GREEN BAY – A statistical ledger of 400-plus yards and 34 points allowed was not what the Packers had in mind for defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley's debut, and no one is hiding from that disappointment.
"I'm not going to make excuses," Hafley said this week. "It wasn't good enough, it wasn't coached good enough, it wasn't executed well enough and that clearly starts with me. And we will be better than that."
The Packers have to be, right away in the home opener against the Colts at Lambeau Field (noon CT Sunday), and not just because Malik Willis is potentially taking over at quarterback for an injured Jordan Love less than three full weeks following the backup's arrival in Green Bay.
The defense has to be better, like now, because the Packers can't afford for the unit to take half a season to find itself the way a young, transitioning offense did last year.
Yes, the change to Hafley and his system will require a little time, but it should settle in much faster than the 2023 offense. Only two rookies in safety Javon Bullard and linebacker Edgerrin Cooper are getting significant playing time – maybe three if safety Evan Williams is given a role, as Hafley has suggested is in the cards – so this is not a youth-dominated unit. Amongst the full-time starters, Quay Walker is the youngest player, and he's in his third season.
Expectations are for rapid improvement. Head Coach Matt LaFleur mentioned the bar naturally raising from Week 1 to Week 2 as the miscues from the performance against the Eagles get addressed – communication, alignment, angles, tackling.
That was too much fundamentally not going right in Brazil, and players like safety Xavier McKinney have noted the need for "attention to detail" and the "urgency" to get it squared away. In Hafley's words, a fine line is detectable between patience and pushing.
"We need to find out how much we can handle going into a game," Hafley said of a game plan. "We need to find out what we're really good at, and then we need to keep doing those things over and over. I think you'll see us evolve as we get going and do more and more, and then I do think you'll see a big jump.
"Guys are learning how to play with one another, communicate with one another, and we've got to get it going faster, though. We have to expedite that so when we get on the field Sunday, we're really to roll."
In addition, neither Hafley nor LaFleur expressed satisfaction with the biggest positive from the defense's opening outing, the three takeaways. They felt the pass rushers had chances to knock the ball out of Eagles QB Jalen Hurts' hands a couple of times, while nickel corner Keisean Nixon dropped a potential pick-six (though the Eagles dropped a pick-six of their own as well).
The point is the good along with the bad is being critiqued, because any defensive opportunity that gets away in an offensive league can prove costly.
"There's plays out there to be made," linebacker Isaiah McDuffie said. "We know we left some on the table."
Such talk has been heard before, plenty. The lingering question is when the vibe and chatter will turn into action and results. And then, when it does – because it will at some point, it always has even if only for short stretches – whether it will be sustainable.
That's a lot to ask, especially after just one game. But there's no better time to bounce back in the short term and accelerate the process for the long term than when the offense is dealing with uncertainty at QB1.
The challenges this week include another dual-threat quarterback in Indy's Anthony Richardson, who had three monster completions last week, and the 2021 NFL rushing champ in Jonathan Taylor. Packers players have said for years, while so much focus has been trained on the high-level quarterback play with which the franchise has been blessed, that they'd like to be known as a defensive team.
Now's as good a chance as any.
"It's about the progress that we've got to make, and certainly there's a lot of things that we have to clean up, but the game of football is never perfect," LaFleur said. "The thing you need to do is try to eliminate making the same mistakes twice. You've got to continue to learn, grow, and learn from each other.
"That's a big part of it, and the faster we can get everybody on the same page, … and there is a learning curve to it, but I'm excited where it's headed."
