PHILADELPHIA — After Brandon McManus’ 26-yard chip shot floated through the uprights late in the third quarter to give the Packers their first points of a torturous game, a voice from the top of the press box at Lincoln Financial Field could be heard above all else.
“Finally!” it said, in a sarcastically cheery tone.
I didn’t turn my head in time to see lips moving, but I’ve covered this team long enough to know which voice is whose among the important people inside the Packers organization. This one belonged to team president Mark Murphy, who sat beside general manager Brian Gutekunst, both watching the team they lead crumble once again under a playoff spotlight.
The Packers have now gone 14 consecutive seasons without a Super Bowl appearance. Their last three postseason stints have ended short of the NFC Championship Game, this one their shortest stay since Matt LaFleur took over as head coach in 2019. The team that calls Titletown home hasn’t even won a division title since 2021, a three-year spell that ties 2008-2010 as their longest drought this century.
GO DEEPER
What went wrong in Packers’ 22-10 wild-card loss to Eagles: Takeaways
Yet to anybody who watched this team all season, Sunday’s 22-10 loss against the Eagles in the wild-card round was no surprise. It shouldn’t have even made you bat an eye if you’re familiar with these Packers, a team that can’t get out of its own way. Time and again against the NFC’s best teams. Against the superior Eagles, it was only fitting that the Packers hammered the nail into their own coffin.
At the podium after his team’s season ended, LaFleur too couldn’t get out of his own way. He knocked over a blue Gatorade bottle and metal cup in front of him, making a loud clanging noise on the wooden surface.
“That’s about par for the night right there,” he said.
Matt LaFleur’s lengthy opening statement: pic.twitter.com/K8QawiRL4c
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) January 13, 2025
The 2023 Packers are the youngest team by average age (25.58 years) to make the playoffs in the last 45 seasons. After winning three straight to end the regular season, a team playing with house money that didn’t know any better dismantled the No. 2 seed Cowboys before falling ever so short of a miraculous NFC title game appearance in a three-point loss to the mighty 49ers. All while the Packers’ first-year starting quarterback played the second half of the season like one of the best in the NFL en route to a $220 million contract extension.
All that accelerated the so-called rebuild with a new franchise quarterback, at least from an outside-expectations standpoint, raising the bar ahead of the 2024 season above where it might’ve rested before.
If you had told a Packers fan in the summer of 2023 that the team would make the playoffs in each of Jordan Love’s first two seasons starting, and be the two youngest teams to do so since 1980 across the entire NFL, they probably would’ve taken it. But 2023 changed things, which is why it feels like 2024 fell short even if Lambeau Field will still be standing when the Packers return as Sunday night turns to Monday morning with the team justifiably optimistic about the future.
Love was asked postgame about the team’s trajectory and the reporter said in his question that the arrow is pointing down on Green Bay, perhaps given the aforementioned reason.
“I don’t know if I’d say it’s pointing down,” the 26-year-old quarterback said. “I think we did some really good things this season. Obviously, made it to the playoffs and had a chance and just didn’t play good enough tonight. But I guess you could say anytime you don’t win the Super Bowl, the arrow would be pointed down.”
Clean it up. Those three words might give fans, players and coaches cold sweats in the middle of the night until OTAs.
That’s the story of the Packers’ season, that they repeatedly dealt themselves body blows against the NFC’s three best teams instead of those opponents doing it for them.
It seemed if given time, they could clean up the self-inflicted mistakes that permeated throughout their own building. That perhaps their next chance against an elite team would be different. Yet here we all sit at Lincoln Financial Field on Jan. 12, two losses to the Eagles, two to the Vikings, two to the Lions. Zero wins, six of their seven losses, season over.
The Packers missed two field goals in a 31-29 Week 4 loss to the Vikings, a game in which they trailed 28-0. They cut that kicker, Brayden Narveson, less than three weeks later. Yet it was veteran Brandon McManus, who was 20-of-21 on field goals this season with his only miss coming from 46 yards in the rain almost three months ago, who pushed a 38-yarder wide right in the second quarter on Sunday to end a seven-minute, 37-second drive with no points.
