The Green Bay Packers Put on a Clinic Thursday Night—and Staked a Claim as a Super Bowl Contender
In 10 days, Green Bay has beaten two of last season’s best NFC teams—and did so in convincing fashion. With Micah Parsons and a reenergized defense, do Jordan Love and Co. finally have enough margin for error to make a real championship run?
The Green Bay Packers aren’t just 2-0, and they aren’t just winning games convincingly. They’re doing what they couldn’t last season: controlling the game against their toughest competition. In 2024, the Packers went just 2-5 against opponents that made the playoffs, and they always seemed to give the game away in key situations, losing those five contests by just 22 total points. Now, Green Bay is plus-23 against playoff-level competition—and its quality of play has far exceeded that scoring margin.
Just 10 days into the new NFL season, the Packers have proved that they aren’t just a fun, young team bursting with potential anymore. They cruised to a season-opening 27-13 win against Detroit and dominated Washington 27-18 on Thursday night, showing that this is a team with real Super Bowl aspirations—and all the pieces to get there.
Since head coach Matt LaFleur took over in Green Bay in 2019, we’ve seen plenty of brilliant flashes from his offense—it’s gone on monthlong runs of scoring 30-plus points per game, it helped Aaron Rodgers win back-to-back MVPs in 2020 and 2021, and it’s ranked in the top 11 in offensive DVOA in each of the past six seasons. But this Packers team seems to be taking on a new identity: The defense is setting the tone and tempo of the game by controlling the line of scrimmage and wreaking havoc in the backfield.
Green Bay’s defense has 12 tackles for loss, the most it’s had in the first two games of a season since LaFleur was hired, but that alone doesn’t capture the chaos that this unit is causing for opposing quarterbacks. Green Bay’s trade for star edge rusher Micah Parsons has already borne fruit in spite of his limited workload (he’s had 10 pressures, 1.5 sacks, and a TFL through two games), and Parsons’s teammates are taking advantage of his gravity and their own respective skill sets. Edge rusher Rashan Gary and defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt each have two sacks already, and five Packers defenders already have five or more pressures.
“Relentless” was how LaFleur described his defense after Thursday’s game. “They allow us to get up on [opponents].” And Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels felt that relentlessness all night. He was sacked four times, completed just 57 percent of his passes, was held to just 17 yards rushing, and didn’t lead a touchdown drive until the fourth quarter, when his team was trailing by multiple possessions. Combine that with last week, when Green Bay held Detroit to just 46 yards rushing, and you see a defense that has enough talent to take away what its opponents do best.
Green Bay’s thorough domination in the trenches over two games is proof that defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley has legitimate juice as a play caller and knows precisely how to best employ his front seven. Under prior coordinators Joe Barry and Mike Pettine, the Packers fielded passive, feckless defenses that couldn’t stop the run. Last season, though, Hafley’s first, Green Bay had 95 tackles for loss—which could’ve been chalked up to an aberration or could have been a product of play calling that opponents would eventually adjust to. Instead, the Packers have kicked even more ass up front this year, averaging negative yards before contact per carry. While Green Bay hasn’t been forcing turnovers (thus far) the way it did last year, its production in the backfield makes up for that, and that’s a big reason why the Packers defense has turned 40 percent of its opponents’ possessions into three-and-outs—getting the ball back into the offense’s hands to attack downfield.
A defense that’s producing at this level won’t just increase Green Bay’s odds to be a legitimate Super Bowl contender in 2025; it will also drastically lower the bar that this offense has to clear—which is a godsend for LaFleur and quarterback Jordan Love. The 2024 season was supposed to be a major opportunity for Love to put his name alongside the league’s great pure pocket passers: Matthew Stafford, Joe Burrow, Dak Prescott, and Justin Herbert. And while he had some great moments, inconsistency and injury left him outside those QBs’ ranks. Now, by trusting his defense to lead the way, Love has a margin for error that he hasn’t enjoyed since taking over as starter in 2023.
There will always be some hot and cold to Love’s play, which is often exacerbated by LaFleur’s relentlessly aggressive approach to the passing game. But now he doesn’t have to be anything other than the passer he’s always been. Don’t rule out the possibility that he’ll turn another corner, either. He’s taking bigger chances downfield than any other quarterback right now, averaging 12.5 air yards per attempt—two full yards clear of second place. And the boom-and-bust approach doesn’t feel gratuitous or seem like it's pushing into the realm of diminishing returns.
In fact, that aggressive ethos is paying off by moving the chains and putting points on the board. Green Bay’s scored a touchdown on two-thirds of its red zone trips this season, and Love is converting 54 percent of his passes on third-and-4-plus yards, an obvious passing situation with an average conversion rate of 37 percent across the league last year. Even if the Packers offense regresses to the mean in those key situations, we’ve also seen a much more confident and creative version of Love outside structure so far, scrambling for hard-earned yards on Thursday and creating more effective offense when he’s throwing outside the pocket.
If Love’s trending toward an individual peak just as his team develops ways to win defensively, there’s no way to pretend that the Packers aren’t in the championship conversation. We’re a couple of weeks into the season, so it's possible that injuries (which Green Bay’s already struggling with) or poor fortune will derail what we’ve seen so far. But with some teams, you just know you’re seeing the leap in real time, and the Packer are checking all the boxes.
LaFleur isn’t just the most successful coach from the Kyle Shanahan–Sean McVay tree; he’s statistically one of the most successful coaches we’ve ever seen year over year. Only one thing has eluded him so far, and that’s a complete group that can consistently beat the best teams in the league. He has that now, and Green Bay has staked an early claim in the long journey to being the best in 2025.
