The Green Bay Packers may have lost the worst game of the Matt LaFleur era. At least, it felt like that.
Fresh off a 16-13 loss to the Carolina Panthers, the Packers managed just 261 yards of offense against the defending Super Bowl champions.
Despite their offensive shortcomings, they still had a shot to tie the game down the stretch, but LaFleur’s play-calling held them back again.
Facing 4th-and-1, the Packers ran an inside zone play that the Philadelphia Eagles saw coming from miles away. They stuffed Josh Jacobs for a four-yard loss, and the Eagles secured a 10-7 win.
Josh Jacobs calls out Matt LaFleur
The game was an ugly display of sloppy football, up to the point where Jacobs even threw his head coach under the bus for his predictable play-calling.
“Fourth-and-1, they called out our play,” Jacobs said, via Kevin Patra of the NFL’s website. “We ran it like four times, and they called it out.”
The former Las Vegas Raiders star admitted that he didn’t think the play would work, as he could tell the Eagles had figured them out.
“As a runner, it don’t ever feel good,” he continued. “Never, I mean never when they know what we’re doing, it don’t feel good because it changes my mind on how I’m going to run the ball. If we’re just being honest, it makes me kind of guess what I’m going to do. Obviously, people are smart, if we got code words or whatever, if you hear it a few times, like you’re going to eventually react to it. You know, that’s football, but it’s never a good feeling.”
LaFleur tried to establish the run despite losing starting center Elgton Jenkins, and relied on perhaps a too familiar play in a crucial situation.
The Packers are now 5-3-1 for the season, and their once-explosive offense has totaled 20 points in the past two games. They have fallen below both the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears in the NFC North standings as a result, and will need to figure out the offensive issues before it’s too late.
