Packers lose to the Bears, and will play the Eagles next week--the only non-division team they lost to this year

 

If Jordan Love hadn’t exited the game early in the second quarter, down at home against the lowly Bears 14-3, with what he called a sore hand, I would have wondered what was Matt LaFleur’s “objective” in this game—that is to win it or not. With the Commanders beating the Cowboys on a last gasp TD pass, the Packers fell to the seventh seed in the playoffs with its eventual loss to the Bears. What to make of the Packers season? Sure they won 2 more games than last season, but do you feel anymore “confident” about their chances in the playoffs?

The Packers are a different team on offense than they were last year, focusing more on the running game, which we assume is what LaFleur always wanted to do anyways. Last year they had 581 pass attempts, this year 479. Last year they ran the ball 441 times, this year 526. Frankly, I’m not sure if the Packer played better with Love than Willis at quarterback, since Willis this season, mostly in 4 games, completed 40 of 54 passes for 550 yards, 3 TDs and no interceptions, and did as he was told to do to make the Packers running game effective while throwing the ball only as needed, and generally surprisingly well. However, Willis entered the game with a QBR of 88.5, but was only 34.2 in this game, so his general effectiveness in leading the offense was not as efficient as previously.

The 24-22 loss to the Bears was unfortunate. After Willis came in relief, the team actually out-scored the Bears 19-10 with him as quarterback. With under 2 minutes to play, the Packers forced a fumble and Brandon McManus hit a 55-yard field goal for the apparent winning points with under a minute to play. I mean this is the Bears we are talking about. But on third-and-11, with 15 seconds to play, Caleb Williams completed a pass for 18 yards to the Packer 33, and Cairo Santos hit from 51-yards away on the last play. This is the same Santos who had the game-winning kick blocked in an earlier loss to the Packers, 20-19. Why is that an “interesting” stat? Because if Santos had made that kick, the Packers would be nothing-and-six against their division opponents.

That’s right, the 11-6 Packers are just 1-5 against their division rivals this year. Maybe that doesn’t concern LaFleur at the moment; since the Week One loss to the Eagles, the Packers have won 10 straight games against non-division opponents, including 4-0 against the NFC West and 4-0 against the AFC South. During that time only two of those 10 teams had winning records at the time the Packers played them. And of course the Packers will play the one non-division team they lost to, the Eagles, next week. They will need Doubs and Watson off the injured list by then.