As you’d expect after a signature win by the Green Bay Packers, the grades are high in the weekly report card following their critical victory over the Detroit Lions on Thursday.
Green Bay’s offense was surgical, with Jordan Love leading the way with four touchdown passes to three different receivers. The defense was not as dominant as it was in its Week 1 victory, but it made enough key plays to turn the tide in Green Bay’s favor.
The victory gave the Packers an 8-3-1 record and sets up for a battle for first place in the NFC North in 10 days against the Chicago Bears.
Here’s our report card, starting with the star of the game, Jordan Love.
Pass Offense
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Matt LaFleur knew coming out of Sunday’s win over the Minnesota Vikings that his conservative approach was not going to cut it against a high-powered Lions offense.
These big games, for better or worse, are often about the man under center. Jordan Love, and every other franchise quarterback, is paid to play well and win big games.
Love was given the keys to the offense on Thursday, and he ran with it. Love competed 18-of-30 passes for 234 yards and four touchdowns. Playing on Thanksgiving for the third consecutive year, he also secured his third consecutive passer rating of better than 120.
The numbers don’t tell the full story. More important than putting up box score numbers is what a quarterback does on the game’s biggest plays.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love throws a pass against the Detroit Lions during the first quarter at Ford Field. | Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images
Love was asked to throw the ball on three fourth downs. He completed all three passes. Two went for touchdowns to Romeo Doubs and Dontayvion Wicks. The other was a game-sealing conversion to Wicks, which came on the heels of a third-down conversion to Christian Watson to keep the offense on the field.
Love and the Packers’ offense often came up small in the biggest games a season ago. They did not come up small on Thursday.
Love’s four scoring strikes made him the first quarterback since Brett Favre to throw four touchdown passes in a Thanksgiving game.
Like Favre often did, Love did so playing through pain with a separated shoulder that still had him handing the ball off with the wrong hand at times.
Green Bay’s in the home stretch of their season. Josh Jacobs is a great player. Its run game has been better as the offensive line has stabilized. The reality is the road to the Super Bowl is often found through the air rather than on the ground.
They’ll need more performances like the one Love had to accomplish their goals, and some help should be on the way with Jayden Reed expected to return in the near future.
**Grade: A**
Rush Offense
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Josh Jacobs was back in the lineup, making good on his promise that he’d only miss one game with a knee injury that kept him out of Green Bay’s win over the Vikings.
Matt LaFleur tested Jacobs’ knee early, and found that Jacobs was more explosive than he had looked pre-injury.
He ripped off a run of 29 yards in the first half in which he looked as spry as he had all season. If there was any concern about Jacobs being on a pitch count, it did not show up in the run game.
Jacobs carried the ball 17 times for 83 yards, averaging 4.9 yards per carry. Emanuel Wilson carried the ball four times, and that was it for other running backs. Green Bay ran the ball 30 times for 125 yards. While the passing offense was the star of the show, the run game played a complementary role.
Green Bay’s newly formed interior offensive line headed by Anthony Belton making his first career start at right guard looked more cohesive than they had with Jordan Morgan in the lineup.
Now, Jacobs will have a mini-bye to heal up and get ready for a stretch in December in which all four opponents have winning records.
**Grade: B**
Pass Defense
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The book was out on Jared Goff. If you make him uncomfortable, mistakes will follow. If he’s kept clean, he can dice up an opposing defense.
Early on, the Packers’ defense got the message. Goff was under pressure early and missed his first three passes, and looked particularly ugly doing so.
From there, he was surgical, he completed 15 consecutive passes, leading the Lions to 21 points. The one incompletion that followed, however, might have been the biggest play of the game.
Goff escaped pressure and rolled to his right, finding Jameson Williams for what would have been a first down. The problem was that Goff threw the ball behind Williams, and Williams could not come down with the ball.
Had the ball been thrown in front of Williams, he might have scored on the play. Instead, Green Bay’s defense got a stop, albeit with a big assist to the Lions’ offense.
Goff’s final numbers look good, completing 20-of-26 passes for 256 yards and two touchdowns.
Jameson Williams had a big day with 144 receiving yards and often found room in the middle of the field. His one touchdown came when Carrington Valentine whiffed on a tackle, allowing him to trot into the end zone just before halftime.