Against the Lions in Week 9, Love threw a mind-numbing pick-six at the end of the first half to give the Lions a 17-3 lead when he didn’t see safety Kerby Joseph lurking around the line of scrimmage on a check down to running back Josh Jacobs. That was his 10th interception in seven games played. In his final eight of the regular season, he threw one. Then on Sunday against the Eagles, Love threw three more, one to cornerback Darius Slay on a contested go ball to wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks, one across the middle at the end of the first half when linebacker Zack Baun fooled him and one on a prayer in the end zone to cornerback Quinyon Mitchell late in the fourth quarter.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again 😏@zackbizzaun | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/iBquDngjPD
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) January 12, 2025
Wide receiver Christian Watson lost a fumble at the end of a long catch-and-run against the Lions in Week 14, leading to three Detroit points in a game that ended 34-31. Jacobs lost one in Vikings territory on the opening drive of a game that ended 27-25 in Minnesota two weeks ago. It was Keisean Nixon coughing one up on the opening kickoff in Philadelphia, leading to a 7-0 deficit three plays later less than two minutes into the game. Not to mention the fumble was caused by linebacker Oren Burks, Gutekunst’s first-ever third-round pick in 2018.
Not to beat a dead horse, but the same thing kept happening against this caliber of opponent until it dealt the final death blow to the Packers’ season. And that’s not even including the litany of penalties on Sunday, which included two frustration-induced unnecessary roughness infractions by Nixon and defensive tackle T.J. Slaton in the fourth quarter. LaFleur said earlier this season after one by Nixon that he takes those kinds of penalties “very personally.”
“I think that’s really the thing that hurt us in a lot of games,” Love said of the self-inflicted mistakes. “We talk about it, I feel like, a lot of the times this season and just feel like we’re not getting beat by the other team. We’re kind of beating ourselves. Whether it’s penalties, turnovers, stalled drives, things like that, I think it all comes back down to the details and execution — a lack of execution in some of those areas.”
A team that sabotages itself like the Packers do also being a team that starts slow against elite opponents, sometimes the latter because of the former, is not a team that will advance far.
They trailed the Vikings and Lions by double digits in the first half in all four games against those two teams this season, so it’s little surprise they faced a double-digit deficit in the first half against the Eagles when it mattered most. Perhaps it was a surprise that it was that bad, with the Packers going scoreless in the first half for the first time since Week 7 last season in Denver, but even that didn’t come entirely out of left field.
“I think that’s going to be a great reflection point this off-season,” LaFleur said of the repeated slow starts on offense, “because obviously, if we had the answers, it wouldn’t have been a problem. And for it to come up multiple times is disappointing.”
Defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley’s unit came to play, holding first-team All-Pro running back Saquon Barkley a full yard per carry below his season average on 25 rushes, forcing punts on five of six drives from the early first quarter to early third quarter while the offense remained asleep and allowing 22 points to a team that averaged more than 27 in the regular season.
It was Love and the offense, inept for most of the night at the hands of a soft zone defense, and Rich Bisaccia’s special teams, botching multiple kick returns and missing a field goal, that made sure the Packers wouldn’t get another chance to turn one of those narrow deficits against the NFC’s elite into a validating win.
The Eagles defense limited Jordan Love to 3-of-11 passing for 58 yards & 3 INTs on passes of 10+ air yards (-14.6% CPOE).
Quinyon Mitchell was targeted 6 times as the nearest defender, allowing only 2 receptions for 10 yards & INT (1.6 yds avg separation).
Powered by @awscloud
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) January 13, 2025
“Defensively, I thought we played winning football,” LaFleur said. “It’s just offensively and on special teams, we had too many mistakes and we can’t overcome those against a really good football team.”
This 12-point loss was the Packers’ biggest of the season. Even then, one more McManus chip shot, one less Love interception, one fewer holding penalty, one more second holding onto a kick return, and maybe the Packers are going to Detroit.
But that’s all this Packers season amounted to in the end — hypotheticals and optimism crushed by their own doing — and that’s why they’re going home for good instead.
“It’s almost like you’re close enough,” Jacobs said, “But not quite.”
(Photo of Jordan Love: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
