The story of the 2025 Green Bay Packers has been the complete opposite of where they were a year ago.
The 2024 Packers were a good team, finishing the regular season 11-6 and securing a postseason spot. They beat playoff teams like the Los Angeles Rams and Houston Texans along the way. Still, they couldn’t get over the hump against the NFC elite, going 0-6 against the Philadelphia Eagles, Detroit Lions, and Minnesota Vikings.
Green Bay is also a good team this year, sitting 5-2-1 in first place in the NFC North, the only division where every team is .500 or better. Unlike 2024, when they couldn’t beat the elite, this year, they make things harder than necessary against inferior opponents.
Green Bay opened its 2025 season with back-to-back wins over the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders, two of the NFC’s top four teams a year ago. It was an encouraging start until they lost 13-10 to the winless Cleveland Browns, who scored all 13 points with less than four minutes to go.
Green Bay’s offense bounced back the following week, putting up 40 points against a bad Dallas Cowboys defense. The problem? Their own defense also gave up 40. Dak Prescott had an outlier performance, but Jeff Hafley’s unit couldn’t stop the bleeding that Sunday night. After starting 2-0, Green Bay went 0-1-1 in a game where they were 7.5-point favorites and another against a mediocre Cowboys squad.
The Packers went 2-0 against the Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals after the bye, games they were favored to win. Make no mistake, the 27-18 win over the Bengals doesn’t tell the full story. It was much closer than it should have been. For context, Cincinnati’s opponents outscored them 113-37 in their previous three games, yet the Packers were only up three points with a few minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Arizona had lost its previous four games by a combined nine points. However, don’t forget their collapse against the NFL’s worst team, the Tennessee Titans, just two weeks earlier. Sure, they might have been better than their record showed, but this is by no means a good football team. It took four quarters for Green Bay to get the win, and you could argue they wouldn’t have left the desert with it if Micah Parsons hadn’t turned into Superman.
It was a frustrating Sunday afternoon for Packers fans when Green Bay fell 16-13 at home to the Carolina Panthers. The defense couldn’t stop the run, special teams were a mess, and Matt LaFleur kept spamming screen passes despite having one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league.
Instead of putting the ball in Jordan Love’s hands on a crucial third-and-four inside the red zone, LaFleur called a screen that lost four yards. Then he went for it on fourth-and-eight instead of taking the points, resulting in one of the most hilarious plays of the season.
Green Bay tied the game after the two-minute warning, but Carolina marched down the field for the game-winning field goal. LaFleur’s decision to go for it instead proved costly. Furthermore, Brandon McManus missed an easy field goal earlier, which also didn’t help – the Packers ended up losing by three.
The Packers will enter Week 10 with only two losses, but to the Browns and Panthers — hardly perennial playoff teams. On top of that, they made things harder than they needed to against the Bengals, Cardinals, and Cowboys, who combined for an 8-15-1 record.
I haven’t even mentioned Green Bay’s 35-25 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Packers had a flawless second half, but they were down 16-7 at halftime and couldn’t move the ball against a Steelers defense that ranked in the bottom 12 in EPA per play and success rate. Pittsburgh is on track to be a playoff team, yet it’s astonishing how Green Bay makes things so much harder on themselves.
Unlike 2024, the Packers have shown they can beat the top teams in the NFC. Still, their inability to stay out of their own way, especially against inferior opponents, is a concerning trend that could derail their chances of hosting a playoff game and making a deep run. LaFleur keeps saying in the press that it starts with him and that the team hasn’t executed. Well, it’s time to take action instead of repeating the same lines every week.
