Next game: Sunday, Oct. 12 at Seattle
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The possibility of a four game losing streak is staring Packers coach Mike McCarthy in the face.
He's spent most of his time this week trying to dissect the reasons why the three-game streak has happened, and how to avoid a fourth straight sad result.
"The biggest thing, the most important thing is to win the football game," explained McCarthy on 620WTMJ's Wisconsin's Morning News.
"We're not doing enough positives for four quarters to put ourselves in position to win game. That's been our mindset."
The mindset of changing the things producing the negative results that, if they continue this week, would produce the first four-game losing streak since Oct. 3, 2005.
Coach Finds Positives
So far this week, McCarthy has discovered many changes in his players' practice performance.
"The week of practice so far, I've been very impressed," says McCarthy. "There's been great energy. The pattern of work has picked up."
He also notes that not everything is negative in his team's performance, including the loss to Atlanta on Sunday.
"You look at all three phases, you definitely see production. Offensively, we had the slow start. We had the dropped ball on the first 3rd-down (situation).
Other than that, the negatives were the penalties. The penalties put us in long down-and-distance. Throughout the game, there was a lot of production offensively.
"Same thing with special teams. There were some very good things done on special teams. When we had the key kickoff, we had the momentum to come back into the game, we had the long kickoff return.
"Every area had their negatives. Defensively, we very frankly had guys trying to do too much."
Doing Too Little To Avoid Penalties
The Packers have sustained the biggest losses in penalty yards of any team in the National Football League: 419 for the season.
McCarthy has both expressed his angry opinions to his players and attempted to change things with their practice habits.
"The pre-snap mental penalties - there's no excuse for that in football," stated McCarthy. "That's something that's drilled every single day. There are consequences to a pre-snap penalty in our practice structure.
"They get pulled right out of the drill."
The Packers are culprits of both types of penalties this year, pre-snap and combative, meaning those that happen in game action.
"With combative penalties, there's more judgment in that. Maybe we've got to do a better job in judgment with some of our holding, some of the things that have gone on."
Rodgers' Courage a Rallying Point
Perhaps the best thing the Packers can hang their hat on is their durable quarterback.
Nope, that's not number four, who's now in the Meadowlands, but Aaron Rodgers, the previously-referred to fragile and often injured number 12 who offered a profile in football courage by throwing for more than 300 yards and producing three touchdown passes in the Falcons loss last Sunday.
"It's definitely a point of reference that Aaron can point to as we move forward," said McCarthy.
"Everybody looks for that in their quarterback. He definitely answered the challenge and played at a very high level.
"It's something that we definitely noticed when we go into practice the whole week. It went throughout the whole locker room."
