GREEN BAY, Wis. — The Green Bay Packers are in trouble.

Yes, the season is only three weeks old and they’re 1-2, not 0-3. There’s plenty of football left to be played and Matt LaFleur teams have rebounded from rough stretches before.

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But the Packers can’t block or run the ball and there are no quick fixes coming for either issue. Those two things are chief among their problems. There’s only so much All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons can do once he returns in the coming weeks.

Green Bay’s best offensive lineman, right tackle Zach Bako-Bewele, is out for the season and who might be their second best, left guard Aaron Banks, hasn’t stayed healthy since signing a four-year, $77 million deal in March 2025. There’s little reason to believe the remaining offensive linemen will get much better.

The Packers’ feature running back and one of the NFL’s best at the position, Josh Jacobs, remains on the Commissioner Exempt List and was recently convicted in court for misdemeanor battery against his former girlfriend. There’s no telling when or if he’ll play this season.

On Thursday night in a 35-14 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, quarterback Jordan Love was off. The defense was horrific and couldn’t tackle. The ghost of Green Bay special teams past visited Lambeau Field again as rookie kicker Trey Smack’s 47-yard attempt to tie the game in the second quarter was blocked because right tackle Anthony Belton whiffed on his assignment. The Packers didn’t score again until garbage time.

The Packers’ 21-point loss was their biggest at Lambeau Field in LaFleur’s eight seasons as head coach. This is also the first time LaFleur has started 1-2 in Green Bay. General manager Brian Gutekunst has pushed all his chips in the middle with hopes of creating a Super Bowl contender. Right now, the Packers look far from one.

Maybe the panic button shouldn’t be pressed yet, but it shouldn’t be far away.

“It’s three games in,” LaFleur said. “Certainly we’re nowhere near where we need to be and there’s a lot of ball left in front of us.”

Several players echoed that same sentiment, that the season is young. And they’re right. Maybe they turn this grotesque start around and go on a deep playoff run. But after watching three games this season — three aesthetically unpleasant watches, to put it kindly — it’s hard to imagine that happening even with Parsons in the fold.

So much went wrong for the Packers on Thursday night (we’ll get to that later) that even tight end Tucker Kraft, perhaps the fans’ favorite player and a team captain who always says the right thing, finally missed the mark when asked about the home fans booing throughout the night.

“Yeah, that’s pretty tough,” Kraft said. “Like everyone pictures Lambeau Field and not boos. I don’t picture boos. I picture my home stadium. That’s tough. It’s pretty disappointing … especially for a home opener. It’s pretty disappointing. It’s not going to help us win. I don’t know what people think, that’s going to rally us or something like that … we’re grown men. We’re mentally strong enough, capable enough to get back on the field and play ball. But it’d probably be much easier with the 70,000 people behind us rather than opposing us.”

Contrast that with this response from wide receiver Christian Watson to a similar question.

“It’s tough, but at the end of the day, it’s an entertainment business, so we have to put a better product out on the field if we want to have the fans have our back,” Watson said. “Obviously, we like to think that the fans will be there through the ups and downs, but we’ve got to put out a better performance than that.”

Kraft and Watson were two of the final players in the locker room on Thursday night. Their lockers are on opposite sides of the room, but Kraft came over to Watson, sat in the locker beside his and they spoke briefly before sharing a hug and going their separate ways.

It’ll be up to those two and Love — the offense’s three primary leaders with Jacobs facing a lengthy suspension from the NFL that has yet to be handed down — to revive an offense that is falling well short of its potential.

Why?

Love wasn’t good enough Thursday. Neither was Kraft, whose hands were uncharacteristically shoddy. Neither were the running backs. Losing wide receiver Jayden Reed to a neck injury last week certainly doesn’t help, either. But the biggest problem on the entire team is the offensive line.

Do injuries play a role in that? Of course. Bako-Bewele is elite when healthy, so that’s a massive loss. Banks is good when healthy, but he rarely has been during his brief Packers tenure. But there isn’t much excuse for the underwhelming remains. And underwhelming might be kind for this line. Gutekunst and the coaches deserve just as much blame as the players, if not more.

