Packers do just enough to beat a Washington team intent on beating itself

 

As I predicted last week, the Packers should not have had much trouble beating the Washington Football Team, because it was playing with a backup quarterback who was a “backup” for a reason, and eventually did so by a score of 24-10. It wasn’t a particularly impressive win, given that Washington let many, many opportunities to win this game slip away. Going into the contest, Washington’s offense was in the bottom half of the league, averaging 336 YPG;  against the Packers, they piled-up 430 yards of offense, with Taylor Heinicke adding 95 yards rushing to his 268 passing yards. But Heinicke was mostly just awful when it counted; on five consecutive drives, Washington—including on three possessions in the red zone—lost the ball on a fumble, an interception, and three turnovers on downs.  The Packers were missing some key players on defense, like Preston Smith and Kevin King, but the defense was repeatedly bailed out by poor play at inopportune times by Heinicke.

Meanwhile, the Packers had a humdrum day on offense, gaining just 304 yards against a defense that was only above the Seahawks as the worst in the league in YPG, and the worst in points allowed, 31 per game. Again, the offensive line will be suspect; the Packers only ran the ball 15 times for 57 yards, and the running backs combined had only had 27 yards on 12 carries. Rodgers was sacked three times, for a total of 16 in seven games. It should be noted that this year is only “unusual” in that Rodgers was sacked only 20 times all of last year; in 2009 and 2012 he was sacked league highs 50 and 51 times, and at 2.4 sacks per game in his career this season shouldn’t be considered unusually “bad,” at least from the quarterback perspective. We are told that David Bakhtiari is practicing with the team now, so we will see just how much improvement there is line play when he returns to the field.

Next week will be a tough road game against the Cardinals, in which ESPN’s match-up predictor favors the unbeaten Cardinals to win, with Kyler Murray looking like a quarterback who should be getting more attention than he is. After a dominating win against the hapless Texans, this could be another Saints-like game if the Packers are not more prepared to play than they were against a not good Washington team. If nothing else, we will certainly find out what kind of team the Packers really have this year.