‘The best team didn’t win’

If you simply glanced at the statistics from Sunday’s Green Bay-Detroit game, you might have thought the Packers ran away with the win. Instead, they were trounced.

Matt LaFleur’s team out-gained Detroit by 150 yards (411 to 261), generated more first downs (20 to 17), averaged more yards per play (6.6 to 4.7), had 136 more passing yards (273 to 137), and punted just twice. Yet the game wasn’t close for nearly the entire second half.

“A lot of self-inflicted wounds, a lot of momentum-killers, a lot of drive-killers,” running back Josh Jacobs said, via the team’s official website. “That’s just on us, man. I feel like we’ve been getting away with a lot of it because we’ve been kind of masking it with the wins. But when you play a good team, all the little things catch up to you.”

The Packers committed 10 penalties for 67 yards, many stalling out promising drives. Green Bay receivers dropped five passes, per Next Gen Stats. Brandon McManus missed a field goal. Elgton Jenkins, playing center in place of the injured Josh Myers, struggled with the snaps in the rain. The defense got gashed on the ground early. And Jordan Love, playing through a groin injury, committed the cardinal sin, tossing a horrific pick-six late in the second quarter, allowing Detroit to blow the game open.

“Putting the ball in jeopardy way too many times and definitely something I have to clean up,” Love said of his play. “I’ve talked about it week after week, so something I’ve just gotta learn from these mistakes and clean it up, but definitely something that I’m gonna make a big focus on going forward, of just finding ways to take care of the ball better.”

Love has now thrown at least one INT in each of his first seven starts in 2024. LaFleur is beginning to get miffed about the questions about the QB’s turnovers.

“I understand,” LaFleur said when asked about the INTs. “It’s really annoying up here, though. Obviously, he’s fighting, he’s competing, and we know that we’ve got to take care of the football. But I don’t question anything about what he’s trying to do. We just got to do it better.”