Cheesehead
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- Mar 19, 2019
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Constantly under pressure and sacked four times before being pulled with the game out of hand in the fourth quarter, Rodgers wound up with a 35.4 passer rating (16-of-35, 160 yards, two INTs), the second-worst in his career when he played all or most of the game.
"It's definitely a frustrating deal, when they bring pressure and you don't have answers for it and can't beat it," LaFleur said.
"That pressure was real, man. I don't think we blocked it very well, and I don't think we had a great answer from a schematic standpoint."
LaFleur also took the blame for the offense not getting in and out of the huddle efficiently, and repeatedly running the play clock all the way down. Rodgers called it a "lethargic" performance offensively, coming off a poor week of practice, with his and everyone else's timing disrupted pretty much all game.
And there was no rally to be had, especially not after All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari left the game with a chest injury. The postgame hope was Bakhtiari would be OK.
"You can't have three-and-outs, you can't have negative-yardage plays and you can't turn the ball over. That's how you stem the tide," Rodgers said. "We could feel it. It was 10-0 and it didn't feel like we were dominating the game.
"We didn't get a chance to get us back to where we were feeling good about the game."
Meanwhile, Tampa Bay QB Tom Brady didn't do anything spectacular (17-of-26, 166 yards, two TDs, 104.9 rating), but he didn't have any miscues. He fired a pinpoint fade to tight end Rob Gronkowski (five catches, 78 yards) for a score, and he wasn't sacked.
The Packers struggled to stop the run, allowing 158 yards on the ground, including 113 and two TDs by Ronald Jones on 23 carries.