From start to finish and led by a masterful performance by Jordan Love, the Green Bay Packers controlled their Thanksgiving showdown with the Detroit Lions in all three phases of the game.
As always, my instant takeaways from what as an impressive Packers performance:
— The Packers ability to move the ball through the air in this game shows the growth that they’ve had since Week 4. No Aaron Jones and with the strength of the Lions defense being their front seven, the best way to attack them is through the air. Winning this game, or even competing, was going to fall on Love’s arm and he rose to the occasion, playing confident, decisive, and delivering accurate throws. What a day. The main goal this season was to find out if Love can be the guy or not and recent weeks show that he absolutely can be.
— Also, heck of a day from Matt LaFleur as a play-caller. A very good Lions defense was off-balanced all day and had no answers.
— Complementary football has eluded the Packers for much of the season b it not today. This was a well-coached team across the board that executed in all facets.
– The opportunity for Love and the offense to find success began with the improved play of the offensive line. Outside of having really good players up front, the Lions doing a great job using stunts, different personnel, and blitzes. It wasn’t perfect, and it won’t be against this Lions front, but Love often had the time he needed.
— Running didn’t come easy as expected, but unlike last time, the Packers mostly avoided negative plays to put themselves drastically behind the sticks. Jayden Reed had some more designed touches drawn up for him as well.
— Christian Watson was involved right away and had a season-high in receptions. Three of his first four catches came with tight coverage, and that was an excellent throw and catch on his touchdown grab. Reed has turned into the go-to pass catcher for this team.
— Loved the decision by Matt LaFleur to take the ball right away after winning the coin toss. You’re the underdog, go down and try to take the early lead. Also, love the initial play call as well.
— The Packers were in control for most of this game not only because of their improved play in the trenches on offense, but on defense as well. The edge rushers in particular were excellent at getting after Jared Goff. Rashan Gary was dominant, but all four edge rushers played well.
— After the Week 4 matchup, LaFleur said if you want to stop the run, then commit to doing so and not being so rigid. As expected, the pendulum swung in the other direction for the Packers this time around, as at least on the initial viewing, it looked like they played more cover-1 and were shrinking the field. Green Bay wasn’t great against the run by any means, but Detroit didn’t dominate on the ground either.
— The Green Bay defense entered the game with the second-fewest takeaways in football. LaFleur has talked often the last few weeks about how generating more takeaways was a must. Well, today the defense came up with two forced fumbles, one of which turned into a Jonathan Owens touchdown.
— This looked like one of Owens’ better games. He was in a lot of tackles.
— The red zone has been troublesome for the Green Bay offense, but today they were 3-for-4 inside the Lions’ 20-yard line. Even without a run game to lean on, which is an again a credit to Love for having to shoulder that workload.
— The Packers continued their rotation at left tackle with Rasheed Walker and Yosh Nijman alternating series. Both LaFleur and Stenavich seemed to really like the rotation after the Chargers game, talking about how they like the competition and thought it helped raise the level of play of both.
— The secondary was helped out by the pass rush, but again short-handed on the back-end, the Packers cornerbacks held up for the most part. Amon-Ra St. Brown was held to just over 10 yards per catch and the Lions weren’t nearly as efficient off play-action as they had been this season. Goff averaged a modest 6.9 yards per pass.
— Reed may be emerging as a go-to option but the strength right now of this passing game is that on any given play a handful of players can get the ball and generate big plays when doing so. With the defense unable to key in on just one or even two players, it can really stress them. Without Wicks, Malik Heath stepped up.
— Lions were 0-for-4 on fourth downs and the Packers punt return unit sniffed out the fake punt attempt by Detroit. Dan Campbell has shown be to very aggressive in those instances and Rich Bisaccia was ready for it with that alignment. Kingsley Enagbare did a very good job setting the edge.