The Green Bay Packers ate good on Thanksgiving with a sweet, sweet victory over the Detroit Lions.
The heavily injured Packer squad punched above their weight class and started strong over a Lions group considered to be one of the NFC’s best. For once, all three phases showed up to play complementary football against their division rival. Jordan Love and the offense were explosive early, the defense forced takeaways and made Jared Goff‘s life miserable, and special teams mostly helped rather than hindered.
Credit to Joe Barry: For most of the game, his (justifiably) oft-maligned scheme looked like an actual NFL defense. Led by Rashan Gary and the pass rush, the defense mostly limited opportunities for the Lions and set Green Bay’s offense up for success.
Barry has had more downs than ups in his history as a defensive coordinator, but he’s ended the last two seasons on a high note. Can he keep generating pressure on opposing quarterbacks and help the Packers with a potential playoff push?
That last sentence feels like a fever dream after watching this team play for most of the season. But with the offense starting to click and Barry’s aggressive game plan, the postseason is actually in sight.
Contrary to years past, the Lions are a team on the rise. They entered Thursday’s game with an 8-2 record and one of the NFL’s best offensive lines.
Rashan Gary and the pass rush made them look like the Lions of old.
Gary was on a tear in the stadium that ended his season last year. His revenge took the form of three sacks, two forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery. His three-sack day made him one of nine Packers to have multiple three-sack games and the seventh to have two or more three-sack games in a season.
Gary caused the momentum-altering fumble that Jonathan Owens returned in the first quarter.
“I know I tipped the ball,” Gary said after the game. “I didn’t know what it was going to be. When I got up, I saw J.O. in the end zone, so I said, ‘Oh, that’s what’s up.'”
Though Gary was the defensive MVP, his squadmates showed up in a big way. Preston Smith had a big hit on a fourth down stop to force an incompletion. Lukas Van Ness stopped the fake punt with some help from Kingsley Enagbare. The interior pass rush showed up, too, with Kenny Clark and BGSU’s finest Karl Brooks making impactful plays.
Barry’s defense is often too passive, and we did see that toward the end of the game. But for the most part, the pass rush ran with aggression and hunger. And Detroit’s offensive line is no slouch. This was a dominant performance against a good team.
They’ll need complementary football like this to stand a chance of making a late-season push. Green Bay struggled during the easier part of their schedule, losing games to the Las Vegas Raiders, Denver Broncos, and Minnesota Vikings. But the final stretch of their season isn’t bad either.
They face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night. But KC’s offense has struggled, and even Taylor Swift’s immense power can only help so much. The Packers could steal a win in the same place where Jordan Love made his first start.
After that, they face the New York Giants, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Carolina Panthers, Vikings, and Chicago Bears. The Giants and Panthers are two of the worst teams in the league, and they’ve consistently eaten Chicago’s lunch. Tampa Bay hasn’t been amazing, leaving the Vikings as the only truly threatening team in that stretch.
Beating up on bad defenses is what a good defensive coordinator with a stacked roster should do. And Barry has done well in the final quarter of seasons in the past. It’s hard to have faith in his overall body of work, and it’s frightful to think if he does well enough to end this season that he could get an extension. But if Barry can keep this aggressive pattern up and get after quarterbacks, Green Bay could do the improbable and push for a playoff spot.
Green Bay still has plenty of issues and a ways to go before they look like a top-of-the-league group. But making the playoffs, even as a seventh seed, would be a boon for the culture of this young team. Learning to win is a process, and a playoff appearance would be something beautiful to build off of in 2024.
The talent is certainly there on the pass rush, but the game plan needs to consistently cultivate the right mindset and plow ahead with full force. If Barry can build on Thursday’s win, Green Bay could make an exciting final push.
