The Green Bay Packers Are Too Big to Fail So Bigly

The Green Bay Packers' struggles are all due to one dark and terrible reason: There isn't any one reason.

The Packers had an impenetrable rushing defense…until Ezekiel Elliott ran for 157 yards against them. They were allowing an average of 247 passing yards per game, many of them only in garbage time…until Matt Ryan and Andrew Luck each hung over 280 on them. Eddie Lacy was having a career year…until he went on IR. A different receiver every game takes a turn being the only receiver to show up, and Aaron Rodgers hasn't been quite magic enough to paper over all of it.

Over the course of the season, Rodgers has progressed enough that his season-long rate stats are approaching his career norms—despite playing several of his worst-ever games in September and October. Yet as good has Rodgers has been over the past couple of weeks, it's still not good enough.

Against the Indianapolis Colts, Rodgers completed 26 of 43 for 297 yards, three touchdowns and an interception. If a mysterious stranger offered nearly any other quarterback the chance to put up that stat line every time they played, they'd take it. Yet the Packers suffered a shock 31-26 home defeat to a 3-5 team that had been getting outscored by an average of almost a field goal a game.

The Packers seemed to solve most of their problems in a close road loss to the Atlanta Falcons the week prior. But on the very first play of the Colts game a new one popped up:

A HUGE 99-yard kickoff return at Lambeau Field… for the @Colts‼ What. A. Start.#INDvsGB #OnlyInTheNFL
https://t.co/GupMBRw4eN
— #OnlyInTheNFL (@NFLUK) November 6, 2016

It wasn't just the kickoff coverage team that wasn't aware the game had already started. The Colts rolled up a 24-10 halftime lead, and the Packers could only narrow that by a field goal in the third quarter. The predictable furious fourth-quarter comeback fell predictably short.

As Aaron Nagler of the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported, in the post-game press conference Rodgers acknowledged that the team, you know, didn't try very hard. "Lack of juice" is a weird thing for an All-Pro quarterback to blame for a team's failings, and yet how else can it be described? The talent is there, the coaches are highly regarded, the schemes have been perennially successful, and yet the execution just isn't good enough to keep pace with the NFC's best.

Even worse, all the usual bulwarks, like the Packers' legendary home-field advantage, have crumbled:

Rodgers on #Packers' low energy. "We have to respond better … get the crowd involved, more than just the squirrel on the field, " pic.twitter.com/wP7HOSYxXu
— Jason Wilde (@jasonjwilde) November 7, 2016

One giant hole didn't sink the Titanic, it was a series of small punctures across too many of the hull's sections. So it seems to be with the Packers right now: Too many things aren't working quite well enough, and the result is catastrophic.

For a franchise where the bar is, and should be, set at winning a Super Bowl, this isn't anywhere near good enough. Even worse, they're now 4-4, looking up at both the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions and are about to embark on a three-game road trip.

McCarthy, Rodgers, and everyone else in the Packers organization had better start putting as many fingers in the dyke as they can—or the impending flood could sweep away all of them.