Flat out awful: Why Green Bay Packers lost to Dallas
By Kenn Korb
Giving the game away
No matter how good a team is, turnovers have the ability to undermine any positive efforts.
When a team is struggling on the level this Green Bay offense has however, they are even more toxic, and they did themselves no favors in this matchup.
In most seasons, the Packers have usually been among the best in the league at holding onto the ball; in fact, outside of 2013 (when Rodgers missed half the year) Green Bay has ranked no lower than 10th in turnover ratio.
Even in 2015 when many of these offensive issues first came to light, the team still took care of the ball, managing a +5 rate (10th in NFL). Unfortunately, this season has seen this area become just another of the many ways the unit continues to fail to live up to its prior excellence.
In this particular game, the Packers defense actually did a nice job of creating turnovers themselves, picking up two off of the mostly-efficient Prescott to help keep the team in the game despite their offense’s issues.
The only problem? Green Bay’s offense doubled that total.
I already mentioned the two turnovers committed by Rodgers earlier; the interception led to a field goal by Dallas, and though the fumble ended up coming right back to Green Bay a couple plays later it did stop what seemed likely to be a TD drive in a then-manageable deficit, wasting precious time.
As for the other two..
On their second drive, down 7-3, Green Bay doesn’t even finish one play before they lost it. Jordy Nelson caught a pass deep over the middle, but as he was turning to run Barry Church knocked the ball out of his hands; with no Packers anywhere around, it was an easy recovery for Morris Claiborne.
Though Green Bay was gifted a fumble by Prescott on that subsequent drive, the play was a perfect corollary for the Packers’ inability to get anything going on offense.
The other fumble came when the game was pretty much sealed up, but not totally done; a team which had survived long odds multiple times just last season could be forgiven for having hope of something improbable. Ty Montgomery — who was actually having a strong day (10 receptions, 98 yards) for a moribund unit — took a carry up the middle, but got popped.
The ball fell out, and Dallas came away with it; after review, it was made official to put the final stake in the Packers’ collective hearts.
As much as any other single area, fixing this new penchant for giving the ball away must be curbed before they will have any chance of getting back to the heights we remember.