Two weeks ago, the Green Bay Packers were on top of the football world. Jordan Love was playing crisp football, the defense looked nearly unstoppable, and every analyst was pegging the team as the early-season favorite to reach Super Bowl LX. Whatever issues the team carried into the rest of the 2025 campaign would surely work themselves out.
Now the Packers are 2-1-1, and their flaws are starting to overshadow their strengths.
Many fans are pointing to special teams failures, others to late-game clock management, and then, of course, there’s the penalties. Through four weeks, these issues have all been prevalent, but not quite constant. One issue has remained constant, however, and it should have fans worried about this team’s ceiling after a quarter of the season..
Green Bay Packers can’t afford rushing attack to remain this inefficient
The NFL may be a quarterback-driven league, but it’s just as true as it always was that the team that runs the ball and stops the run will prevail on Sundays more often than not. Green Bay has the quarterback. They stop the run almost better than anyone. But the rushing attack is lacking, and it’s holding the Packers back.
Of course, this issue starts on the offensive line. Heading into Week 4, the Packers' front five carried the league’s fifth-worst run block win rate. After Sunday’s tie, they fell to the second-worst rate in the league, winning just 67% of run block reps as a unit, one percent higher than the last-place Chiefs.
The Packers’ reconfigured offensive line has underperformed, but injuries and youthful experience have played a role as qualifiable excuses. But excuses in the NFL aren’t worth much of anything. The fact is, the rushing attack personnel is too good to be this ineffective.
For what it’s worth, the Packers rank 14th in the NFL in rushing yards, but this is largely thanks to volume attempts. Only four teams have attempted more runs than Green Bay, but only five teams are averaging fewer yards per carry.
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Against Dallas, there was a spark that maybe things are headed in a better direction. Josh Jacobs rushed for a season-high 86 yards, averaged 3.9 yards per carry and put up two scores on the ground. Emmanuel Wilson averaged 5.5 yards per carry himself on eight attempts. Despite more cumulative success against the Cowboys, the drop in run blocking win rate is still a concern worth monitoring.
And even still, Jacobs leads the NFL in total carries with 80 after four weeks, while he’s 13th in yards and tied for the 24th-worst yards per carry average, 3.3. Right now, his pace is mirroring his final season in Las Vegas, where he averaged 3.5 yards per carry and only totaled 805 yards on 233 carries.
Clearly, as reflected in their record and two-game slump, Green Bay’s rushing attack, as it stands currently, isn’t an ingredient that builds a winning formula, at least not consistently. Despite obviously wanting to establish the run, Green Bay has found ways to win without an efficient rushing attack, instead leaning on its ability to stop the run and pass efficiently. That can win regular-season games from time to time, but it doesn’t pay off in the late stages of the season.
The Packers’ BYE Week couldn’t come at a better time to try to correct this early-season error. Some extra time off can help the offensive line get healthy and ultimately serve as a chance to reset the team's perspective on the 2025 season. Hopefully, the Packers can come out of the BYE with a renewed focus on the running game that breeds more consistency in their efforts.