Pete Dougherty: Matt LaFleur, Jordan Love flop in Packers slow-start loss to Vikings
MINNEAPOLIS − Matt LaFleur and Jordan Love got it handed to them Sunday afternoon.
In simplest terms, Kevin O’Connell outcoached LaFleur, and Sam Darnold outplayed Love, and the Minnesota Vikings led nearly wire-to-wire in beating the Green Bay Packers 27-25 at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Sure, the Packers gave themselves a shot at the miracle comeback by putting up 11 points in the last 6½ minutes and, if they could have gotten a stop in the final 2 minutes, would have had the ball with a chance to win the game.
But that shouldn’t deceive anybody into thinking the game was that close. This one was lost by LaFleur’s and Love’s painfully slow starts on offense, which left the Packers down 20-3 early in the third quarter. That Love had only 45 yards passing and a 66.3 passer rating at halftime, to Darnold’s 184 and 116.5 tells you everything you need to know about the quarterbacks’ play, and the head coaches’ game-planning and on-the-fly adjustments Sunday.
“That’s me as much as anybody,” LaFleur said after the game of the Packers’ slow start. “So I’ve got to be better, and we’ve got to get better.”
The loss means the Packers can’t finish with the No 5 seeding in the playoffs and leaves them fighting for their lives to finish with the No. 6 seed rather than No. 7. That could be an important difference, because the No. 7 will have to play at 13-3 Philadelphia in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
That’s no small thing for these Packers, because they are oh-fer against the three teams ahead of them in the NFC. With two losses each to Detroit and Minnesota, and one against Philadelphia, the Packers are 0-5. More troubling is how poorly they’ve played early in their four defeats to the Vikings and Lions, essentially losing those games in the first half with slow starts they couldn’t overcome.
The combined deficits they’ve faced against those teams is 89-20. That the Packers margin of defeat in three of those games was a field goal or less counts for nothing. Putting up respectable numbers (Love’s passer rating was 91.7 on Sunday) is worthless when it comes against defenses playing the clock rather than the opponent and willing to give up yards just to keep the time running and avoid allowing a big-play score.
Going winless against the teams ahead of them in the NFC doesn’t mean the Packers couldn’t pull off the upset in a playoff game. But it clearly would be a big upset. With only a week left in the regular season, the Packers are looking like the kings of the NFC also-rans in 2024.
“It obviously bothers me,” LaFleur said of the 0-5 record against the Vikings, Lions and Eagles. “I just think you can’t get down against good football teams. If there’s a lesson that – that is the lesson, because it’s tough to come back. Our guys continued to fight and battle and scratch and claw, but ultimately we just can’t put ourselves in a hole like that. It certainly took us way too long to get going offensively. If that happens, this is the result.”
Said Love: “Belief is there. Wasn’t good enough in a lot of areas tonight. Off to a very slow start. Obviously not putting up any points early on didn’t help us. Obviously we know what type of team we are, and there’s just a lot of stuff to clean up.”
So why did the Packers fall in such a big hole Sunday? Well, it didn’t help that their best player on offense, Josh Jacobs, lost a fumble on a promising game-opening possession. But LaFleur and Love followed that up with next-to-nothing for the rest of the half.
Love simply wasn’t sharp (7-for-12 passing in the first half, 19-for-30 in the game) and didn’t make any plays until the game was out of hand. Among his big misses was over-leading Jayden Reed, and then Reed dropping the extended catch attempt, on a fourth-and-2 halfway through the second quarter with the Packers nearing the red zone and down only 7-3.
But along with a couple of inaccurate Love throws, LaFleur also didn’t adjust to Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ man-coverage-heavy game plan.
“Played a little more man than we were anticipating,” LaFleur said. “They had shown that in a couple games but didn’t think we’d get it. That’s part to our slow start, we’ve got to be able to adjust quicker and have some plays in there that can attack that coverage, and that falls squarely on my shoulders.”
Darnold, on the other hand, escaped trouble a number of times and made several good bail-out throws on the move. He looked more poised and confident in the pocket than Love, and his 377 yards passing were a career high.
Of course, Darnold also had the advantage of the game’s best receiver, Justin Jefferson (8 catches for 92 yards), to occupy the Packers secondary, as well as one of the best No. 2s in the league, Jordan Addison (6 for 69). Addison would probably be the No. 1 if he were on the Packers.
With those players on the field, and O’Connell dialing up plays, was it really any surprise the Vikings cranked out the two first downs they needed to seal the game in the final 2 minutes?
“They’ve got two legitimate No. 1 receivers and then you got (Jalen) Nailor out there making play after play,” LaFleur said. “They’ve got a lot of weapons.”
The question now is whether the 2024 Packers are good enough to make a deep playoff run. They’ll have to do it all on the road, and it’s not like it’s October or early November, with plenty of time for young players to improve.
Of course, there’s reason to think the Packers could beat, say, the Rams in the wild-card round. But after that?
“It’s only going to get tougher for us, we know that,” Love said.