After a third straight loss in Washington, it’s time to ask the question: Do the Packers stink?

If I had ANY idea how to edit the Packer logo on Elaine’s head I would have done it. Sadly, my editing skills both begin and end with Microsoft Paint and some HyperStudio circa 1997 (shout out Mr. Worm, computer teacher at Holy Name).

Anyway, that’s the question: Do the 2022 Packers stink? And after a third straight loss on Sunday to a team they were favored to beat*, the answer at the moment is: Yes.

The 2nd half defense stinks, special teams stink (again), Aaron Rodgers stinks and is hurt, the wide receivers stink, the playcalling stinks, it all stinks. Stink, stank, stunk.

Now if you want to write the team off after yesterday and say the 2022 season is over? By all means, go ahead. It’s hard to argue with you given the sample size we’ve seen. My personal feeling is that it’s still too early to say they’re completely done, especially in the NFC which is a dumpster fire outside of Eagles (and maybe the Giants?), but yeah, it’s not looking pretty. And with a road game this coming Sunday against a Super Bowl contending Bills team, who are coming off of their bye week, it definitely feels like things are going to get worse before they get better.

• People who came to play yesterday: Preston Smith, De’Vondre Campbell, Aaron Jones. That’s it. That’s the list.
• Seriously, why can’t we consistently give the ball to Aaron Jones. I fundamentally do not understand why this is a question after EVERY G– DAMN GAME. When you give Aaron Jones the ball, good things happen. And it looked like Matt LaFleur finally understood that early in the game yesterday! Jones got 7 touches on the first two drives. After that? He was barely a factor until that drive late in the 4th quarter. It makes zero sense. He’s your most talented skill position player. He’s your best running back AND your best wide receiver. But for some reason we seem to intentionally ignore him for long stretches of time. Matt LaFleur has a player with a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th gear, but seems to want to merge onto the interstate in 1st. It’s wild.
• Aaron Rodgers was outplayed by Taylor Heinicke from the 2nd quarter on yesterday. I can’t believe I’m typing that sentence. His bum thumb is definitely a factor, and injuries to a wide receiving core already thin on experience and talent is also a problem, but at some point you need the $50 million dollar man to make some throws. His deep balls look atrocious. The play right before the Fox cameras caught him saying, ‘what the f– are we doing,’ to the sideline was a 3rd and 2 where Romeo Doubs was wide open and Rodgers threw it at his toes. I don’t know, man. I get that the offensive line hasn’t been consistent, and the receivers have plenty of drops, but we need to the 4-time MVP to at least start to play at 50% of the level we saw the last two years.
• The next good reason I hear as to why Amari Rodgers is still fielding punts will be the first. He gave up 3 points yesterday in a game you lost by 2. 5 fumbles on punt returns in his career already. But I’m certain he’ll be out there Sunday night in Buffalo again. So dumb and so predictable.
• Not great, Bob:

• YEESH. Bakhtiari was one of the lone bright spots in that Jets game (highest graded left tackle in the league that week), but that quote from Tom doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence that he’s ever going to be in a place where he’s a guarantee to play week-to-week.
• Side note: The reworked offensive line was pretty good yesterday. Tom at left tackle, Jenkins back to left guard, Myers, JRJ and Nijman at right tackle. Only 1 QB hit given up all day.
• The Packer defense from the 1st half to the 2nd half continues to be one of the more mystifying parts of the season. They are literally a top 5 defense in the league in the first half and bottom 5 defense in the second half of games. Yesterday they only gave up 7 first half points (if you take away the gifted field goal after the Amari muff) AND they had a pick-6. In the second half they gave up 13 points (not horrible) but the drives the Commanders were able to put together were LONG and tilted time of possession almost 2:1 in Washington’s favor.
• By no means am I saying the referees cost the Packers the game yesterday, but that call on Eric Stokes for illegal contact that negated the Rasul Douglas scoop and score was disgusting. If you’re going to call that you may as well throw a flag on every single play, because that type of contact happens all of the time. Again, it’s not the only reason the Packers lost, but a 21-10 game at halftime is obviously a lot different than 14-10 (#analyis).

So now they head to Buffalo where they are +10.5 on the betting line. Largest deficit against the spread in Aaron Rodgers’ career. Now I would never expect any athlete to say, ‘yeah we are going to get cooked,’ no matter what the matchup looks like, but Rodgers did have this take in the postgame yesterday:

Not exactly a William Wallace speech but he is correct. Given the circumstances it feels very likely that the Packers are going to be staring down a 3-5 start with almost no room for error the rest of the way. This season is going to need those 2016 ‘run the table’ vibes if they can’t pull off a miracle on Sunday night.

*After the 3-1 start, plenty of people looked at the Giants/Jets/Commanders stretch and thought, ‘three wins and 6-1 headed to Buffalo.’ This was supposed to be the soft part of the schedule. But by the end of the season, there will probably be some revisionist thinking when it comes to that run of games. I don’t believe the Commanders are a good team, but the Giants are now 6-1 and the Jets are 5-2. If those are 10-12 win teams that make the playoffs, we might look back at those losses and say they weren’t as bad as they looked in that moment.

PS: Unrelated: Giannis scored 44 points in 28 minutes on Saturday. LOL.