Version 2.0 of the 2025 New York Giants, this one with Mike Kafka as head coach instead of Brian Daboll, takes on the Green Bay Packers Sunday at MetLife Stadium. To learn more about the Packers we turned
to Justis Mosqueda of SB Nation’s Acme Packing Company in this week’s ‘5 questions’ segment.
Ed: The Giants just fired their head coach after a third straight 2-8 start to a season. There is chatter that Matt LaFleur is on the hot seat. The Packers made the playoffs last year and are in playoff position this year. So, what is up with that?
Justis: After the draft, President/CEO Mark Murphy retired (the Packers have a policy to retire the position automatically after a certain age), so we basically got a new sitting owner in Ed Policy, son of Carmen Policy – who served as the president/CEO and VP/counsel to the owner for five San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl champions. Policy came in immediately and said that no one is getting extensions right away, implying that Matt LaFleur hadn’t earned that extension at this point. The expectations after the Micah Parsons trade were to win a Super Bowl, and Green Bay isn’t close right now. Had the Parsons trade not been made, this team might be somewhere in the 3-6 to 2-7 range right now. Basically, making the playoffs isn’t enough to keep the job around here. McCarthy made the playoffs for eight straight years, had one losing season and then was shown the door in-season the next year.
Ed: Green Bay has lost two straight and scored just 20 combined points. What is up with that?
Justis: Matt LaFleur doesn’t know how to beat two-high defenses if he can’t run the ball. The offense will run for one yard on first down and then run the ball again on 2nd and 9 if they get a split-safety look again on the next play. Over the last two games, the Packers have had to play 32 third- and fourth-downs. Green Bay saw 16 of those situations in just seven drives against the Carolina Panthers two weeks ago. In short, they just can’t run the ball, which is really what LaFleur wants to do every play, if given the opportunity.
Ed: If you could take one player off the Giants roster and put him in Green Bay’s lineup, who would it be? Why?
Justis: Well, Malik Nabers is banged up right now, but I wouldn’t mind Dexter Lawrence in green and gold. The Packers have a little bit of a hole at nose tackle right now following the trade of Kenny Clark, but Colby Wooden has been a passable player on the interior. Obviously, though, the jump to Lawrence would be huge.
Ed: A couple of years ago the chatter was that Jordan Love was going to follow Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers as the next Green Bay Hall Of Fame quarterback. We don’t hear that anymore. What is Love as a quarterback at this point?
Justis: I actually think Love has done really well over the last two games, but teams have just sort of had answers for the play-calls. Last week, LaFleur really wanted to throw routes short and over the ball, and the Eagles knew that, so their defensive tackles got their arms up in the passing lanes and really were able to disrupt the game that way. I think at least two of their DTs got PBUs on Monday. The team can’t run the ball, so they have to throw to move the chains, even if it’s only on got-to-have-it third- and fourth-downs. They can’t throw deep, because teams are bailing in coverage. They can’t throw intermediate over the middle, because even low-zone defenders are bailing in coverage. They can’t throw short and outside, because they have no ability to generate YAC yards now that TE Tucker Kraft is on IR with an ACL tear. They can’t throw short and over the ball, because the Eagles just proved that you can defend those passes by getting into passing lanes with defensive tackles’ arms. It really just leaves the intermediate outside of the field to attack, and that’s where LaFleur has targeted the least in his career as a play-caller, even though Love has done a good job of throwing those passes (he did it a couple of times against the Pittsburgh Steelers) when given the opportunity.
Ed: The Giants are reeling, obviously. If they are going to pull off an upset and prevent a Packer party at MetLife Stadium, what are they going to have to accomplish? Are there Green Bay weaknesses that can be exploited?
Justis: Stop the run is the first bullet point. If you can stop the run, you can beat the Packers. Unfortunately, I know the Giants are among the top-3 teams in the NFL in terms of first downs given up in the ground game. The only two times Green Bay has run the ball effectively this year…were against the Giants’ peers (the Dallas Cowboys and Cincinnati Bengals). Make the game a very low-scoring game, hope that Brandon McManus misses a kick and hope that you can win like 10-3 or something is sort of the path to beating the Packers.
