General manager Brian Gutekunst and the Green Bay Packers made the decision early on in the offseason to fully embrace the youth movement on offense. However, the decision to lean on inexperience has played a key factor in Green Bay’s struggles through the first seven games of 2023.
At receiver, Romeo Doubs, with 529 career snaps, entered 2023 as the most experienced player at that position group. At tight end, a position with a notoriously steep learning curve for first-year players, Green Bay has three rookies on the 53-man roster, along with Josiah Deguara, who has been utilized more so as a fullback.
The Packers are hitting the reset button to a degree this season. They are evaluating for the future, hoping the decision to go all-in on their young skill position players provides this group with the opportunity to get valuable practice and in-game reps, which hopefully accelerates their learning curves, along with the chance to grow together as a collective unit.
“You can’t get those young guys to that speed unless they get to play,” said Gutekunst during training camp.
What the Packers didn’t want to happen is to have another instance where a veteran took away snaps and opportunities from the young players – thus potentially delaying their development – and yet was still unproductive and not helping the team–i.e. Sammy Watkins. When that scenario takes place, nothing is accomplished.
“It’s always good to have those guys,” said Gutekunst about having veterans on the team. “But, at the same time, if they’re out there, those other guys aren’t. That’s just part of it. With all players that leave here, especially the guys who have done things in the league and are veteran players, they’re more experienced, and they’re going to be better players than some of the young guys.”
But with that said, the right veteran would hopefully help provide stability to an offense that very much needs it right now. Throughout the first seven games for the Packers, dropped passes, a failure to make contested catches, missed blocks, and running the wrong routes have been common occurrences for the receivers and tight ends. Jordan Love even mentioned a few weeks ago that unscouted looks were giving the young pass catchers some issues, and that is something that is absolutely a product of inexperience. Green Bay’s inability to make timely adjustments is affected as well.
Even with all the practice and in-game reps available to them, we’ve seen really no such development from the Packers’ skill position players. This outcome falls both on the players and the coaching staff—everyone is responsible.
Of course, the Packers want to win as many games as they can this season, but the ultimate goal is to evaluate Love and figure out if he can be the guy for the foreseeable future. Admittedly, an already difficult task becomes even more challenging when there is so much chaos going on around him.
“There’s going to be a couple plays that you want back,” said Matt LaFleur of Love’s play after the Vikings game, “but also we’ve got to make some plays for him, too. I think we had like six dropped balls. That’s going to be tough to overcome. We’ve got to throw it better, we have to catch it better, we have to block better, and we have to stop having penalties that knock us back and put us in these obvious pass situations.”
In a science experiment, you have a variable, or an unknown, and a control as part of the test. The control, or a known commodity, helps evaluate the variable as a comparison by providing a baseline. However, in the Packers’ case, Love – the variable – is surrounded by other variables because there is zero consistency at the receiver and tight end positions. So, in terms of evaluating the original variable (Love), that becomes all the more difficult when there isn’t a standard to help set what the floor – or baseline – should be.
Gutekunst, of course, knew that inconsistency was going to be apart of the equation this season with so much inexperience. However, knowing what he knows now, you do have to wonder if the offseason would have played out differently if he could go back and alter the past.
All of this isn’t to say that re-signing Marcedes Lewis or having a veteran receiver apart of the team on a near league-minimum deal would all of a sudden have flipped the script and this is a 5-2 team we are talking about. But what a player of that caliber could provide is some stability, a go-to option, something to lean on in the midst of so much uncertainty. Love doesn’t have that right now, which makes everything that is being asked of him more challenging. In fact, since training camp, we’ve seen Love’s decisiveness as a decision-maker regress, and that is, in part, a product of what is going on around him.
At the end of the day, youth isn’t an excuse, and no one on this Packers team is using it as one. This is a results based business, where the opponent does not care about growing pains or the injuries that you are dealing with. The objective is to win and the Packers aren’t coming all that close to doing so. However, we would be naive to think that the youth isn’t a factor in what is occurring on the field. Just because it’s not an excuse, doesn’t mean it’s not a part of Green Bay’s reality either.
“We’re not even talking that game with young guys,” said LaFleur. “We’re focused on whoever is out there, the expectation is the same. We’ve played seven games now; I’m not interested in that. I think that’s an excuse. We’ll never do that. We’re just going to continue to find ways to try to keep improving, and it starts in practice. Get a good week of practice, then you go out and play well. I do think that the practices have been competitive and such like that, but we’re obviously not getting results that anybody wants.”