There’s a fair bit of panic in Green Bay this morning.
Week 9 didn’t, uh, go exactly to plan. In arguably the biggest game of the Packers’ season to date, the Lions came into Lambeau Field and held them to one touchdown in their second home division loss in six weeks.
The Lions were uncharacteristically pedestrian on offense – they didn’t even put up 300 yards of total offense – and they were still able to comfortably deal with the Packers all night, with Green Bay’s late touchdown making the final score look more respectable than it actually was.
Every NFL win and loss is overrated to some degree, but Sunday afternoon’s game made it seem like the NFC North maybe isn’t quite as competitive as everyone thought a few weeks ago. Afterwards, Xavier McKinney – who never shies away from transparency with the media – had some blunt criticism of the Packers’ lackluster performance.
Xavier McKinney doesn’t hold back about Packers’ issues after Week 9 loss to Lions
Xavier McKinney was reflective after the #Packers loss to the Lions, as Green Bay fell to 0-2 in division games.
"We just gotta stop doing the same, really the same sh**, honestly. We gotta figure it out." pic.twitter.com/HiDfLIUZZW
— Lily Zhao (@LilySZhao) November 4, 2024
“We’ve just got to stop doing the same s— honestly,” he said. “Figure it out. It’s not really that hard. It’s not complicated. We’ve just got to figure it out … It’s not good. We don’t want to lose any games, especially our division games. We put ourselves in a hole being 0-2 in the division. Luckily we play the Lions again, we play the Vikings again. We’ve got to take care of our business next time we play these teams.”
In one sense, it’s nice to see a Packers player be this candid about the team’s struggles after a loss. It’d almost be more annoying to get some sort of canned answer about taking the next week one day at a time – go look at Chicago and Matt Eberflus if you want to see how well those types of answers are playing.
But there’s something a little jarring about seeing this type of response from a player on a team that’s still 6-3 and in the thick of a division race. Losing two of the three home NFC North games on your schedule isn’t a great look, and the Packers have their work cut out for them the rest of the way.
For now, everyone gets a little break from Packers football during the bye. The great news is that when they get back, they’ll probably have an opportunity to end the Bears’ playoff hopes.