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Through three games, the Packers rank 26th in pressure percentage allowed, per TruMedia. Because the offensive line is so bad, Love has to get rid of the ball right away. The Packers rank 31st in average time to throw at 2.5 seconds. Even Love, who will never throw his linemen under the bus, said he’s uncomfortable back there.

That might be some of his own doing, but it’s impossible to feel good behind this line of Jordan Morgan, Jager Burton or Donovan Jennings, Sean Rhyan, Jacob Monk and Anthony Belton. On Thursday, Love released the ball 2.53 seconds after the snap on average. While Love was only sacked once, TruMedia logged the Packers with a 40.7 pressure rate allowed and Love shouldered another 12 quarterback hits.

“Man, a lot of stuff,” Love said about what he needs to improve. “I think to start, my footwork in the pocket. I think making accurate throws, my decision-making and reads, going through those things quickly. I think just the feeling I have right now is not good … There’s always going to be plays where there’s going to be pressure. Sometimes you might have a little more time in the pocket, but as a quarterback, I’ve got to operate a lot faster and be more accurate and find completions to help us as an offense.” A lot faster? When the Packers’ average time to throw is longer than only the Cincinnati Bengals? How much faster can you operate?

Love wasn’t his best Thursday night by any means, but he has no shot behind this offensive line. And it certainly doesn’t help when Kaleb Johnson lacks speed and MarShawn Lloyd lacks vision at running back. Or when the Packers are constantly behind the sticks because of inefficiency on early downs, whether that comes in the form of a negative 1-yard run, negative 3-yard screen or a Watson holding penalty on first down that puts the Packers in obvious passing situations and allows whatever blood-thirsty pass rush to tee off on a hopeless offensive line.

“J. Love shouldn’t be getting touched or on the ground that much,” Belton said. “There’s no excuses to it.”

The Packers got a firsthand look Thursday at what an elite running back can do in helping a team stay ahead of the sticks. Maybe Jacobs isn’t elite, but he’s not far from it. That might be the most realistic fix to Green Bay’s offensive woes since Jacobs can gain more yards than are blocked even if the line struggles and at least make teams respect the Packers’ running game.

Right now, they have no reason to respect a rushing attack tied for 30th with 3 yards per carry and 32nd with a meager 48.7 rushing yards per game. The Packers couldn’t afford to run while facing a deficit on Thursday and only ran nine times for 17 yards.

“I think we all saw a dynamic running back on the other side,” LaFleur said. “And I think Josh is a dynamic running back, but it is the situation.”

Added Lloyd: “I do believe we can run the ball well. I can’t say that because we’re not doing it.”

“Right now, I don’t know what we’re doing well offensively,” LaFleur said.

Perhaps the putrid defensive performance was more of an outlier given two stout showings to start the season. Maybe we just chalk it up to a slick field surface and an elite running-back/wide receiver tandem in Bijan Robinson and Drake London.

Even so, Robinson’s 194 rushing yards and two touchdowns and London’s nine catches for 194 yards are unacceptable. So are the missed tackles, blown coverages and a costly roughing penalty by edge rusher Brenton Cox that turned a punt into a second chance, a 55-yard run by Robinson on the next play and a touchdown to tie the game at 7-7 two plays later.

The Packers gave up 498 total yards and a Falcons team that hadn’t snapped the ball in the red zone through two games converted four of its five trips there into touchdowns. The Falcons averaged 5.9 yards per rush on 41 carries and 7.5 yards per play overall. They operated efficiently, got the ball out quick (2.31 seconds on average) and made everything look easy.

Right now, the Packers look like they’re pulling teeth.

If they don’t find a fix, or two, or three, and do so quickly, a season that should feature Super Bowl aspirations could get even uglier in a hurry.

“We’re out there busting our ass every single day to get better and obviously throughout the offseason, from the start of OTAs through training camp,” Watson said. “I think that we saw a lot of great things. We’ve just got to find a way to put it together. It gives me hope that I’ve seen it, but potential only takes you so far.”

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