Well, that was embarrassing.
After blowing a two-score lead in Week 1 and eventually losing by 17 to the Minnesota Vikings in their regular-season opener, the Green Bay Packers needed a comeback of their own and overtime to beat the New York Jets in Week 2.
Thursday night’s home matchup against the Atlanta Falcons was expected to be a get-right game against a team that had been outscored 54-16 over the first two weeks of the regular season.
Instead, things went from bad to worse for the Pack in a 35-14 blowout loss in front of a national audience.
This game was lost in the trenches for the Packers, who ran the ball about as poorly as they stopped the Falcons from doing it. Green Bay managed just 17 rushing yards on nine carries, averaging just 1.9 yards per attempt, while the Falcons ran the ball 41 times for 242 yards (5.9 yards per carry) and three scores.
Green Bay couldn’t contain the Falcons’ top offensive playmakers, giving up more than 200 total yards to Bijan Robinson, while Drake London enjoyed a breakout game with nine receptions for 194 yards. Big plays came early and often for the Dirty Birds through the air and on the ground, and in his first game back from last year’s season-ending injury, Michael Penix Jr. looked comfortable and efficient (18-for-25, 256 yards).
In case you forgot, this is a Packers team that traded multiple first-round picks last year for Micah Parsons, in hopes that one of the league’s most dynamic playmakers would be the last piece of a championship roster. Instead, Parsons suffered a season-ending injury that’s still keeping him out of the lineup, and Green Bay has followed up their first-round exit from the postseason last year with a 1-2 start that hasn’t shown any sign of being Super Bowl contenders.
Yes, the Packers were missing some key starters Thursday night. With a fully healthy roster, it’s entirely possible we’re talking about a different result and a more positive outlook heading into the coming weeks. But no NFL team is truly fully healthy at any point in the regular season, and if they want to go deep into the playoffs this time around, the Packers are going to need to learn how to win games like this without an injury-free two-deep.
Matt LaFleur has been one of the most successful regular-season head coaches in the league over his tenure in Green Bay, but he’s gone 1-4 in the postseason since losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC title game to end the Packers’ 2020 season. Only two quarterbacks in the NFL (Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott) are making more per year than Jordan Love right now, but even when he’s been fully healthy, the first-round pick who was supposed to be the next chapter in Green Bay’s succession plan at quarterback is still chasing consistency that stabilizes the offense and the entire team over an entire season and deep into the playoffs.
As close as this team may have felt to contending for another Lombardi Trophy when they made that trade for Parsons last year, right now, they’re on track to hand a top-10 pick in the 2027 NFL Draft to the New York Jets (who acquired their selection from Dallas in the Quinnen Williams trade) with nothing to show for what is shaping up to be a catastrophically disappointing 2026 campaign.
LaFleur’s lack of postseason success has been outweighed by his ability to keep the Packers contending every year with plenty of regular-season wins, but it looks like the franchise might not even be able to count on that anymore. They paid Love the big bucks in hopes that he would develop into one of the league’s best passers, but that simply hasn’t materialized beyond a few flashes of brilliance here and there.
The vibes are bad in the Frozen Tundra right now, and if they don’t find some answers fast, they could get even worse in the coming months ahead of some drastic offseason changes.
