The Packers’ London debut began with Aaron Rodgers moaning about his desire to strut his stuff in front of the Euro market. Coach Matt LaFleur wanted to keep things on the ground as per his offensive philosophy, but it appeared that he capitulated to Rodgers' desire to air it out, and at least for the first half it seemed the switch in plans wasn’t harming the offense as the Packers put up 20 points as the defense—save for a 40-yard run by Saquon Barkley—kept the Giants’ top-rated running attack largely grounded in mustering a 20-10 halftime lead. Rodgers kept it "safe" with a short game, completing 18 of 24 passes for 147 yards and two touchdowns.
But then everything fell apart in the second half. The Packers were still able to run the ball on the Giants defense when given the opportunity, averaging 4.7 yards per rush, but they only ran the ball 20 times the entire game, and didn’t do it when they should have. While the Giants scored 17 points on their first three possessions of the second half, we saw something that we didn’t expect to see anymore with the departure of Davante Adams: Rodgers suffering from “tunnel-vision.” Including an 0 for 3 and a three-and-out, he completed just 2 of his last eight passes, and 11 of 21 in total, to his most "trusted" receivers, Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard; outside of those two, Rodgers completed 14 of 18 passes.
To be fair, Rodgers is still not connecting with Romeo Doubs on long passes, and Cobb had his most productive game in a long time; but again as last week against the Patriots, the Packers made odd play selections on short-yardage situations. With over a minute to play in an effort to score a tying touchdown, Rodgers misfired to Cobb on third-and-two instead of running the ball, and then here we see Rodgers trying to lob a pass to Lazard who was completely covered in what appeared to be a replay of last week’s interception, but this time we see two Giant’s safeties, Julian Love and Xavier McKinney, who instead of going back into coverage, gambled big and won big as they came in completely unblocked to bat the ball away:
We also observe that AJ Dillon appeared to have a path to the end zone if he had been given the ball. Previously on the Packers first second half possession, a sack put the Packers out of Mason Crosby's diminishing range, and then they blew a fourth quarter opportunity to stem the tide after the Giants—behind seven straight completed passes and several scrambles by Daniel Jones on a 91-yard march for the tying touchdown--muffed a Packer punt as the football bounced in the wrong direction. The Packers' Keisean Nixon was right there to make the recovery but the ball bounced off of him out-of-bounds…
…to give the Giants great field position to take the lead, which they would do on Barkley’s TD run with six minutes to play. After the Packers lost the ball on downs on the batted pass, the Giants just ran down the clock, and the punter took a safety to get in better position. After another penalty on David Bakhtiari (who seems to be showing quite a bit of rust from not playing for so long), Rodgers bid for a miracle “Hail Mary” ala the 65-yarder against the Lions fell considerably short, as his would-be heave was short-circuited by a Giant defender’s arm as it appeared quite a few Packer linemen seemed to be confuse about who they were supposed to block.
As I noted last week, this was no “gimme” game for the Packers, since they were facing the best running attack in the NFL and the Packers run defense hadn’t yet demonstrated it could contain top-rated playmakers like Barkley, who if he didn’t put up big numbers on the ground, he did contribute a 41-yard catch-and-run that put the Giants in the red zone two plays after the missed fumble recovery.
Next week the
Packers play a real home game against the Jets, who put up 40 points on a
Dolphins team hurting without Tua, but had a chance to take a 20-19 lead early
in the fourth quarter before falling completely apart. We would think
that the Packers are better than that, but this game didn’t demonstrate that,
and we are hearing that Rodgers expressed some discontent in the locker room after
the game from players worried about facing the Jets.
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