Photo by Madison Morris - packers.com
Packers vs. Commanders
The 2025 NFL season is only two weeks old, but so far no team has been as impressive as the Green Bay Packers. On a short week against a Commanders team that made the NFC Championship game a year ago, the Packers had no trouble shutting down Jayden Daniels, while the Packer passing game kicked into high gear.
Jordan Love threw for 292 yards and two touchdowns, with tight end Tucker Kraft leading the way with 124 yards and one score. And as good as the passing game was, Love missed two likely touchdowns to rookie Matthew Golden with a slight overthrow on a go route, and an underthrow when he was open in the middle of the end zone. They probably should have scored in the 40s.
Fortunately for the Packers, the defense is so good that the offense doesn’t have to be perfect. I am honestly not sure how teams will consistently score against Green Bay this year with Micah Parsons single-handedly elevating the pass rush. Jayden Daniels and Jared Goff were two of the best quarterbacks in football last season, and Daniels’s ability to escape the rush and buy time was a huge part of Washington’s surprise turnaround. The Packers were able to generate quick pressure at an unprecedented rate on both quarterbacks, with no chance of escape.
Terror to Quarterbacks
The Packers had a good, if not great defense last season, and I think in retrospect they look like a well-oiled machine with everything in place but the battery. Without Parsons, the excellent safety duo of Xavier McKinney and Evan Williams were forced into a more “true safety” roll of cleaning up messes in the back of the secondary. With the enormous pass rush upgrade, they can now fire forward at the often-errant passes from a harried, opposing quarterbacks. Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries are inside linebackers Quay Walker and Edgerrin Cooper. Cooper already looked special as a rookie, but this season, he’s been an absolute terror to quarterbacks, ballcarriers, and receivers alike. Guarding the middle of the field has been a huge weakness since at least the AJ Hawk era of Packer defenses, whereas the Packers now employ the two fastest off-ball backers in the NFL.
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Parsons only recorded half a sack against Washington, but he led the team with four pressures, and the attention he demanded from Washington opened up so many others. Rashan Gary, Edgerrin Cooper, Devonte Wyatt, Karl Brooks, and rookie Barryn Sorrell all recorded at least half a sack, with Wyatt adding two quarterback hits, and two passes defended while dropping into coverage. Jayden Daniels dropped back 42 times and suffered a hit on 12 of those dropbacks.
If the Packers have any weakness on defense, it’s in an unproven secondary, but so far, Nate Hobbs, Carrington Valentine, and especially Keisean Nixon have been up to the task. Nixon recorded a ridiculous five passes defended against Washington, as the knowledge that the pass rush would get home allowed him the freedom to be aggressive with receivers Terry McLaurin and Noah Brown. For context, Xavier McKinney led the Packers in passes defended last season with eleven.
Winning on the Road?
With the Vikings and Bears struggling and the hardest part of their early schedule behind them, the Packers may be able to put the division away early. They are on the road for four of their next five games, and winning on the road is rarely easy, but they face a poor Cleveland team with an extra three days of rest, followed by the struggling Cowboys in Dallas where Green Bay has had nothing but success. The Packers then have an early bye week before coming back home to face the Bengals without quarterback Joe Burrow. They follow that up with trips to Arizona, and Pittsburgh to face old friend Aaron Rodgers.
It's early, but every single indicator, advanced or otherwise, screams that this is a dominant team. The Packers are first overall in the advanced statistics Expected Points Added (EPA) and Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). They have the NFC’s best point differential despite playing its hardest schedule. Things haven’t been perfect as wide receiver Jayden Reed did suffer a broken collarbone, and will miss six to eight weeks, but their depth at receiver is strong, and Reed, for all of his greatness, was just fourth on the team in targets. This is a juggernaut, and a true Super Bowl contender.
