The Packers need to stop shooting themselves (REDACTED)

Sunday's loss felt like groundhog day. It is not the loss itself; The Packers are 6-3 despite missing quarterback Jordan Love for two games, and he's playing less than 100% in almost every other game, but in the way the game unfolded. The Packers took penalties, drops and then a really bad decision from the franchise quarterback, and the Detroit Lions are far too competent a team to survive that cacophony of mistakes.

All told, the Packers officially dropped five passes on Sunday (per PFF) and actually dropped six, but Bo Melton's drop was negated by a targeting penalty and the subsequent ejection of Brian Branch. These drops also don't include at least one very bad misreading of a ball by Christian Watson that would have amounted to a walk-in touchdown.

Watson has another one later in the game that's less formidable in the end zone but still looks like he mistimed his jump.

This series of errors was limited to the receiving corps, but they are far from the only ones at fault here. The team managed to rack up another double-digit penalty output, 10 for a surprisingly low 67 yards. A good portion of the yardage came from a frankly bad call on Keisean Nixon to open the game, but the Packers' offense managed to rack up a handful of procedural penalties with four false starts and an (intentional) delay of game. The running performance wasn't great on Sunday, but the offense had to dig out of deeper holes in sloppy conditions And Then the receivers applying Crisco to their gloves was a recipe for disaster.

The icing on the cake was that Jordan Love did the Jordan Levis twice in this game, which somehow only resulted in one interception.

The second may just be worse in terms of process. It's 2nd and 1 on the Lions 9. There's no reason to try to be a hero here. Love avoids a sack that would have pushed them all the way back to the 22 yard line, and then almost goes out of bounds at the 18 yard line before, I think(?), trying to throw the ball back down the field to someone ? Once the play breaks down here, given the context, he simply needs to be thrown out of the back of the end zone and survive to compete on the next two downs.

Put all of this together and it becomes extremely difficult to create a team as complete as the Detroit Lions, who are currently ranked #1 in FTN's DVOA.

These problems are not new either and need to be comprehensively addressed after the bye week. The Packers currently rank ninth-worst in the NFL in penalties per game, averaging 7.3 per game. In terms of mileage, they perform slightly better with only fourteen worst values. The Packers are eighth-worst with thirteen false start penalties, fourth-worst in offensive balls and third-worst in defensive offside penalties. The false starts were spread throughout the offense, but holding was a particular problem for Rasheed Walker, who was warned about the penalty more than anyone other than Patrick Mekari in the league.

While the offensive line struggled with penalties, the receiving corps struggled greatly with drops. According to PFF, only Daniel Jones and Deshaun Watson have higher drop rates than Jordan Love this season at 9.8%. For comparison, the league's average drop rate is around 4.5%. The good news for the Packers passing game is that drops can be an unstable statistic. Just because they've struggled so far doesn't mean they'll continue to be among the least secure receivers in the league. The most notable offenders this season are Dontayvion Wicks and Jayden Reed. Wicks has a staggering 27% drop rate and Jayden Reed is at 16%. Last season, Wicks only completed 5% of passes, while Reed only completed 4%. It's entirely possible that this bout of decline that has affected Wicks and Reed so far will disappear in the second half of the season and the passing game will improve in that way.

The final recurring pain point for the passing game is that of Love himself. His interception last weekend was eerily similar to his pick-six interception against the Rams. Although Love has not been overly aggressive with the ball this season, he has at least been overly careless with the ball, and he has also been unusually penalized for it. Love is tied for the league lead with 10 interceptions this year, which is exactly the number of turnover plays PFF attributes to him. Last year, there were 737 turnover-worthy plays and just 443 interceptions, according to PFF charts. Now, it's important to note that fumbles also play a role here, and unfortunately there isn't much clarity as to which fumbles are considered TWPs and which are not. If Love's interceptions go down to about 70% of TWPs, he'll be at seven interceptions instead of 10, and Green Bay could get another win, or even two. That doesn't excuse Love's decision-making, which has been worse so far this season than last season, when his TWP percentage was half what it was so far this season, but it does suggest that even with some questionable decisions being made, he was penalized quite severely for this and it's unlikely that this TWP to INT rate will continue over the course of the season.

The Packers have been an incredibly frustrating group this season, especially in the passing offense. On the bright side, the Lightning are still there and many of their problems aren't that serious statistically. All they have to do is stop shooting themselves in the (REDACTED).