“Go Pack! Go Brewers!”
Evan Williams said it best after the Packers beat the Cowboys 23-13 on Sunday Night Football. Green Bay is now 4-2. It wasn’t always pretty, and they certainly don’t make it look as easy as the Brewers have, but the Packers are stacking wins and trending in the right direction. “We’re all in it together. [The Brewers] winning only really rubs off on us,” Zaire Franklin added.
It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows this season. They started 1-2, with an epic Week 1 collapse that turned into a fourth-quarter knockout by the Vikings. In Week 2, they were an Aaron Glenn mishap away from losing to the Jets. Week 3 was a four-quarter beatdown by the Falcons. There were a lot of doubts about this team.
Fast forward to today, and the Packers have won three straight and are showing signs of being a contender in a wide-open NFC. Jordan Love has found his groove, the offensive line is showing signs of life, and Jonathan Gannon’s defense is playing lights-out football. Everything is slowly starting to come together.
Last night was a tale of two halves. The first half was all Green Bay. Love went 14-for-22 for 190 yards, a passing touchdown, and a rushing touchdown. The defense was just as good, holding an explosive Dallas offense to zero points on just 107 total yards and forcing two turnovers. The lead would’ve been even bigger if not for two devastating drops by Matthew Golden in the end zone. Otherwise, Green Bay was in complete control.
The second half was a different story. The defense kept holding strong, but the offense couldn’t put the game away. They went punt, field goal, punt, field goal, punt, which resulted in only six points on five possessions, and they didn’t chew up much clock. They had plenty of chances to put the game out of reach and didn’t. Fortunately, the defense kept Dallas out of the end zone for most of the night. The Packers are now 11-1-1 against the Cowboys dating back to 2009, with six of those wins by two scores or more.
The tone after the win was appropriate for LaFleur and his players: happy to win another game, but noticeably aware of everything that still needs to be cleaned up. “I think it feels pretty good right now. But once tonight’s over, you watch the tape, you learn from it, you move onto the next,” LaFleur said. “It’s not like our schedule is going to get any easier here. So, it truly is a week-to-week league, and you’ve got to take it one game at a time, really, one day at a time.”
There’s plenty to take away from the win over Dallas. At the forefront are the issues we’ve discussed ad nauseam: dropped passes, untimely penalties, undisciplined play, no running game, and the list goes on. But the good outweighed the not-so-good, and the Packers found a way to win their third straight. This team has already shown it will keep battling through whatever adversity comes, and that’s exactly what they’ll need to keep doing moving forward.
“I love that locker room. I love those guys,” LaFleur said. “They come to battle; they come to work with a great attitude. We’ve had some ups and downs... it’s truly how you respond to the adversity. One thing I love about those guys is just, even through it all, there’s never been any finger-pointing. Everyone’s looking inward... That’s the mark of a good team.”
Gannon’s Defense Deserves the Credit
“Hats off to Jonathan Gannon and the staff.”
The biggest takeaway of the night is simple: the Packers might have a legit defense. Last season, Dak Prescott and the Cowboys scored 40 points on this unit. Forty. And they did it without CeeDee Lamb. Prescott threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, and George Pickens went for 134 yards and two scores. Last night? Seven points. (It was really 13, but six came in garbage time.)
Going into the game, Dallas ranked fifth in passing offense and sixth in scoring offense. It didn’t matter. Prescott threw 54 times to get to 258 yards. Neither Pickens nor Lamb found the end zone. Javonte Williams was held to 3.7 yards per carry, and the longest run of the night was just eight yards. It wasn’t that long ago when Atlanta came to Lambeau and dogwalked this defense, but last night was an entirely different story.
The most impressive part was how the defense responded to adversity, most notably on Dallas’s second-to-last drive. The Cowboys got the ball down 16 with about ten minutes left in the fourth quarter. Green Bay stopped them on third-and-20 early in the drive, but an illegal contact penalty on Ty’Ron Hopper gave them a fresh set of downs. A few plays later, Carrington Valentine had an interception wiped out by a roughing-the-passer call on Lukas Van Ness. Then a neutral zone infraction turned a long third down into a much more manageable one, and Karl Brooks was later flagged for roughing the passer. That’s four critical penalties on one drive, and the defense still didn’t give up a single point. Talk about not breaking.
