How often do you watch a Green Bay Packers game and hope you can sit back and enjoy a good win? Probably every single time you turn the game on right? Who doesn't want to kick back, have some game day hors d'oeuvres, a few choice beverages, and enjoy a stress-free victory? The last thing we want is to be panicking over each drive thinking we absolutely need to score on offense, or we need a huge stop on defense. We want to get out to a calming three-score lead and just enjoy ourselves to the finish line. 

Well, that doesn't get to happen a lot. The Packers only holding a slim lead or perhaps being down by a score trying to get even, tends to ruin those chances of a relaxing game, and instead, we're at the edge of our seats stressing out. It's just the life of a football fan. I can probably count on only one hand, if it even takes the whole hand, how many times the Packers have consistently dominated the opposition most of the season in my lifetime. It's rare. But you like to have a few each season if you can when your team is dominating.  The Packers have had some dominating performances this season. But many of them have been fueled by first-half scoring and then kind of laying off in the second. Many felt the recent victory against Seattle was one of these. 

This past Sunday, the Packers dominated the Seahawks. It was 20-3 in the Packers' favor to start the second half. The Seahawks only kicked another field goal halfway through the third to make it 20-6 before the Packers responded with a field goal of their own to make it 23-6. With Seattle's offense unable to get anything going, it appeared the game was pretty well in hand for the Packers. But given the Packers' own inability to get much moving on offense in the second half, it had many fans still biting their nails. Perhaps it was a form of PTSD given the way Seattle's Lumen Field has been a house of horrors for the Packers for the last decade and a half. Some feared with the Packers' conservative approach and inability to put up more points, history was going to repeat itself. Seattle then scored their first touchdown in the fourth quarter with the Packers offense unable to answer and those fears ramped up further until Edgerrin Cooper intercepted a Sam Howell pass and Jordan Love hit Romeo Doubs in the endzone to essentially seal the game. 

Even though the Packers had the game well in hand for basically the entire duration, the lack of production in the second half made it hard to trust that the Seahawks didn't have a chance to come back. This is something the team needs to work on. 

Don't Let Up

After the game on Sunday night, in Matt LaFleur's post-game presser, he even admitted fault. "It was lousy play-calling by me." It seemed like instead of attacking the way they did in the first half, the Packers had gone experimental. As if they had a good lead and instead of putting foot to throat on Seattle, they were trying new things to see if they would work. Instead of the straight-forward runs we saw in the first half, it seemed as if the Packers were trying a few new wrinkles out to see if they took. Well, they did not. Even if this wasn't the case, and Seattle was just doing a much better job of flowing to the ball carrier and stopping Josh Jacobs, why didn't they take advantage of that?

As Seattle's defense began to stifle Josh Jacobs in the second half, the thought in my head surfaced, so I decided to post it on Bluesky: "Seattle is sniffing out the run much better now. Time to just catch them sniffing with the play action and put a quick throw over their heads." It would've been the perfect time for Jordan Love to run the Tom Clements-taught guitar fake and then sail a few to Tucker Kraft or Romeo Doubs up the middle of the field to take advantage of the aggressive run defense at the time. But, yet, we never got any of that. Instead, the Packers offense was just walking off the field as quickly as they were walking on. 

This falls on Matt LaFleur to not deviate from what works. If the defense can't stop something, keep at it, don't create wrinkles in it or try to get exotic, force it down their throats until they say "uncle." If they begin to stop it, then do the opposite. As I said, run play action passes over the run defense, or if they're stopping the inside run, start running tosses to the outside or screens to remove those interior run stoppers from the equation. 

Matt LaFleur can be an aggressive head coach. He knows how to expose a defense to put points on the board early, but he lacks that killer instinct to "humiliate" a team and he gets too conservative. Packer fans know all too well from past experiences what happens when you get too conservative in important games and let your opponent come back. We can't let that happen. We need all gas and no brake until the final whistle.