While no team really gets to feel truly good about itself leaving on Sunday considering the Vikings may have lost Kirk Cousins for the foreseeable future, the Packers sure feel worse.
At least the odds at a top draft pick improved, right?
After a 24-10 loss to fall to 2-5, here's who bears the blame for Green Bay.
Rasul Douglas
With the game still 10-3, Rasul Douglas was complicit in a T.J. Hockensen touchdown that allowed Hockensen to show off his route-running ability more than his physicality. Giving up a touchdown is never good, but for tight ends like Hockensen, sometimes you have to accept that they can simply go up for a jump ball and haul it in no matter how good the coverage is.
In this case, though, Hockensen just gets open off a good route. Or, perhaps, he gets lucky off a huge Packers miscommunication:
While there is also potentially some fault to share here for Jonathan Owens who moved to the right, Douglas adjusted far too late to fill in the gap and gave an easy, meaningful touchdown to the Vikes.
Douglas has performed well most of the season, graded 80.7 by PFF, including an 85.6 in coverage, 10th-best among all players with at least 100 snaps in coverage.
This key play, though, a massive game-changer that swung the likelihood of a win far lower for Green Bay.
Jaire Alexander
Unlike Douglas, his defensive counterpart on the opposite side, Jaire Alexander, doesn't have weeks of goodwill built up to help protect his reputation. Alexander has graded 66.3 in coverage. OK, but not quite good. He's been a disappointing fixture on the defensive end the last several weeks.
Though the game wasn't as up for grabs here, Alexander got burned too:
The Packers were stil in this one until these late touchdowns came, punished by the Vikings red zone passing attack. The inability from the secondary to lock down receiving threats when it mattered most may not have lost the game for Green Bay, but it sure helped keep it completely out of reach.
A rookie's fresh legs might have been to Jordan Addison's advantage in this particular instance, but Alexander's reaction was clearly a half-step behind here making his chances of making a play on the ball a longshot.
To go along with that touchdown, Addison pulled in 82 yards on seven catches, one of several receivers Kirk Cousins and Jaren Hall were able to find all afternoon.
Plays like this make it look as if some of the team is simply resigned to the cause, which is even more alarming than just getting beat. That, ultimately, feels like a coaching problem, which brings us to our third to-blame...
Matt LaFleur
The Packers are an ugly team to watch right now. Nothing is clicking as the team has now lost four games since it pulled off a huge comeback win over the New Orleans Saints in Week 3. It's not quantifiable, but it's hard to say anyone in the Packers building appears to want it. The culture is shot, the energy is just not there. That, to me, is a coaching problem, with Matt LaFleur deserving of the blame.
On the field, the team, as a whole, could be characterized as undisciplined and unprepared. Check out this play where no one seems to be on the same page about what's going on:
Plays like this look like the results of practice not being taken seriously. That falls on LaFleur and the coaching staff.
That one play paints an illustrating picture of why there's one notable absence from the blame game for the Packers this week...
I've left Jordan Love off here. While Love didn't look good, I also don't think the young quarterback looked actively bad. He turned some trash into treasure a few times on Sunday, as he has plenty over the last several weeks. Game plan elements and execution on the plays called set Love up for an atrocious performance.
The offensive stats appear at first glance to be an indictment on Love, but don't get that twisted: They say more about LaFleur and the coaching staff than they ever could about Love.
Back to LaFleur, it's hard to understand, much less justify how and why the game plan is being rolled out the way it is. Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon combined for 13 carries all game. Shotgun passing plays were called on the goal line. There's never a guaranteed right play to call, but the time to be inventive and unpredictable is not necessarily when you're trailing and trying to merely stack up some good plays.
Extremely tough circumstances for the Packers, who host the Rams next Sunday at home.
