Packers Lose Third Straight: Packers 17, Lions 30

Sometimes you lose by 13 points and the game is closer than the score might indicate. This was the opposite of that for the Green Bay Packers. They were outplayed badly on defense and on offense. They came off the bye week as flat as any well rested team can be. I mentally checked out in the 2nd quarter and started comparing them to the 1987 Green Bay Packers (the defense was better that season). A team that can't score more than 20 points or hold any opponent to under 20 points is going to be bad.

The only Packer with more than one pressure tonight was Mike Daniels. He had 2. 7 Packers had double digit pass rushes.

— Nathan Jahnke (@PFF_NateJahnke) November 7, 2017

The Lions can't run the ball (and didn't) but they have an effective short passing game that feasted on a Packer team with no pass rush and defensive backs who couldn't keep up with any receivers (they only recorded 1 pass defense). I wasn't optimistic about the secondary coming into the season. They've been better than last season's horror show but they're still bad.

#Packers CB Damarious Randall on the defense: “We just shitted the bed. Point blank. Period.”

— Michael Cohen (@Michael_Cohen13) November 7, 2017

The good news is that the defense is going to look a whole lot better over their next two games, when they battle two quarterbacks (Mitchell Trubisky and Joe Elite Flacco) who have lower QBRs than Brett Hundley.

That 4th down play is what 3 years with a QB you realize isn’t any good looks like.

— Tom Crabtree (@itsCrab) November 7, 2017

Midway through the 3rd quarter, the Packers had the ball on 4th down at midfield. If Aaron Rodgers was on the field, the Packers would have run a quick slant or maybe a naked bootleg off play action. But with Hundley, they ran a pseudo jet sweep with WR Randall Cobb that lost 3 yards, and led to the above tweet by former Packer TE Tom Crabtree.

Maybe he's just the next great garbage time quarterback. Until early in the 4th quarter it looked like he would be held to under 100 yards passing for the 2nd straight game but two late touchdown drives after the game was out of reach boosted his passing yardage to 245, his completion percentage to 68.4% and his QBR to 51.5.

The optimist sees that 4th quarter and thinks he's adjusting to the starting role. The realist is still thinking back to the 2nd quarter:

Help pic.twitter.com/LkFUcMkn9K

— Justis Mosqueda (@JuMosq) November 7, 2017

He's been really bad over the past 2+ games but there aren't any better solutions on the roster. He got his starting offensive line back (except now it looks like Bryan Bulaga's season is over) and maybe 4 out of 5 ain't bad. The 4th quarter was probably a mirage but an optimist can say it was a sign of hope. It doesn't get any easier for him the rest of November with three good to great defenses ahead on the schedule. I'm not expecting any playoff run in their future but I do hope that Hundley can keep improving enough to make their games watchable and competitive for the rest of the season.