The Green Bay Packers suffered arguably their most surprising loss of the season on Sunday, and Aaron Rodgers thinks a lack of focus and energy had a lot to do with it.
After Green Bay’s 31-26 loss at home against the Indianapolis Colts, Rodgers called out his teammates for not giving it their all.
“I don’t understand it,” the quarterback said, via Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com. “I mean, this is what we get paid to do, is to bring it every week, and I hope the guys would say I bring it every week. I mean, I love this game and I bring energy. I’m not a rah-rah guy, but I’m a focused, enthusiastic player, and I don’t know what the lack of juice was.
“You kind of felt it over the entire sideline. We didn’t have the same kind of enthusiasm and encouragement that we had the previous two weeks. So we’ve got to look deep in the mirror there, because that’s just not acceptable.”
The Packers have been fortunate that no team in the NFC North is playing all that well, so their 4-4 record has them just one game behind the Minnesota Vikings and a half-game behind the Detroit Lions. Still, Rodgers says the team needs to get much “tougher” down the stretch.
“That’s the mark of a team,” he said. “We talk about that all the time at my locker. How you deal with adversity says a lot about the kind of players you’ve got and the kind of team we’ve got. We’ve got to respond a little bit better.”
The Colts took the Lambeau Field crowd out of the game immediately by returning the opening kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown, but Rodgers said it is “unacceptable” for the Packers to not be “mentally tougher” in a situation like that.
Rodgers played pretty well for the third consecutive week, completing 26 of 43 passes for 297 yards, three touchdowns and an interception. He’ll likely still pour himself a glass of his favorite drink to get a better idea of what has gone wrong with the team.
