Aaron Rodgers just wants the Packers to be the Packers again. It didn’t happen Sunday night against the Bills.
These Packers dropped their fourth game in a row, 27-17 to AFC heavyweight Buffalo on “Sunday Night Football.” It’s the first time Green Bay has lost four consecutive since 2016, Green Bay (3-5) now heads into a stretch of games that will be pivotal if the team wants to avoid missing the playoffs for the first time since 2018.
Rodgers might not be telling everyone to just relax at this point, but he does believe there’s one simple thing that can help turn the team around: just win.
“Nobody feels sorry for us and we’ve got to find a way to get one win,” he said. “I feel like if we can just get one, then the whole momentum changes.”
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Rodgers said he felt the team had a great week of practice and had a different level of energy before the game and in the locker room than previous weeks.
“Felt like Packers again. I felt like, for whatever reason, we didn’t have the confidence for a few weeks and weren’t playing with a lot of energy, weren’t amped up before the game, so I liked the way we felt before the game,” he said. “Maybe it’s not football, maybe it was being counted out, maybe it was this environment, but that’s encouraging. But the play in the first half wasn’t very encouraging.”
Heading up to Buffalo to face the Bills was always going to be a challenge for the Packers, who were coming off losses to the Giants, Jets and Commanders. But the pressure was still high for Green Bay to pick up a win and move back to .500, particularly after the Vikings won Sunday afternoon to move to 6-1.
With the record now 3-5 and the team 3.5 games out of first place, the Packers face an important stretch of games coming up: the Lions in an NFC North game, followed by the Cowboys, Titans, Eagles and Bears before a bye.
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The Packers could muster only seven points in the first half, on a touchdown pass from Rodgers to Romeo Doubs with 6:15 left in the second quarter. The Bills, on the other hand, scored on four of five possessions to take a 24-7 lead at the half.
While Buffalo was held in check in the second half, Green Bay scored a field goal on the first drive of the third quarter and a touchdown on the penultimate drive of the game. It never brought the margin to a single possession.
Rodgers praised the Packers’ running game, which accounted for 208 yards on 31 carries, but overall, he said, the team was “hurting ourselves.”
“We’ve got to help our defense out a little bit early in the game. I think when we went on a run back in [2016], we started those games faster so we can play more one-dimensionally on defense. We just haven’t done that,” Rodgers said. “We haven’t put up any points early in the games to get our defenses a chance to kind of pin their ears back and get after the passer.”
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Rodgers said the most important thing for the team will be to “take a beat.” He added that the players need to avoid responding with emotion after the loss.
“Take a beat. Let it sit. There’s not a whole lot to say after the game that’s really going to spark the team, I don’t think,” Rodgers said. “It’s more the conversations on the plane with the guys, it’s the leadership conversations we have on Monday, tomorrow, and come in with a message this week that is what we need.”