I have a great friend that lives three doors up in my suburban Bay Area neighborhood who is originally from Milwaukee. He loves his “hometown” teams; in baseball that is the Milwaukee Brewers, in basketball it is the Bucks and his most passionate love for a team is with the National Football League Green Bay Packers.
You can imagine that Terry, we’ll call him that because that is his name, was quite pleased last week when he found I was predicting a big game for his underdog Packers against the visiting Indianapolis Colts. He basked in the day that saw Green Bay rush for a record 164 yards in the first quarter while building up a 10-0 lead. By the end of the first half the Packers running game had amassed 237 yards and limited the Colts offense like Indianapolis forgot to bring their game plan.
Still, despite the bulge in statistics, the Packers didn’t add to their 10-0 first quarter lead on the scoreboard and were outscored in the second half 10-6 enroute to a 16-10 home victory.
Time for Terry to celebrate.
Times up.
The Packers quick start last week was the product of a motivational boost where they thought they were in big trouble after suffering a loss on the scoreboard to the Philadelphia Eagles and even more debilitating, the loss of Jordan Love for at least a few weeks with a strained Achilles.
The Packers have no proven backup quarterback on their roster, and instead had to count on a kid that had only been acquired in a trade a few weeks earlier, Malik Willis. Green Bay got him from the Tennessee Titans on August 26th for a seventh-round draft choice.
Confidence?
No.
Even though the Colts had lost their opener to the Houston Texans in a hard-fought two-point defeat, Indianapolis was confident coming into Lambeau Field that they had the weapons to hand the cheeseheads a loss.
Two teams that lost their opening game and one team is confident of a win and the other driven by the fear of failure. This is a mismatch in motivation, and the Packers exploded with their highest rushing total ever in the first quarter, possessed the ball for more than 13 minutes of the first quarter, and didn’t allow the stunned Colts a first down.
Their dominance persisted in the second quarter, although they didn’t add to their 10-0 lead, and then the motivation was drained out of the Packers. They came out for the second half confident, and the game ended closer than it started.
What we have now is a Green Bay team sure they can win with Wills running the offense while Love recuperates. Last week, they didn’t know that while this week they think they can, and knowing they can is a real bad thing.
Uh oh.
This Sunday, the Packers meet a team that has a final score of 24-17 down pat, the Tennessee Titans. New head coach Brian Callahan has lost his first two games by that score, first to the Chicago Bears on the road and last week to the New York Jets at home.
This week, the oh and two Titans are slight home favorites to win their first game and pin the Packers with a second loss. When I saw this game on the schedule before the lines were posted I thought we might get Green Bay on the road as a favorite, a line that would have screamed from the mountaintops to take the home team.
But the books, smart rats as they are, made the winless Titans the favorite to hide their advantage in this one.
But we found it.
Qoxhi Picks: Tennessee Titans (-3) over Green Bay Packers