I still go back and forth on trying to get a good read for just where we're at right now.
I certainly wouldn't say we're a GOOD team really right now. There's just not really any reasonable objective standard by which I could say that.
But I also think we are probably not as BAD as we have looked at times, either.
For instance go back to Week 1. You see two very different Packers performances. Is the first ~3 quarters or so more representative of the team's "true level," or is the 4th quarter more true to our actual identity and the early part of the game was just a fluke? The truth is somewhere in the middle. In all of our games there HAS been a lot of things that we have done right. But at the same time we have been undone and lost or made it closer than it needed to be, often due to our own mistakes.
That said, I do think there's a big difference here. If you run into a team who is just flat-out better than you and they just manhandle you, it is what it is. Sometimes you just lose to a much better team and there's not much you can do about it. But for me, I think I try to hypothetically compare "best execution," if that makes sense - that is to say, I ask myself, if my team executes to perfection and my opponent executes to perfection, how does this matchup look? Obviously, the game that is actually played on the field ultimately matters a lot more than the hypothetical one I might envision, but I guess my point is to say that it's sometimes useful to take a hard look at the ways we might beat ourselves.
And so it's like....credit where credit is due - I don't want to completely minimize our opponents but at the same time we have contributed a LOT to our own struggles this season...OR have simply struggled to deal with adversity in some situations. Again thinking back to Minnesota, I think we probably all would agree...it's not that the Vikings suddenly transformed into this dominant force and there was nothing we could do to put up any resistance. No, it was more that we just repeatedly tripped over our own feet. I still hold that this was more a game that we lost than they won, basically.
Against the Jets we won of course, but it was really ugly. But again, it's not as though the Jets simply dominated us or we were just totally outmatched. The conditions were bad, we had a ton of penalties, dealt with major injuries, Love played with a numb hand, etc. Even against Atlanta where we got ran all over, we were in a really good position until a roughing call gave them new life. It's impossible to say but IMO if that call doesn't go that way then we likely go up and it's a lot harder to commit to the ground game when you're playing catch up. Maybe we still lose but that pretty significantly changed the momentum/direction/etc. And against Tampa, they did basically nothing. We just had some untimely penalties and turnovers that made it get pretty dicey.
And I don't say any of that to be "excuses" per se. These things are all part of the game, and things like being turnover-prone, undisciplined, unable to cope with adversity, unable to "reclaim" a momentum shift, etc...those are a real part of our "team identity" right now and they have a big impact on our performances. But I guess my point is to say that many of these things are at least conceivably able to be overcome. They are largely issues of mentality or execution rather than simply being an inferior team who is outmatched talent-wise in every matchup. When you consider the truly BAD bad teams in the league, someone like the Dolphins or the Titans and the like...even IF they execute well, they are going to have a very hard time winning. At bare minimum I do not consider us to be anywhere near that category.
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GB @ DET