Throughout the second half, questionable calls from the officials gave Dallas new life more than once, but instead of cracking, Green Bay’s defense just kept battling. Gannon and his new-and-improved unit deserve as much credit as anyone for the win. They had the Cowboys on their heels most of the night and held one of the league’s best offenses to its lowest point total of the season.
Over this three-game winning streak, the defense has allowed 14 or fewer points in each game, an average of 11.3 points per game, the team’s longest such streak since 2016. And they’ve done it without Micah Parsons, and after losing Edgerrin Cooper and Javon Hargrave to season-ending injuries. Mixed pre-snap looks, calculated pressures, and timely takeaways have lifted this defense to a level of competence Packers fans aren’t used to seeing.
“I thought our defensive performance was outstanding,” LaFleur said. “I thought JG and the staff did a great job. And obviously going out there and being able to execute at a high level.”
EVAN. WILLIAMS. 📺: NBC https://t.co/H2dBumCPkg
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) October 19, 2026
Jordan Love Owns Sunday Night
The other big takeaway from the night: Jordan Love sure loves playing on Sunday Night Football.
Love has been masterful on Sunday nights throughout his career, and last night was more of the same. His all-time record on SNF improved to 5-0-1. Statistically, he’s completed 70.0% of his passes for 1,725 yards, 15 touchdowns, and one interception, with a 114.7 passer rating. He still hasn’t lost on a Sunday night. It’s an absurd run.
The box score doesn’t tell the whole story of his performance. He finished 23-of-41 for 276 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. That’s not a bad line by any means, but it doesn’t account for three separate touchdown passes that were dropped. If his pass catchers had held on, Love would’ve finished with close to 400 yards and four touchdowns.
“That’s the quarterback that you want to be on your team,” Matthew Golden said after the game. “Just the things he can do getting out of the pocket, extending plays, and being able to make more plays. It makes our job easier being able to play with a dude like that. He’s different.”
The offensive line didn’t make things easy either. ESPN Insights had Love pressured on 23 of 44 dropbacks (52%), one of the highest rates of his career. He took three sacks, but still went 11-of-19 for 159 yards and a touchdown under pressure.
Love was in complete control all night. Whether it was pre-snap, navigating the pocket, or with his arm, he had Christian Parker’s defense searching for answers. He made big-time throws all game, throwing off his back foot, dropping deep balls into buckets, and carving up the middle of the field. He had 109 passing yards on one drive alone. He moved around the pocket well, kept his eyes downfield, and used his legs when nothing was there. If Love keeps playing like this, the Packers are going to keep winning a lot of football games.
“He does a great job just commanding the offense, doing a great job converting critical third downs throughout the course of the game,” LaFleur said after the game. “He’s a G. We talk about playing like a G. He’s a G.”
The Drops Were Costly
As good as Jordan Love was last night, his stat line should’ve been much, much better. The main reason it wasn’t? Drops.
Drops were a major problem for the Packers, who left at least eight points off the board on critical drops alone, including two by Matthew Golden and one by Christian Watson. The first came with just over 11 minutes left in the second quarter. Love dropped one right in the bucket down the left sideline for Golden, who had a step on the defender, but he couldn’t hang on to what would’ve been a 43-yard touchdown. He later pointed to the lights as an issue. Instead of going up 14-0, the Packers had to settle for a field goal.
Later in the quarter, right before halftime, Love floated a back-shoulder ball down the right sideline to Golden, who dropped it again. He made a beautiful move to separate and turn back to the ball, but couldn’t secure it. Fortunately for Golden, the Packers got into the end zone a few plays later to make it 17-0 at the half.
“Would he like to have a couple of plays back? For sure,” Love said after the game. “There was a time he came back to me and said, ‘Just keep trusting me, just keep coming to me.’ That’s what you love to see, that confidence, that resiliency. That’s what I tell these guys all the time: don’t hang your head after a bad play, just expect the ball to keep coming your way.”
