By any metric, the Green Bay Packers' win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday was… not pretty. Heck, the entire game was a pretty messy affair. When you've got one side starting an UDFA at QB and the other rolling out a bunch of turnstiles at offensive line, it's to be expected.
On Sunday, both teams were kept under 300 yards of total offense and under 200 yards passing. There were 14 total penalties, 10 of which were on the Packers. Each team had two turnovers, with three coming on some pretty brutal interceptions thrown by either QB.
But an "ugly" win is still a win, and as the common adage goes, you never apologize for a win.
But what happens when all of your wins are ugly wins? When your team can't help but grind out every game, and they have to take every game down to the wire? At what point does it stop being a good thing that a team can win ugly games, and instead must have ugly games to win?
Packers' schedule isn't getting any easier
I ask this question, not because I think the Packers are there yet, but because that's where they could be heading. Let's take a look at the schedule that Green Bay has remaining, where one thing becomes abundantly clear as you read down the list: this was the easy part of the schedule.
So far, the opponents the Packers have already played have a combined record of 7-9, which is largely propped up by the Vikings' 4-0 record. The Jets and Bucs have losing records, while Atlanta is 2-2 (albeit looking like a completely new team with competent QB play). Against those guys, Green Bay has only a 2-2 record and is feeling grateful to have those two wins at all.
The Packers are about to enter the gauntlet. The next seven opponents on the schedule will test them immensely: Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Carolina, New England, Minnesota, and then wrapping things up with the LA Rams following the team's bye week. In fact, over their next 13 opponents, Green Bay will play only three teams that currently hold a losing record: New Orleans, Miami, and Houston.
Unless things change drastically in the near future, all of these games are going to be absolute dogfights. But when you think about it, winning "ugly" has been a staple of the Love-LaFleur era. Heck, go back to 2022, the last season with Aaron Rodgers at QB, and you'll find plenty of ugly wins.
Since 2022, I count 11 ugly wins on Green Bay's schedule, and plenty of ugly losses to go along with them. How many times have we heard these phrases from players or coaches following a game?
"Got to clean things up."
"We didn't play our best football."
"We left a lot of points out there on the field."
A win is a win, but I think at a certain point, being unable to truly "put an opponent away" bleeds into a team's culture. That's why it matters, and you can't necessarily ignore this particular elephant. And we've already seen how it affects the Packers when they are trying to close out these tightly contested matchups in Minnesota, or against Chicago last season.
Packers' historically bad penalty trend
So, what does Green Bay need to do in order to start looking a little more synchronous in their wins?
It's an uphill battle, for sure, but there's one thing that comes to mind immediately: penalties. You probably already know the Packers are the No. 1 most-penalized team in the league right now. But try this on for size: Green Bay is averaging a whopping 10.5 penalties a game, which would land them, if the season continued to play out like this, at 179 penalties.
Dallas led the league with 149 penalties last season, which was itself the most a team has accrued since 2022. And the Packers are on pace to demolish that record entirely. In fact, Green Bay is on pace to set the record as the most penalized team in league history, beating the 2011 Raiders, who were penalized 163 times.
So, that's probably not a good place to be, right?
Penalties stem from a lack of one of three things: a lack of discipline (personal fouls), a lack of proper positioning (holding, pass interference), or a lack of understanding of the rules (illegal formations). Of Green Bay's 42 penalties, 10 have been called as holding penalties, and eight as false starts.
Those two make up 43 percent of the Packers' penalties and are predominantly called on… offensive linemen. Will the revamped offensive line help Green Bay settle down their penalty issues?
The unfortunate answer is… don't hold your breath. Jacob Monk, Donovan Jennings, and Jager Burton have all been called for only a single penalty each so far in 2026, while new starter Laken Tomlinson was penalized twice versus Tampa Bay.
In fact, while penalties are such a huge issue, there's no one individual doing a disproportionate amount of work here. Christian Watson and Javon Bullard lead the way with three penalties each, but that's it. Twenty-four different players have committed a penalty, tied for most in the league with Baltimore.
Penalties are such an obvious factor when you think about how much the Packers are struggling to put games away right now, but the historic scope of the problem makes it hard to say that they still aren't underrating their impact.
No team can be successful with those kinds of numbers, and as long as the Packers continue to shoot themselves in the foot, the more we are going to see these ugly games continue to play out.
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