injuries. There will be lots of time to review game tape. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
When the short rest is over, there is a Bronco team waiting in Denver. For the Packers, this was a must win. If only to keep the naysaying pundits at bay. But it will take more than words and desire. It will take execution on a professional, NFL, level. Young players often learn the best when they make critical errors. Hard lessons learned the hard way. Hopefully, on October 22nd the lessons learned will be demonstrated on the field.
So now what?….Packer Nation, and the Packers themselves, have to bathe in this fiasco for awhile citing the bye week.
But all is not lost…..
Maybe when ‘someone’ is done pouting (take your time), he can entertain and educate us Ladies about how successful Gute and MLF are post Aaron Rodgers.
I’m ready, i have pen and notebook in hand.
I didn’t make excuses for Jordan Love when he was sacked 5 times by Detroit. And I’m not making excuses because of some dropped balls last night. He better do some soul searching and figure this out during the bye or he’s one and done as QB for the Packers.
I expect to see mistakes. I expect to see drop balls and missed assignments from a young team. But I also expect to see progress and I’m not seeing it. Many more games like last night and it’ll time to scout this year’s college QB draft class.
Face it, this team is down the drain. I’m not sure they can even beat Denver & if they lose that one? what else needs to be said? Its a horribly put together team, years of horrible drafts from TT & Gutty. Who can ever forget Justin Harrell, passing on TJ Watt, Passing on Dalvin Cook for Kevin King. Not trading 3rd rd pick for Beast mode in his prime The organization likes to be young & CHEAP! WORST run franchise in all of Sports. Might need wake up the 4 cadavers on Board, get their input LMAO!
Enjoy Lambeau littered with Filthy visiting Fans, Nov-Dec.
This! ^^^^
The problem with this defense is they can’t make a stop when they need to. Just stop an awful Raiders offense on thiei TD winning drive and you win the game. The only reason the defense looked ok is because of how bad the Raiders offense really is. I guess if you want you can make excuses for the offense because they are young, inexperienced in game QB, and so on and so on. But there are no excuses for this defense. You have eight first round draft picks with many years of experience at most positions. As you have frequently said PF4L, BROKEN.
This team IS exactly what I thought it would be . . . A bottom feeder. Thanks Gutekunst, Murphy, MLF, and Barry! Nice work at deconstructing something promising.
*
Please! Someone tell me why Barry is still a coach for the Packers!
Sorry, my sarcasm was not fully developed; my intention was to make fun of the Packer brain trust for the over the top moves and their over-reaches in the last few drafts that did nothing but harm the team rather than help it. Starting with drafting Love, which was because they had deconstructed the “root cause(s)” of the problem(s) lol! While in all actuality, creating more problems, all while still leaving the glaring problems intact . . .
Did you girls not listen to what your hero said on his PR firm, the Pat McAfee podcast? Rodgers said to Packer fans, “calm down.” He likewise started 2-3 and had a three INT game against the Bucs. It might be best to take a more prudent approach and let this play out before you all go off half cocked. This season was always about finding out what we have at QB. This won’t take years and years. Kevin isn’t doing the evaluation here. Jordan Love has 12 games to convince the organization he’s the answer. If not, we go another direction. The stakes are high for everyone.
Because the truth hurts them . . .