Opinion: Packers clearly must fix run defense to keep title hopes alive

GREEN BAY, Wis. — If Mike Pettine or Brian Gutekunst doesn’t do something to solve their run defense, the Green Bay Packers are getting nowhere near the promised land this season.

Almost halfway through the 2020 season, the Packers’ defense, coordinated by Pettine and stocked by the general manager Gutekunst, looks just as leaky as the one that last season imploded against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC title game. How do you conclude otherwise after Minnesota’s Dalvin Cook slashed his way to 163 yards and a 5.4-yard average per carry in the Vikings’ 28-22 win over the Packers on Sunday?

Pettine’s defense simply had no answer for Cook, who is one of the top running backs in the NFL but by no means the only good one. This on a day when the 23 mph winds whipping through Lambeau Field left little doubt about the Vikings’ game plan. The Packers knew the run was coming, yet just like at San Francisco last season, they were powerless to stop it.

What’s so striking is that coach Matt LaFleur, Pettine and Gutekunst had the offseason to prevent a repeat of the way 2019 ended. Yet eight weeks (and seven games) into 2020 the Packers aren’t any better at stopping a team that’s good at and committed to running the ball.

“We’ve all got to look critically at ourselves, and we better figure out a solution quickly,” LaFleur said about his run defense, “because the formula’s been written, and we have got to step up and get it fixed. If not, we’re going to continue to get these types of results.”

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The defeat dropped the Packers to 5-2 and potentially changes the tenor of their season, because this week they go back to San Francisco for a rematch against a 49ers team that decimated Pettine’s defense twice last season with 37-point performances.

Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers coach, surely will light up when he sees the video of Cook cutting back time and again for big yardage. He doesn’t have a back of Cook’s caliber, but Vikings offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak runs the same outside zone run scheme as Shanahan, and the 49ers’ young coach very well might be the best game offensive teacher and game planner in the league.

That the Packers lost to the Vikings is hardly a shock. Minnesota isn’t as bad as its 1-5 record coming in suggested — it had one-point losses to Seattle and Tennessee. For all their problems, the Vikings are talented at the skill positions on offense with Cook, receivers Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson, and tight end Kyle Rudolph. The question with them is always whether erratic Kirk Cousins will make the big mistake.

Still, the gale-like winds meant the Vikings were going to be one-dimensional on this day, and the Packers still couldn’t stop that dimension. We’re not quite halfway through the season, and Pettine’s job security already is shaky despite the Packers’ good start.

When he thinks about the good teams on his schedule, LaFleur has to be worried that his run defense still can be compromised so easily and rarely comes through in a pinch. Rookie inside linebacker Kamal Martin looked like he might make a difference after his promising debut last week, but while his performance Sunday again suggests he is in fact an upgrade, it wasn’t enough to matter in this game.

Cook dominated as the Vikings scored touchdowns on long drives on their first four possessions, and the Packers didn’t get a defensive stop until the fourth quarter. Even with Pettine playing his base 3-4 personnel much of this game, the Vikings’ time and again pushed back defensive linemen Kenny Clark, Dean Lowry and either Tyler Lancaster or Kingsley Keke. Outside linebacker Za’Darius Smith was his usual gambling self, and Preston Smith was mostly a non-factor on the other side.

Maybe the most galling run of all was near the end, when the Packers, with a glimmer of hope, needed a three-and-out with 2:39 to play and down 28-22. LaFleur had all three timeouts, so the Packers were set up to get the ball back in Aaron Rodgers’ hands with two minutes left and a healthy chance to pull off the comeback win.

But Cook slammed his way to six yards on first down. LaFleur was right not burn a timeout then — he had no reason to think his defense could prevent Cook from getting four yards on two more plays — which allowed the Vikings to run the clock to the two-minute warning. Sure enough, Cook picked up the first down on the next carry, and LaFleur had to start spending the timeouts. By the time he got the ball back, there were only 47 seconds left, and from his own 28 on this kind of blustery day, Rodgers was a long shot to get in the end zone.

“When we know that teams are going to try to run the football, we can’t let them,” LaFleur said. “We cannot let them. We’ve got to force them to throw it. Whether that’s within the call or whatever it may be, we’ve got to be in the business of finding solutions.”

The question is whether the Packers can do anything about it in the second half of the season. Is Pettine capable of changing the way he approaches and teaches run defense after spending his NFL career working in the get-up-the-field Rex Ryan scheme?

Or, can Gutekunst make an 11th-hour trade — the NFL’s trade deadline is Tuesday — to beef up his defensive line? All season I’ve been of the opinion this team needs a veteran run plugger for early downs, but now I’m not so sure it won’t take a bigger move than that.

So this where the Packers sit a game shy of their schedule’s halfway point. They’ve just lost to an NFC North rival and could very well be 5-3 after traveling to San Francisco for a Thursday night game this week.

They’re still a Super Bowl contender in the NFC, but they look just as vulnerable as they were last year. And we know how that turned out.

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