GREEN BAY, Wis. — There are times when Matt LaFleur looks like one of the best head coaches in the NFL.
And then there are times like Sunday against the Carolina Panthers, with 11 minutes remaining in the game, the Green Bay Packers facing a fourth-and-8 from Carolina’s 13-yard line and trailing by seven.
For whatever reason, LaFleur went for it instead of cutting the Panthers’ lead to four with a 31-yard field goal and plenty of time left on the clock. The play stood no chance in a game the Packers (5-2-1) eventually lost by, you guessed it, three points, 16-13.
It’s almost as if LaFleur panicked in the moment. He’s a seventh-year head coach of one of the NFL’s most successful teams since he took the helm in Green Bay, but he hardly looked like it during this particular sequence.
“Hindsight’s 20/20. I wish we would’ve taken the points. Didn’t do that there,” he said. “Bad decision.”
The fourth-down play broke down from the start when defensive end Derrick Brown split center Elgton Jenkins and right guard Jordan Morgan to flush quarterback Jordan Love out of the pocket to his right. Love then ran around like a chicken with its head cut off to avoid multiple defenders before hoisting a prayer across the field directly to cornerback Mike Jackson in the end zone. Jackson dropped an easy interception, which spared the Packers what might’ve been a pick-six.
The play itself unfolded terribly, but the decision to go for it might’ve been even worse.
“Matt made a decision on that one,” Love said. “He wanted to try and put up a touchdown, and obviously it didn’t work out.
“They were playing their soft defense and were able to be underneath it. Started scrambling around and, at that point, you’re trying to find a way to make a play and you’re going to take a shot, throw it to the end zone and hope that somebody come up and make a play. Me and (Romeo Doubs), right there, weren’t on the same page. I don’t know if he was pushed out of bounds, too, or not, but just weren’t on the same page. Just got to find a way to try and put one in the end zone or past the sticks and make a play on that.”
Before the fourth-down play unraveled, Love burned a timeout since the receivers weren’t aligned correctly. Doubs waved his arms in the air and Love clapped twice to seemingly get wideout Malik Heath’s attention to move across the formation. Rookie receiver Savion Williams began following Heath before staying on the left side, as Love pointed for him to stay put. By the time Heath was set, six seconds were remaining on the play clock. And by the time Love motioned for Doubs to line up outside running back Emanuel Wilson instead of inside him on the right side of the formation, there were two seconds left.
“And now, Green Bay, on a critical fourth down, can’t get lined up,” FOX color commentator Greg Olsen said.
Love popped a timeout as Doubs clapped in frustration, and boos rained down from the home crowd. That’s not the first time Packers pass catchers struggled to align correctly pre-snap in a critical situation. It also happened on the final play of the tie against the Cowboys.
“We were messed up on who was where and the formation and everything, so it was a lot of chaos, I think, pre-snap,” Love said. “The clock was getting low, and I didn’t like where we were at, so (we) used a timeout right there.”
The jeers continued after the play itself failed miserably.
And as if the initial alignment, post-snap execution and decision to go for it weren’t bad enough, there was the play before it, too.
On third-and-3 from the Panthers’ 8-yard line, LaFleur called a screen to the left for backup running back Emanuel Wilson with Josh Jacobs on the sideline. The Packers lined up with trips to the left, and Wilson motioned that way. Love hit Wilson about 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage, and safety Tre’von Moehrig beat Heath’s block attempt to pile drive Wilson into the ground for a loss of 5 yards.
“It was a bad play call,” LaFleur said. “Ultimately, we ran the same play the play before. (Love) went to Rome on the back side. I saw one guy out there, and give credit to — I think it was Moehrig out there — give credit to him. He blew up the play.”
Ironically, it was also in that Cowboys game when Doubs failed to block cornerback Trevon Diggs on a screen to receiver Matthew Golden, which lost 3 yards late in overtime, two plays before the frantic alignment. Not that there’s a direct cause and effect between botched screens and not knowing where you’re supposed to line up shortly after them, but the point is that far too often this season, the Packers have looked disheveled or inept on offense, given their talent on that side of the ball. Yes, they’ve dealt with injuries to key pass-catchers and lost tight end Tucker Kraft early in the third quarter Sunday to what looks like a torn ACL, but nothing excuses averaging only 7.5 points per first half over their last six games. Those stretches have been countered with offensive brilliance, which is why the Packers entered Week 9 fifth in the NFL in points per game with 27.6.
The Packers are leaving plenty of meat on the bone despite that gaudy scoring number, however, and that’s a fault of the head coach and the players. No sequence served as a better microcosm of that than the several plays that might’ve cost them the game early in the fourth quarter Sunday, when both LaFleur and multiple guys on the field left plenty to be desired. Now they must solve those offensive dry spells, a task made significantly harder by the likely loss of Kraft for the season.
“I think it’s inconsistent,” Love said of his big-picture offensive assessment. “I think we’ve had games where we’ve played very well, put up a lot of points, and we’ve had games where we have not put up enough points. Those are the games that you lose. It’s just inconsistent. We’ve got to find ways to keep just building on it, keep growing on the things we’re doing well and clean up a lot of the mistakes, but turnovers, penalties, all those things that are just negative are what’s hurting us in some of these games where we’re not playing at the level we’ve played at in other games.”
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