On its own, the Green Bay Packers going to Detroit and coming away with the win over the 8-2 Lions was impressive. However, an added layer to it all — making the Packers’ performance even more grand — was that Green Bay was quite short-handed.
The Packers were once again without Jaire Alexander and Rudy Ford on the back end of their defense. In fact, Green Bay was without any of its Week 1 preferred starters in the secondary. De’Vondre Campbell was out at linebacker while on the other side of the ball, the Packers were without Aaron Jones, and we all know how much he means to this offense.
Luke Musgrave and Dontayvion Wicks have been two of the catalysts that have helped spark the Packers’ recent surge on offense, but they were out as well, as was Josiah Degaura, leaving Green Bay with only two true tight ends.
Another way to put into perspective how short-handed the Packers were on Sunday is through the salary cap lens. Salary cap guru Ken Ingalls, who independently tracks the Packers’ salary cap situation, broke down the numbers, and in short, Green Bay was without 55.5 percent of its 2023 cap space on Thursday.
The 2023 Salary Cap is $224.8M.
Yesterday the Green Bay Packers played & won a football game with $124.76M (55.5%) of cap space unavailable on the field.
Dead: $66.37M
IR: $30.24M
Jaire: $10.76M
Jones: $8.20M
Campbell: $5.53M
Rudy: $1.50M
Degura: $1.34M
Wicks: $0.83M https://t.co/EqufkBVywB— Ken Ingalls – Packers Cap 💰 (@KenIngalls) November 24, 2023
In instances like this, teams need their best players to play as such, and the Packers got those contributions. At quarterback – the most important position in the game – Jordan Love had the best performance of his career. Christian Watson had by far his best game of the season, while Kenny Clark and Rashan Gary were incredibly disruptive.
On an already inexperienced team, the Packers were forced to rely on several players that, at the start of the season at least, likely weren’t going to play any role in 2023 or a small one at that. Wide receiver Malik Heath made the most of his opportunities, catching all four targets for 46 yards while running just five routes, along with throwing some key blocks along the way.
Also on offense, Tucker Kraft stepped into Musgrave’s TE1 role and came away with his first NFL touchdown, while Henry Pearson was elevated from the practice squad for his first NFL game and was a core special teams player in Deguara’s absence.
The secondary, made up of two seventh-round rookies in Carrington Valentine and Anthony Johnson, along with backup safety Jonathan Owens and practice squad/special teams player Corey Ballentine, all played 100 percent of the defensive snaps on a short week. For the most part, and with the help of the pass rush, they were able to limit Detroit’s impact through the air.
“It was cool to see a lot of young guys get their first opportunity to go out there and play and make some big time contributions,” said Matt LaFleur after the win. “I know Malik’s (Heath) been up for the last couple of weeks, but he had four catches today and made some big plays. It was cool to see Tucker Kraft get his first touchdown. Henry Pearson made his debut on his birthday, ironically enough. And then the guys on the back-end continuing to play hard. Guys like CV (Carrington Valentine), Corey Ballentine, JO (Jonathan Owens) having a big touchdown.”
Despite all of the injuries that Green Bay was dealing with, where they were healthy was in the trenches on both sides of the ball. As LaFleur said afterward, that was ultimately where he believes the game was won. Against two excellent Detroit fronts, PFF credited the Packers offensive line with allowing only 10 pressures in the game, while conversely, Jared Goff was pressured 33 times and under pressure on 52 percent of his dropbacks.
Understandably so – and deservedly so – the play of Love and the passing game in this performance will garner a lot of attention. However, as is going to be the case when a team is dealing with numerous injuries, this victory was really a total team win by the Packers, and that is why LaFleur gave everyone in that locker room a game ball following Thursday’s performance.
“Gosh, I’m just so proud of our guys,” said LaFleur. “Our coaches and everybody just sticking together. We were down a lot of bodies, obviously. For our guys to come out and battle against a really good opponent in their stadium, it got a little interesting at the end, but we had enough to hold on. But I can’t tell you how happy I am for the guys in that locker room.”
