Love out, Willis in as Packers pull out another win on a last-play field goal against Jaguars

 

The Packers beat a Jaguars team they clearly outmatched on paper, but it was an “exciting” game for all the wrong reasons. Jordan Love threw an early interception in the red zone that could only be described as a poor decision with the defender easily stepping in front of Romeo Dobbs and took points off the board—just the kind of play that the pregame talk was hoping to avoid. With the Packers leading a “surprisingly” close game by 3 early in the second half, Love went down with an apparent groin injury, and the Jaguars marched 93 yards to take a 17-13 lead.

So in came Malik Willis in the game against a team that lost 5 of its first 6 games, and it was time for the “big play” or two in between the prayers, which is what we expect from the Packers with Willis at quarterback, when fortunately they were not playing the top tier teams in the league. Maybe opposing defenses see the Packers a step down with Love out of the line-up, but with Willis, he just needs to shake the rust off and the Packers ground game keeping the pace, allowing the odd big pass play to eventually turn the tide when needed at a desperate time. The Packers answered the Jaguars with an 80-yard drive in which only one short pass was attempted, but with Willis gaining 20 yards on a scramble, and Josh Jacobs waking up with a 38-yard run into the end zone and a 20-17 lead.

While Trevor Lawrence had what is for him a “good” game, throwing for 308 yards and two TDs, his sack/fumble at his own 5-yard-line led to short TD pass from Willis to Kraft and just like that the Packers were up by 10. Unfortunately, the offense went perhaps predictably stagnant, and after a field goal made it a 7-point game, Lawrence sliced up the Packer secondary with 87 yards on 9 straight throws, ending in a game-tying TD with less than 2 minutes to play.

Earlier in the game the Packers wasted a 67-yard pass play to Tucker Kraft in a drive that ended in a short field goal, but with 1:13 left in the game, Willis, whose three prior completions netted only 5 total yards, managed to make the one big play he needed through the air, a 51-yard pass to Jayden Reed that put the Packers in position for a few wasted plays and Brandon McManus connecting on his second-straight game-ending field goal and a 30-27 win. Through two games, McManus is 6 for 6 on XPs and 4 for 4 on field goals, and you can’t ask for anything better than that.

The initial reports are that Love’s injury are concerning enough at least to Matt LaFleur. If he misses the next game, that means that Willis will start at home against the one-loss Lions team for the division lead, or at least put the Packers ahead of the Lions, if not the Vikings, who they lost to earlier in the season. One will have to hope that Packers control the game on the ground as they did in Willis’ previous two starts to keep the Lions’ defense guessing when he is going to throw the ball—the fake handoff was just enough to allow Reed to get wide open at the end of this game. At any rate, the uncertainty of who will play is giving the Lions a slight edge on the betting line.