GREEN BAY – The numbers jump off the page: 13, 16 and 10.
Those are the opposing point totals in the Packers' three losses this season, following Monday night's aggravating 10-7 home defeat at the hands of the Eagles.
That's 39 points allowed in three defeats, all by three points apiece. That's one fewer point over three games than the defense allowed in its lone rough outing this year, when the offense bailed it out in the 40-all tie in Dallas.
But rather than get a win somewhere along the line with the defense bailing out the offense, the Packers are searching for answers because the offense keeps coming up woefully short.
"I feel like we've wasted a few performances – championship-level defensive performances – and haven't been able to score enough points," Head Coach Matt LaFleur said.
QB Jordan Love followed with this: "It's frustrating and I know as a defense, they definitely have every reason to look at us and say, 'What are you guys doing? You guys need to figure it out and help us out and put up some more points,' because they're doing a great job."
How unusual is this? In LaFleur's first six seasons as head coach, the Packers lost a grand total of three games in which the defense allowed 16 or fewer points.
Now that's happened three times in the past seven contests.
The leaders of the Packers' offense are confident there won't be any finger-pointing in the locker room or in the coaches' hallway, but they're certainly pointing the finger at themselves.
"I'm not worried about that," LaFleur said of a potentially splintering team. "We've got the right guys in the locker room. I'm absolutely not at all concerned about that. We just have to find a way to win a football game."
That feels like a Herculean task at the moment with the offense having scored just two touchdowns and 20 total points in its last eight quarters, all at home.
But just as the Packers didn't fold up shop when the Eagles' 10-0 fourth-quarter lead felt enormous, they'll keep after it. LaFleur referred to it as digging "out of this hole" and Love repeatedly called it a "funk."
Whatever it is, it's defined by penalties, turnovers, missed blocks, dropped passes, you name it. If it's not one thing, it's another. For the second straight game, LaFleur referenced the opposing defense waiting for the Packers to screw up, and they obliged, over and over again.
"It's tough, it's disappointing, it's frustrating," Love said. "You feel like as an offense you're letting the defense down because they're doing such a great job, obviously, against a really good offense over there. They stopped them for the majority of the game. We just didn't find ways to score. It's just not good enough."
Love said the same about his own play, and his mistakes – like not protecting the ball and losing it on a sack when in field-goal range at the end of the first half – are always magnified due to the position he plays. That comes with the territory.
But the miscues are spread out all over personnel-wise, and have been all season. There's no quick fix or the Packers would've found it by now.
"We've got to find solutions," LaFleur said. "We're going to keep on battling."
Two years ago in Love's first season as a starting QB, he and the offense had their share of rough performances. That's when the entire offense was young and the coaching staff was learning the players and figuring things out on the fly.
This is a different stage and a different struggle, but the quarterback is counting on many of the same individuals to lead another turnaround.
"I've got a lot of trust in Matt," Love said. "That's something that's not wavering at all. I've been with Matt since I got here. I know exactly what he's capable of, what the whole staff's capable of, so that's not anything that's wavering.
"I think we've got a great locker room and the message is stay together."
It's hard to fathom after a 5-1-1 start that the level of turnaround needed rivals that of the 2023 season when the Packers were 3-6 at this point. But that's how off everything has looked on offense the past two games.
Can they find themselves again? If that Dallas game was the anomaly for the defense, the proverbial exception to the rule, it may not take much and the season will remain full of promise.
The defense two years ago was nowhere near this good, and the offense at least has recent history on its side.
"We can definitely get to that," Love said. "It starts with getting a win. Getting a win, and build upon that, that's exactly what we did in '23.
"The mindset is just keep believing in the guys we've got. That's what we'll keep doing."
