In a game in 1996, the Jacksonville
Jaguars outgained the St. Louis Rams 538 to 204, and somehow lost 17-14 thanks
to Mark Brunell throwing five red zone interceptions, one of them returned for
a touchdown. Thus despite the fact that the Packers were out-gained a
mind-numbing 250 to 50 at halftime against the Chargers—yet still held them to
three field goals and just a 9-0 deficit—you thought, OK, all the Packers have
to do is come out in the second half and play their game and this nonsense will
be put to rest. Instead, the nonsense
continued, and the Chargers didn’t try to find a way to lose like they had been
doing this season, and Aaron Rodgers never looked comfortable. Not that we
haven’t seen this before earlier in the season, but at least he played just
well enough to make certain the Packers scored more points than the other team.
This time, what was on paper didn’t lie: the Packers were outgained 442 to 184
and it looked that bad.
By the time the Chargers took a
26-3 lead early in the fourth quarter, Rodgers had still only thrown for just 61
yards. He managed to throw another 100 yards and a touchdown in what was
essentially junk time, but there was no doubt that this was one of his
worst performances ever, with a net of 139 yards passing on 35 attempts. I don't think Brett Hundley even had a game this bad. Davante
Adams was back in the line-up, but he gained just 41 yards on 11 targets. It
seemed that Rodgers was just trying to force the ball to him, to get him back
in the “game.” Was it possible that in doing so the Packers were getting out of
what had been working for them in the last four weeks? The Packers seemingly
were hitting on most cylinders when Adams was not in the line-up. How to
explain this? I know that there are those who are blaming penalties and coverage, but that does not "explain" the fact the Packers are now 3-2 in games with Adams and the offense did not look good in any of them, and were 4-0 without him with the offense finally seeming to jell. You can't just ignore that.
Perhaps one can look at this as a
game against a team that had been underperforming and was due for a big game. Philip
Rivers is no slouch; for his career to date he has thrown for 57,000 yards, 386 TDs and with a 95 quarterback
rating, and the Chargers were coming off a 12-win season. Yet Packer fans
should have expected better. Did the team decide to take the weekend off, enjoy
the sun before heading back to the frozen tundra of Green Bay? Or do they need
to rethink how Adams is going to be re-integrated into the offense?
No comments:
Post a Comment