The Green Bay Packers are winning, but they’re doing it the hard way.
Sunday’s victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was the kind of game that never looked clean. It was choppy from the start, with one team starting an UDFA at quarterback and the other dealing with a line full of turnstiles.
The result was a slog: both teams finished with fewer than 300 yards of total offense and under 200 passing yards, there were 14 penalties overall, 10 of them on Green Bay, and each side coughed up two turnovers. Three of those giveaways came on rough interceptions from the quarterbacks.
A win is a win, of course. But the bigger question is what happens when this becomes the norm. If every victory has to be dragged across the finish line, at what point does “winning ugly” stop sounding like a strength and start looking like a warning sign?
That’s the concern for Green Bay, especially with the schedule about to tighten the screws. The Packers have already faced opponents whose combined record is 7-9, and that number is helped along by the Vikings’ 4-0 start.
The Jets and Buccaneers have losing records, and Atlanta sits at 2-2, though the Falcons are playing like a different team with competent QB play. Even against that group, Green Bay is only 2-2, and those two wins already feel precious.
What comes next is a much rougher stretch. The Packers are headed into a run of Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Carolina, New England, Minnesota, and then the LA Rams after the bye week. And over their next 13 games, only three opponents currently have losing records: New Orleans, Miami, and Houston.
That means the margin for error is about to shrink fast. Unless something changes, these games are going to be tight, messy fights.
And that’s where the Packers’ current identity becomes impossible to ignore. Winning ugly has been part of the Love-LaFleur era for a while now, and if you go back to 2022 - Aaron Rodgers’ final season at quarterback - there were plenty of those games too.
Since then, there have been 11 ugly wins on Green Bay’s schedule, along with more than a few ugly losses.
You can almost hear the postgame refrain by now: “Got to clean things up.”
“We didn't play our best football.”
“We left a lot of points out there on the field.”
Those lines have become familiar because the same issues keep surfacing. At some point, the inability to finish teams off starts to shape a team’s identity, and that matters. Green Bay has already shown signs of struggling to close out tight games in places like Minnesota and against Chicago last season.
The clearest problem is also the most obvious one: penalties. The Packers are the most-penalized team in the league right now, and they’re doing it at a stunning pace. They’re averaging 10.5 penalties per game, which would put them at 179 over a full season if nothing changes.
That number would blow past last year’s league leader. Dallas finished with 149 penalties in 2025, which was already the most a team had committed since 2022. Green Bay is on pace to sail right past that and even challenge the NFL’s all-time mark, which belongs to the 2011 Raiders at 163.
That’s not the kind of race anyone wants to win.
The Packers’ flags are coming from all the usual places. Penalties can point to discipline, positioning, or a basic lack of rule awareness, and Green Bay has all three issues showing up in the numbers.
Of the team’s 42 penalties, 10 are holding calls and eight are false starts. Those two categories alone account for 43 percent of the total, and they’re mostly landing on offensive linemen.
Whether the reshuffled line can steady things is still an open question, but there hasn’t been much evidence yet. Jacob Monk, Donovan Jennings, and Jager Burton have each been flagged once so far in 2026, while new starter Laken Tomlinson was penalized twice against Tampa Bay.
There isn’t even one player absorbing the bulk of the damage. Christian Watson and Javon Bullard lead the team with three penalties apiece, but that’s about as concentrated as it gets. Twenty-four different Packers have been penalized, which ties Baltimore for the most in the league.
That spread tells its own story. This isn’t one player creating a mess.
It’s a team-wide problem, and one that keeps feeding into the same ugly results. As long as Green Bay keeps handing opponents free yards, the Packers are going to keep finding themselves in these grind-it-out games.
In Other News...
Packers Suddenly Have New Offensive Line Questions This Week
The Packers latest injury report brought a fresh layer of uncertainty to a group that has already been under the microscope, with four players listed as non-participants and both Chris Brooks and Aaron Banks among them. For a team trying to keep its offense on schedule, any week that adds turnover up front or in the backfield tends to draw immediate attention, especially as the practice week starts to take shape.
Savion Williams at least offered a bit of movement on the other side of the ledger, as he returned to practice and opened his 21-day window to come off injured reserve. The bigger issue now is how Green Bay manages the rest of the week while Chicago deals with its own long injury list, because the Packers preparation could hinge on which pieces are actually available when the division matchup gets closer. [Read more 🡒]
Packers Suddenly Have A Familiar Backfield Option Fans Will Recognize
The Packers ground game has been searching for a spark through four games, and the numbers have reflected it. Green Bays current running backs have averaged three yards per carry, with MarShawn Lloyd, Kaleb Johnson and Chris Brooks combining for 231 rushing yards on 75 carries, a production line that leaves plenty of room for improvement as the team tries to settle into its 2-2 start.
One familiar name now hovering around the conversation is Jamaal Williams, who last played for the Saints in 2024 and recently worked out with the Patriots while reportedly looking good. For Packers fans, the idea of a reunion is easy to understand: Williams would bring a known presence to the backfield and a jolt of energy to the locker room at a time when Josh Jacobs status remains uncertain. [Read more 🡒]
Jordan Love Gives Packers Fans A Reason To Believe Before Bears Week
Jordan Love has given Green Bay something it has been waiting for at the most important position on the field: steady, efficient quarterback play. As the NFC North turns toward Week 5, the Packers are watching a division landscape shaped by uneven quarterback performances, with Minnesota winning despite Kyler Murrays struggles and Chicago leaning on Tyson Bagent as part of an offense that has found ways to function. In that mix, Loves improved efficiency stands out as a reason Packers fans can believe the offense is moving in the right direction.
The timing matters because the Bears are not just surviving on offense, they have had real success doing it, which makes this week a useful measuring stick for Green Bay. Minnesotas formula has been built more on defense than quarterback production, while Murray is still auditioning for the long-term contract questions hanging over him. Love does not have to settle every debate in one Sunday, but he does need to keep showing that the Packers have stability where their division rivals still have uncertainty. [Read more 🡒]