Sunday night was not how the Green Bay Packers expected it to go. Sure, the Denver Broncos played their starters and were expected to win, but the Packers' performance was not close to good — and it was even harder to evaluate individual pieces.
Head coach Matt LaFleur was disappointed with how the team played, especially because the performance in the joint practice on Friday had not been good either.
"I was hoping that our guys would come out with more strain, effort, grit after getting humbled the other day in practice," LaFleur said. "It's a good lesson for our guys in terms of, it doesn't matter who is out there, if you don't put your best each and every time you go on the field, these things happen to you."
The Packers have one last preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday, at Lambeau Field, and it's a good opportunity to leave a better impression before the regular season opener in Brazil, on September 6, against the Philadelphia Eagles.
"We're going to have to regroup, take a long, hard look at the mirror and we gotta get better," LaFleur added. "We need that urgency from everybody."
Quarterback play
Just like most starters, quarterback Jordan Love didn't play on Sunday. LaFleur's plan was to take advantage of the joint practice to see what he wanted from the main players, while giving younger pieces more game reps.
Sean Clifford and Michael Pratt, though, didn't take advantage of the opportunity — especially Clifford, who had a really tough first half.
LaFleur clearly wasn't happy with their performance, even though he mentioned how the entire offense is responsible for what happened in Denver.
"The production kind of speaks for it, but it wasn't just on them," LaFleur pointed out. "It's everybody, it's all eleven. We gotta block better upfront, we gotta finish runs better, we had a couple drops. So I think it's just collectively all eleven gotta be better for us to have any success offensively."
Last week of camp
The Packers have their last two open practices of training camp this week, on Tuesday and Thursday — the last one will be a joint practice with the Baltimore Ravens in Green Bay ahead of their preseason matchup on Saturday.
Matt LaFleur hasn't announced if starters will play in week 3 of the preseason. Since the NFL got rid of the fourth exhibition game, there is now a bye week between the last preseason game and the first regular season one.
The final cut day to build the initial 53-man roster is next Tuesday, August 27, three days after the preseason finale.
