Green Bay is 1-1 after a 20-17 overtime win over the Jets, and the record is the least informative thing about it. Jordan Love finished 16-of-29 for 145 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, a 91.9 passer rating and a 37.6 QBR. That gap is the game. The rating says he was fine. The QBR says the Packers' passing game was barely functioning on a per-play basis: 5.0 yards per attempt, three sacks taken for 9 yards, 55.2 percent completion. Green Bay won this one on defense and on the ground the ball bounced.
Start with what Love actually produced. A 6-yard touchdown to MarShawn Lloyd and a 20-yarder to Christian Watson, who needed 11 targets to catch four passes for 41 yards. Matthew Golden was the most efficient receiver on the field, 4 catches on 6 targets for 58 yards, and he didn't score. When the secondary target outproduces the primary one in yards per target, the passing game is distributing by default rather than by design. Two touchdown passes can hide 145 yards. They shouldn't.
The defense is why Green Bay is .500 instead of 0-2. Lukas Van Ness put up 10 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 3 tackles for loss and 4 quarterback hits. Evan Williams matched the 10 tackles with 7 solo stops, a tackle for loss and 2 pass breakups. Geno Smith spent the afternoon as the Jets' leading passer and one of their listed rushing leaders, which tells you how little room the New York backfield had to work with. Breece Hall, Isaiah Williams and Braelon Allen all logged carries and none of them separated from Smith in the category standings.
Now the part that won't repeat. Four Packers put the ball on the ground: Love, Kaleb Johnson, Tucker Kraft and Lloyd. Green Bay recovered three of them. Lloyd's was the one that cost them, the only lost fumble in the game. Four fumbles against one recovery loss is a coin flip dressed up as ball security, and it's the single biggest reason a 5.0-yards-per-attempt offense got to 20 points. Add Skyy Moore's return work, 4 punts for 92 yards with a 63-yarder and 4 kickoffs for 116 yards at 29.0 a pop, and you have a team winning on hidden yardage and recovered fumbles while its quarterback throws for 145.
The overtime itself was compressed. Regulation ended at 0:00 in the fourth. Play resumed with an official timeout at 7:29 of the fifth quarter and the game ended at 5:23, meaning the final 2:06 of clock ran basically uninterrupted to the deciding sequence. Short window, thin margin, and the Jets are 1-1 with the same problem the Packers have: neither offense could put the other away in sixty minutes.
Here's the call. Green Bay's 20 points are a defensive and special-teams product, and the passing offense underneath them is the weakest part of the operation. Love at 5.0 yards per attempt with a 37.6 QBR is not a formula that survives a schedule with better secondaries on it. The fumble recoveries will regress, the punt returns won't average 23 yards a pop, and when they do, the Packers will need Love to throw them to a win instead of asking Van Ness and Williams to tackle their way to one. I'll take the under on this formula holding.
— The Sharp
