The Packers’ passing game has struggled of late, and there’s nothing coach Matt LaFleur would like more than for his offense to find its groove again in Sunday’s NFC wild-card game on the road against the second-seeded Eagles.
Of course, it helps that the Packers’ two quarterbacks — starter Jordan Love and backup Malik Willis — seem to have recovered from injuries that affected their ability to throw the ball during the team’s loss to the Bears in last Sunday’s regular-season finale.
Love, who had numbness in his right hand after banging his right elbow on the Lambeau Field turf during the second quarter, was limited in practice earlier in this week because of the injury, although he said his hand was “pretty much feeling back to normal” by the next morning.
By Friday, Love was completely off the injury report.
“He did well,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said after the day’s practice. “Today was a good day.”
Meanwhile Willis, who injured the thumb on his right hand on a Bears defender’s helmet during the fourth quarter, also started the week limited in practice and finished it off the injury report and a full participant in Friday’s practice.
The Packers’ passing game that was on a roll for much of the second half of the regular season until the team’s back-to-back losses to the Vikings and the Bears the last two weeks.
The Packers finished the regular season eighth in scoring offense (27.1 points per game) and fifth in total offense (370.8 yards per game).
In the passing game, they were 12th in yards per game (223.9), but were third in passing yards per play (7.95), because running back Josh Jacobs and the ground game became such a focal point and Love wasn’t asked to carry the offense as much as he had at times last season.
But against the Vikings and Bears, the Packers quarterbacks combined to complete 36 of 55 passes for 390 yards with one touchdown, no interceptions and six sacks.
Love, who in the prior five games had 1,054 yards with eight touchdowns and no interceptions, hit on just 61.9% of his passes in the final two games and threw just the one TD pass.
“It’s everything,” Love said when asked what needs to happen for his accuracy to improve and for the passing game to be more productive. “It’s footwork, the timing of the play, being on the same page with receivers, obviously your fundamentals throwing the ball, making sure everything’s on point.
“There’s a lot of things that play into that, but it comes down to just being locked in on the details, and just going out there and doing the same thing you do in practice — make sure everything transfers over to the game.”
Making matters more difficult: The Packers will be without big-play option Christian Watson, who suffered a torn ACL in his right knee against the Bears and is out for the season.
“Not having Christian, we all are upset about that. Christian is one of the best players on this team,” said Bo Melton, one of the receivers who could get more opportunities now. “I feel like everybody in our room can step up. ... We’ll be ready.”
Jefferson wants 1st playoff win: Justin Jefferson has smashed all kinds of NFL receiving records over his first five seasons, and he was just voted as an unanimous selection for first team All-Pro.
Winning a playoff game with the Vikings is the next — long overdue — feat on his list. A performance matching his superstar status would go a long way toward getting that done.
“It’s definitely important to have those moments,” Jefferson said after practice on Friday. “It’s win or go home. You have those moments, or you miss those moments and you wish had those moments after the season. So you definitely don’t want to have those type of conversations.”
For all the spectacular aspects of Jefferson’s career, he has only taken part in one postseason. The Vikings won the NFC North at 13-4 in 2022, but they lost at home in the wild-card round to the Giants.
The next opportunity comes on Monday night in Arizona, where the Vikings, as a 14-3 wild card team, will face the NFC West champion Rams in a game moved because of the Southern California wildfires.
The Vikings entered playoff mode one week early, with their road game against the Lions that decided the NFC’s No. 1 seed and the division title. The experience can do nothing but help despite the 31-9 loss, in which quarterback Sam Darnold turned in his worst game of the season at the worst time.
“Our entire operation needed to have a reflection and a time period where we acknowledged what happened,” coach Kevin O’Connell said. “We tried to identify the things we absolutely need to fix, and that’s individual players like Sam and many others, and that’s coaches.”
Darnold went 18 for 41 overall and just 3 for 9 when targeting Jefferson, resulting in the second-lowest catch percentage of Jefferson’s career.