Why they lost: Green Bay Packers stall out at Minnesota

Field Position Is A Problem

This is a frustrating trend with the Packers; whenever the offense gets the ball, they seem to be trapped deep in their own territory. This has a multitude of long-reaching issues attached to it.

First, we can look at the struggles of the offense; the team has not found their rhythm there, and pinning them deep forcing them to have practically a full field to traverse if they are to score.

When the offense does falter, that means the punting unit must go out pinned deep; Jacob Schum is proving so far to be here more for his directional punting skills than leg strength, so long distance tries provide the opposition with not only decent field position, but even better than we might see with other teams.

From there the defense is forced to defend a short field, and one of two things is likely to happen from there:

1. They allow a score of some sort
2. They force a punt

The former is obviously bad, but the latter has the unfortunate effect of just restarting the process; a punt from near midfield is decently likely to get downed deep in Green Bay territory, meaning the offense is pinned again, another punt has a good chance of coming, and we just keep going in a circle of ineptitude until either the defense forces some kind of turnover, the opposing special teams falters, or the offense actually finds a rhythm and produces a decent drive.

In this game specifically, all we need to see is the numbers from the punt return game to see how spot-on that idea is. Minnesota had 7 punts on the night, 5 of which trapped Green Bay within their own 15 yard line. Those 5 drives ended with 2 fumbles, 1 interception, 1 punt, and the eventual drive that ended on 4th down; for comparison’s sake, on the blocked punt that put Green Bay around midfield, they scored their first TD.

Field position is something that gets discussed in individual games, but is routinely forgotten in the broader conversation of how well an offense and/or defense end up producing; when it becomes a consistent problem game after game (like it has with the Packers), it can really hold back a team.

Until Green Bay manages to find some way to either force themselves into better field position (examples: getting more quick three & outs on defense, making something happen in the return game, or getting longer distance kicks out of Schum) or find a more reliable offensive rhythm, the team is unlikely to do much better than we’ve seen through two weeks.