Brett Favre and his receivers seemed to be in a zone last Sunday, hooking up for four touchdowns and 360 yards against the Colts. Granted, they were playing catch-up for a significant part of the game, but those are still gaudy aerial numbers for a club that has admittedly become a "running team" over the past few seasons.
Running or passing - word around the Packers locker room this week was that the offense is ready to get back on the field and pick up where the explosive performance left off last week.
Wide receiver Javon Walker, who is coming off a career day at Indy and with another 100-yard performance against the Giants Sunday would become the first Packer to have three consecutive century receiving games since Robert Brooks in 1995, feels that he and his fellow receivers need to continue their hot streak.
He also knows that the Packers desperately need a win Sunday to avoid getting off to a 1-3 start.
"We need a turnaround this weekend," Walker said. "We need to get a win to put us in position like we were last year. For me, I need to go out and work hard. That's the thing about us wide receivers - no matter what we do, we still have to go out and work hard because the next team is going be ready for us and game planning ways to stop our offense."
Right tackle Mark Tauscher was asked if he thought the team needed to come out Sunday and re-establish themselves as a dominant running team.
"I don't know how important that is," said Tauscher. "Putting points up on the board and winning games is important. If we score 38, 31 points and not have 200 yards rushing, I'm fine with that. We realize running the football is what makes us successful here, but a good balance and something that makes us score points is the most important part of what we're doing.
"We want to make explosive plays. If we get an 80-yard touchdown pass, we're excited about that."
Walker's emergence over the past year, along with the continued steady play of Donald Driver and Robert Ferguson, has really given Favre a wealth of targets to look for when he drops back to pass.
Walker, who as a third-year player is the junior member of the trio, knows that his quarterback can look to any of them to deliver a big play when needed.
"It's just a confidence level, knowing that he can go to any one of us receivers and we'll make the play for him," Walker said. "Instead of like some other teams having one guy they go to, (he can go to) any one of us.
"Those guys, they not only help Brett, but they help me, I help them, we all help each other. That way, teams can't game plan and say, 'We're going to double-team this guy.' If you do that, it opens up a whole other ball game."
The receiver went on to say that he wouldn't mind if defenses come out keying on shutting down the passing attack.
"If we get a different look in this game, we can attack," said Walker. "We do have the wide receivers to do it. We still will be aggressive."
Ferguson said that he thinks that the success of the passing attack should help to open up some more running lanes for Ahman Green and the rest of the ground game.
"It will only help our running game," Ferguson said. "The safeties will have to stay with us, so they'll be more hesitant to come up on play-action. (Ahman) will probably get some more long runs."
The overriding thought in the locker room, though, is that everyone must step up and do all they can to get back in the win column Sunday.
Walker has confidence that the team will feed off their experience of battling back from last year's slow start to turn things around in 2004.
"We were in the same position last year," he said. "We're going to come out and play hard. That's all we can ask for out of ourselves. Everything will take care of itself if we take care of our game plan on Sunday."
