TAMPA, Fla. -- That might be the most frustrated Matt LaFleur has been after a win in eight seasons as the Green Bay Packers' head coach.
Short, snippy answers to questions he normally elaborates on and a consistent look of disdain on his sun-drenched face after three grueling hours in the Tampa sun.
You can't blame him, either.
His offense tried its best to give away yet another double-digit lead, and he likely lost another one of his best players for the season in linebacker Edgerrin Cooper to an Achilles injury.
"We're never going to be satisfied with scoring 17 points in the game," LaFleur said after the three-point win. "That's just not to our standard, and we've got to find ways, when we have opportunities in the red area, to convert. … Too many penalties. Turnovers. Ball carriers have got to hold onto the ball. We put the ball on the ground way too much. And this stuff's got to get fixed, and it's got to get fixed now."
Regarding Cooper, who crumpled to the grass midway through the third quarter in anguish while reaching for the back of his left leg, LaFleur offered a succinct diagnosis postgame on his star linebacker's non-contact injury.
"Not good."
Lost for the season?
"I would suspect that, yes."
"Yeah, I don't know."
"It's a win, but it don't feel like a win," linebacker Zaire Franklin said of Cooper's injury.
In the end, despite all the frustration emanating from the head coach, his team escaped with a 17-14 triumph over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A 2-2 record looks a lot better than 1-3. It cost them arguably their second-best defensive player behind edge rusher Micah Parsons, but the Packers kept their season alive for another week after an underwhelming 1-2 start to a season that's supposed to feature Super Bowl aspirations.
"It's not always going to be pretty," safety Evan Williams said. "We understand that. There's plenty of plays that I want back from the game. I know everybody in this locker room feels the same way. There's definitely different levels that we feel like we can tap into as a team. … It's about playing 60 minutes, going 12 rounds, fistfighting 'til the end and letting the chips fall where they may."
The Packers' offensive line lost that fistfight in lopsided fashion through the first three games. Quarterback Jordan Love was hit 31 times during that span, according to TruMedia, eight more than any other quarterback in the league. Against the Buccaneers, Love was hit just twice.
It helped that he threw the ball in 2.43 seconds on average, according to Next Gen Stats. Entering Week 4, Love's average time to throw of 2.49 seconds was second fastest in the NFL among quarterbacks with multiple starts. That's one way to mitigate the struggles of what has been the team's worst position group.
The Packers entered Sunday with a league-worst 16-percent pass-block win rate, according to ESPN Analytics. On Sunday, they achieved a season-best 53-percent clip in that area. Right guard Travis Glover hadn't played yet this season after missing all of 2025 with a shoulder injury. Veteran left guard Laken Tomlinson, 34, started in his first game with the team.
Left tackle Jordan Morgan, center Sean Rhyan and right tackle Anthony Belton held their spots and performed much better as a group than in any of the previous contests, albeit against a defense that ranked No. 31 in pressure rate entering Week 4, according to TruMedia. The Packers also ranked No. 31 in pressure rate allowed through three games (44.7 percent) despite Love's lightning quick release time, so it's worth noting the team surrendered a meager 6.5-percent pressure rate against the Buccaneers.
"I think the O-line did a great job today," Love said. "Pass protection, run game … just keep me clean, give me some time. They did a great job, and you could feel the difference back there, for sure."
Veteran right guard Kevin Zeitler was inactive after signing with the Packers this week, and LaFleur said of his absence, "We've just got to get him acclimated with what we're doing, and I think it would have been pretty unfair to put him in these conditions today with three practices under his belt."
LaFleur has previously said Zeitler will be on the field when he's fully ramped up, so don't be surprised if he replaces Glover in the starting lineup next Sunday against the Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field.
As the offensive line rebounded from a dismal showing last Thursday night against the Atlanta Falcons, as did coordinator Jonathan Gannon's defense.
Yes, Tampa Bay started an undrafted rookie quarterback in Jalon Daniels, who was making his first NFL start. But the Packers defense still did what it was supposed to in surrendering just 14 points, seven of those coming on a 54-yard drive after a shoddy Daniel Whelan punt.
Green Bay sacked the elusive Daniels three times, pressured him 15 times (41.7-percent pressure rate), hit him seven times, intercepted him twice and registered four tackles for loss. Perhaps last Thursday's capitulation against Falcons running back Bijan Robinson and wide receiver Drake London was indeed a fluke.
Cooper recorded a sack and interception before he went down. Williams had a diving interception and multiple effective blitzes late to seal the game. Green Bay's offense turned the ball over twice in the red zone in the fourth quarter while threatening to take a double-digit lead, but the defense bailed them out.
"It was great," LaFleur said of the defense. "I thought J.G. was aggressive and that was big time. Obviously it paid dividends. We ran, I think, three straight pressures right in a row (to end the game), and it was obviously effective. It kept them out of field-goal range and defensively, we did enough today to win the game."
While the Packers breathed a sigh of relief leaving Raymond James Stadium, there's still plenty to rectify if they want to contend this season.
Let's run through the list. They faced four first-and-20s courtesy of various penalties and committed 10 infractions overall. The Packers are now up to 42 accepted penalties on the season, according to nflpenalties.com, trailing the Cleveland Browns by one for most in the NFL. Pre-snap penalties that happen due to a lack of focus continue to be a problem, which Love lamented postgame.
Their ball security issues persisted, with running back Kaleb Johnson losing a fumble at the Buccaneers' 1-yard line with a chance to go up nine in the fourth quarter. Running back MarShawn Lloyd also fumbled in the red zone, but his cough-up trickled out of bounds.
LaFleur was asked postgame how to correct those issues and said bluntly, "I think a great teacher is the bench. If guys don't start holding onto the ball, they're going to be sitting on the bench."
The only problem is running back Chris Brooks suffered an ankle injury and didn't return, so who's going to play running back if Brooks is out and the other two guys keep fumbling?
Those weren't the extent of the Packers' ball security gaffes, as wide receivers Matthew Golden and Bo Melton had costly third-down drops to force punts instead of move the chains. Love also threw an interception to cornerback Jacob Parrish at the Buccaneers' 7-yard line with about four and a half minutes left in the game and the Packers leading by three. He admitted to being late on his read to Golden.
"I can't turn the ball over there," Love said. "Plain and simple, so got to be better. But late and good play by the DB."
Former Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers once said a coach's favorite thing is when his team wins but there's still plenty to correct. LaFleur's team won and still has plenty to fix, but he wasn't exactly flashing smiles at the podium.
He probably lost one of his best players for the season, and his team continued to play sloppy football, so we'll see how much this win masks with the 3-1 Bears marching into town next weekend.
"They said the Green Bay Packers don't finish in the fourth quarter," Franklin said. "We came in and tried to do that to the best of our ability. … A lot of room to grow, a lot of things to improve on, but at the end of the day, a win is a win."
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
