Matt LaFleur fell to the sword for the Packers’ Week 1 appearance, but Aaron Rodgers preached patience after the Vikings won 23-7 in Minnesota.
LaFleur gave a blunt assessment of his own performance as a play-caller in a game in which the Packers averaged 6.7 yards per pass and seemed to break away from the only productive unit – the run game – too early.
“It obviously wasn’t very good,” said LaFleur. “That starts with me. I need to have a better plan for the team and prepare the guys.”
LaFleur even threw a few tribes to their own accord when it came to the offensive distribution.
“Any time Aaron Jones comes out of an eight-touch game, that’s not good enough,” said LaFleur.
But Rodgers, visibly upset on the sidelines as the Packers stumbled offensively out of the gate, seemed to have calmed down a bit by the time the postgame rolled around.
“We had a lot of opportunities today,” said Rodgers. “Don’t take anything away from (the Vikings) defense, but we hurt ourselves many times, myself included. I had a lot of opportunities to score way more than seven (points).”
There is truth in what both men said. LaFleur has written more on-point game plans than none in his usually brilliant Packers career. But he certainly won’t prepare this call-up form.
The Packers came out passive and unwilling to test the Vikings’ secondary depth more than a few times before. Some of that can understandably be attributed to the attacking line getting pretty beat up.
But getting away from his two best playmakers in the game, Jones and A.J. Dillon, ended up backfired. They combined for 23 touches; realistically, that number should be closer to 40 than 20.
Rodgers agreed. But he also saw the bright side of what appeared to be a rather vague performance when it mattered most.
“Look, it’s hard to win in this league, and certainly hard to win if you get in the way too often,” he said. “I feel like we’ve done some good things. Maybe we need to pay a little more attention to Jonesy and Dillon.”
Rodgers did point out that it was far from ideal.
“(We) made a lot of mistakes in the perimeter, missed a few pitches, so there’s a lot to clean up completely,” he said.
But he may be on to something in one respect: The Packers struggling in Week 1 isn’t new. They were terrible in that bizarre season opener a year ago against the Saints, losing 38-3 and only 229 yards and 14 first downs — much worse than today.
As a refresher, the Packers would win their next seven games, finishing the season 13-4, and Rodgers would win AP NFL Most Valuable Player for the second consecutive season. Sometimes bad things happen in week 1 that can be quickly washed away.
But that squad had Davante Adams, something this club doesn’t have. While Adams was busy catching 10 passes for 141 yards and a score in his Raiders debut, the Packers’ wide receivers combined for 12 catches for 120 yards, the vast majority of which came from a 17-point deficit.
An early drop by rookie Christian Watson on a pass that should have been a 75-yard touchdown set the tone for the day.
“Drops are going to happen, it’s part of the game,” said Rodgers. “It’s the mental stuff that we just can’t have because we’re hurting ourselves.”
Perhaps LaFleur will reconsider his decision not to play his starters in the preseason, something he has now done for two years in a row. Doing it last year was one thing; taking that approach with a unit whose composition has changed significantly is quite another.
“This is two years in a row that we’ve come out looking unprepared,” said LaFleur. “Of course we will all look inward and make the necessary corrections.”
Those corrections could come as early as September 18, when the Packers receive the 1-0 Chicago Bears. Even after Chicago’s fine defensive performance in Week 1, it’s worth recalling that Rodgers has owned the Bears in recent matchups.
If that trend continues, like Green Bay’s slow start a year ago, the Packers should be fine, even as ugly as Sunday’s result was.