The pass defense, however, goes as Micah Parsons goes. The Packers sacked Goff three times, and Parsons had a hand in all three, sharing one sack with Kingsley Enagbare.
Parsons is the Packers’ closer, and it truly is a wonder where this defense would be if Parsons had not been acquired.
**Grade: B**
Rush Defense
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The challenge for this unit got even bigger before the game started. When the inactive list came out 90 minutes prior to kickoff, Quay Walker was on it. Walker was one of the catalysts to the Packers’ dominant performance in their season-opening victory over the Lions.
Thursday’s performance was not as dominant as Week 1’s statement victory over the Lions, but it was pretty close.
Jahmyr Gibbs had more than 200 rushing yards last week against the New York Giants. He was able to find his way into the secondary a couple of times, but was mostly kept in check.
Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs runs against Packers linebacker Isaiah McDuffie (58) and cornerback Carrington Valentine. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Perhaps the biggest statement of the game came on a series to begin the second half. After Jared Goff scrambled for 24 yards, the Lions ran four plays. Four Gibbs runs netted 5 yards, including two consecutive stops at or behind the line of scrimmage on third and fourth down.
They struggled with David Montgomery, who ran for 32 yards on eight carries, including a touchdown run to open the scoring for the Lions. The total numbers, however, are excellent again. Gibbs and Montgomery ran 28 times for 100 yards. If you had told the Packers they would hold Gibbs and Montgomery to less than 4 yards per carry both times they played against them, they would have signed up for that in a heartbeat.
**Grade: A**
Special Teams
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Green Bay had a new kickoff returner with Savion Williams inactive due to a foot injury he’s been nursing for a few weeks. The early returns were questionable. Melton fielded a ball that landed on the sideline that could have gone out of bounds. During the return, the Packers’ return unit was penalized after not committing an infraction a week ago against Minnesota.
The punt team’s first opportunity of the game did not go well, either, as Tom Kennedy had a 21-yard return that gave the Lions good field position after the Packers’ offense went three-and-out on their second possession of the game.
The kickoff team was not much better. All of Brandon McManus’ kicks in the first half went into the end zone, gifting the Lions the ball at their 35-yard line. Against a team who is as aggressive on fourth downs as the Lions, and having a kicker with the leg like Jake Bates, they were living dangerously throughout the game.
Punting was highlighted by Daniel Whelan’s 72-yard boot that bounced twice inside the Lions’ five before bouncing harmlessly into the end zone for a touchback. That play in particular was a net gain of 52 yards in the fourth quarter. Whelan remains a weapon at punter.
Strategically, they were weird in the first half, which knocks their grade down a little, but they were solid if ultimately unspectacular.
**Grade: C-plus**
Coaching
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Matt LaFleur’s aggression, or lack thereof, came under fire after a 23-6 victory over the Vikings in which LaFleur said he took the air out of the ball and let the defense win the game.
Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, right, shakes hands with Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur after the game. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Thursday’s game was a completely different story. LaFleur was back to his mantra of all gas, no brakes. Green Bay came out throwing early and often against Detroit, and was not content to settle for field goals to give them six point leads in the first half.
Both of Green Bay’s touchdowns in the first half came on fourth-down conversions, one to Dontayvion Wicks and one to Romeo Doubs. The result was a halftime lead against the Lions, who had to labor through an overtime game on Sunday.
LaFleur stayed aggressive throughout the game, matching Detroit’s offense score-for-score in the second half. With 2:59 left in the game, all eyes were on Lafleur and Green Bay’s offense. They could close the game out with a couple of first downs. They did with the third of the fourth-down conversions, with Jordan Love completing a pass to Dontayvion Wicks against tight coverage.
On the special teams side of things, if the Packers were kicking into the end zone by design, it’s an odd strategy. Green Bay has done a good job covering opposing kick returns this season, and the Lions did not have Glyn Milburn returning kicks for them.
Of course, the opening kickoff of the second half was kicked short of the goal line, and the Lions returned the ball 1 yard short of where they would have been had it been kicked through the end zone.
Defensively, Green Bay was excellent situationally as the Lions were 0-for-2 on fourth downs, while the Packers were 3-for-3, including the game-clinching conversion.
It’s hard to win a big game if your head coach is not on top of his game. LaFleur was, and he was perhaps the biggest reason other than his quarterback to explain how they were able to walk out of Detroit with a win.
**Grade: A**
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