Since we’re offering our slightly less hot post-mortems, I will say this: I think I’m still coming out ahead as a football fan this week, and let me explain why. We usually look like death warmed over in our first week or two. This year we didn’t do that, and it netted us two key NFC wins, one against what is likely our main competition for the division. This week likely represents something of a low point on our year (hopefully excepting any injury devastation) and the fact it was a road loss to an AFC opponent that we will not be seeing in any possible Super Bowl matchups this season is about as good an outcome as you can hope for when it comes to clunkers.
It is still early, we’ve got a (hopefully) better matchup next week with Dallas, and a bye coming up to help deal with some mildly alarming injury problems, and that all should help set things right. So I’m not a complete doomer about this.
But I am something of a pessimist, so my order of concerns from highest to lowest are:
1) This offensive line will actually be worse than last year, despite the revamp
2) LaFleur is really just an overachieving mid-tier coach
3) Love is sort of fraudulent—despite the high level efficiency numbers and comparable counting stats to Rodgers and all that—because he may just be someone who shrinks in big moments
I am still holding out the possibility of being convinced by the quality of this offense, but for me, the three trend lines above are the most concerning. I have very little criteria with which to evaluate a coach, since so much of the job is non-visible to fans, but I expect issues 1 and 3 above will be definitively answered one way or another this year.
My overall confidence level is currently at a B-, but trending down.