Evan Siegle/Green Bay Packers
Aaron: Learning how to win again?
At the midway point of this increasingly frustrating season for the 3-4-1 Green Bay Packers, three key takeaways have emerged — none of them particularly promising:
1. The Packers can compete with some of the best teams in the National Football League, but they can’t beat them.
In two consecutive games, first against the then-unbeaten Los Angeles Rams on Oct. 28 and then against the New England Patriots on Nov. 4, Green Bay figured out to how lose games in which they put themselves in a prime position to win. In L.A., backup running back Ty Montgomery fumbled a kickoff return after the Rams took a 29-27 lead with two minutes and five seconds left in the game. (Montgomery was supposed to take a knee after catching the ball in the end zone; Green Bay traded him to the Baltimore Ravens two days later.) In New England, with the score tied at 17 heading into the fourth quarter, Packers running back Aaron Jones coughed up another crucial fumble inside the Patriots’ 30-yard line. New England converted that into a touchdown and then scored another one on its next possession, running away with a 31-17 victory. “Yes, it’s frustrating,” Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers told reporters after the loss to the Patriots. “I say it all the time, every year you have to learn how to win again, and we have to learn how to win on the road. We’ve lost four road games.”
2. Green Bay’s defense likely will remain porous.
Despite stopping a 4th-and-1 goal-line stand by New England in the third quarter to keep the score at 17-all, the Packers gave up 433 yards to the Patriots and 416 yards to the Rams. Cornerback Kevin King, safety Kentrell Brice and linebacker Blake Martinez all suffered injuries in New England. And the prior week’s trade of safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix — a former first-round draft pick and Pro Bowler — to the Washington Redskins for a fourth-round pick in the 2019 draft depletes an already weak secondary.
3. Realistically, forget about the playoffs.
This team needs to play every possession of every remaining game as if it won’t have another chance to score — because, as recent games prove, it might not. If the Packers somehow work their way into the playoff picture to battle the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears for NFC North supremacy, that unlikely 29-29 tie with the Vikings at Lambeau Field in Week 2 could come back to haunt them.
