Wow! The Packers again pulled victory from the jaws of defeat with Jordan Love’s first fourth-quarter comeback of the season. The Texans were probably the NFL’s second or third best team going into this game, admittedly, hobbled, so you’d think we wouldn’t need to focus on Packers positives, but twitter is as negative as always so let’s get into them.
• Can’t bury the lede here, the defense is obviously the number one positive of the day. Who cares if they didn’t have Nico Collins, the Packers pressured CJ Stroud half the time and held him under 100 pass yards. Stroud is the best QB on a rookie contract in the NFL and one of the top five or so altogether. Holding him under 100 yards is something a Packers defense hasn’t been capable of in 15 years.
• Jaire Alexander is back to elite number one corner status and completely stifled Stephon Diggs in this game. None of the Texans receivers could get anything going but you could tell Stroud was looking for Diggs and finding nothing.
• Sadly, I couldn’t find pressure stats anywhere as I write this on Sunday night, but it at least looked like Rashan Gary was hassling the QB a lot more than he has been in the disappointing first half of the season.
• Evan Williams could be a DROY candidate. He had 9 tackles in this one including a big two-point conversion stop (remember we won by two points). I don’t want to keep saying this, but he’s the type of safety we haven’t gotten to watch here in a long time.
• Quay Walker got hurt in this one and Eric Wilson stepped up with six tackles and two sacks. Edgerrin Cooper had two TFLs. Let’s hope Cooper earns a starting spot if Quay is out for a while.
• 300 words in and we’re finally going to talk about the offense. Starting to sound like a broken record with this, but it is positive that Jordan Love threw two bad picks and still had the gumption to lead the team to the win in the 4th. Too often over the past 15 years, a start like that would be the end in itself. Of course, it would’ve been better to just kick their ass and not have the turnovers.
• Dontayvion Wicks and Romeo Doubs got in on the passing game in a big way – when teams leave everything on the line to take Jayden Reed out of the game, someone needs to step up and they did.
• Tucker Kraft had a tud for another good entry in his quest to make people say, “Huh. Is Tucker Kraft the best tight end in the NFL? No, he can’t be… well, maybe.”
• Let’s end with Josh Jacobs who averaged 6.3 yards per carry and had his first career receiving touchdown (wth??). It didn’t even feel like Jacobs touched the ball that many times but at 21 it’s more than we would’ve felt comfortable with Aaron Jones getting. Not to compare Jacobs to the ex, but what he’s doing is commendable.