Watson might’ve had the most crucial drop of the night, late in the third quarter. It came on 2nd-and-6 from the Dallas 26-yard line. The Cowboys only rushed three, giving Love plenty of time. He moved around in the backfield, then fired a missile down the middle to a fairly wide-open Watson for what would’ve been a 26-yard touchdown. Watson dropped it. A Dallas defender may have gotten a finger on the ball, but it’s one Watson needs to come down with regardless. Green Bay would’ve gone up 24-7 at that point, but had to settle for three again.
Love’s pass catchers still had decent days overall. Golden turned 13 targets into six catches for 104 yards and a touchdown, and Watson turned eight targets into 64 yards. Respectable lines, but each could’ve been so much bigger. Golden would’ve been close to 200 yards if he’d held on to those two balls. More importantly, the drops were the difference in Green Bay not being able to put the game away.
“It’s tough,” Love said after the game. “It’s football. I want to see us make every play. I want to make every throw; I want these guys to make every catch. That’s the expectation. Stuff happens; drops happen... It sucks, but it’s something we have to continue to get better at.”
The Run Game Is Still Missing
The other big hindrance to Green Bay’s offense was, again, the inability to run the football. It was tough sledding. Pierre Strong led the way with 11 carries for 28 yards. MarShawn Lloyd ran eight times for just 10 yards, and Kaleb Johnson had one carry for -2 yards. As a group, the running backs combined for 20 carries and 36 yards. That’s abysmal. Worse, the Packers ran the ball on first down 14 times and averaged just 1.4 yards on those carries.
Last week, Green Bay established just enough of a ground game to set up play-action, and Love feasted, going 12-of-14 for 245 yards and a touchdown, per PFF. Last night was a different story. The Packers only called seven play-action passes, and they weren’t effective at all. Love went 1-of-6 for seven yards.
“That’s something that we got to keep looking at, keep finding ways to improve at,” Love said after the game. “Because we want to have a complementary game. You want to have a run game going that can be dominant, and it’s not where it needs to be right now.”
It’s hard to pin this on one issue. The offensive line isn’t giving the backs much room, but the backs aren’t maximizing the chances they do get. The play-calling tendencies are also pretty obvious: LaFleur loves to run on first down, and opposing defenses know it. “It’s just too inconsistent,” LaFleur said. “When you’re in second-and-long quite a bit when you’re running on first down.”
This might be when Kevin Zeitler finally moves into the starting lineup. The Packers are also expected to get Josh Jacobs back this week after he spent the first six games on the Commissioner’s Exempt List. He’ll undoubtedly help, but he hasn’t practiced with the team since August, and the line probably won’t make his life easy. “Time will tell,” LaFleur said about Jacobs igniting the run game. “But I do have a lot of confidence that he can provide a spark.”
The offense is inching closer to putting it all together and becoming one of the league’s elite units, but it needs a run game to take that next step. “I still think there’s so much more out there for us as an offense,” Love said, “and once we get that run game really going and solidified, it’ll help a lot of areas.”
A Clean Bill of Health
For the first time all season, the Packers won a game without suffering a season-ending injury. There were some bumps and bruises along the way, but all in all, they came out of Sunday night’s win unscathed.
MarShawn Lloyd and Sean Rhyan both needed medical attention after trying to make a tackle on Jordan Love’s interception, but both returned on the next drive. Tucker Kraft was also checked out by the medical staff after being tackled on the right sideline, and he returned after halftime. Brandon Cisse was the only player who didn’t come back, suffering a stinger in the fourth quarter, but he said he was fine after the game.
Coming out of a win healthy is a welcome change. The Packers lost Jayden Reed for the season to a neck injury in the Week 2 win over the Jets, and on the very next play, Zach Bako-Bewele went down with a season-ending knee injury. Edgerrin Cooper suffered a season-ending Achilles injury in the Week 4 win over Tampa Bay, and last week Javon Hargrave went down with the same injury against Chicago. Four season-ending injuries in three wins? Bad luck doesn’t begin to describe it.
Fortunately, no one appeared to suffer a significant injury this time. The Packers should head into next week’s matchup with Detroit as healthy as they were last night, if not healthier.
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHEESEHEAD NATION WEEKLY NEWSLETTER HERE.
__________________________
Carter Semb is a lifelong Packer fan, shareholder, and season ticket holder. He is a contributor for Cheesehead TV and Packers Talk. For commentary surrounding Wisconsin sports, he can be found on X at @cmsemb.