Not even Aaron Jones is safe from criticism after Packers' loss to Steelers
There's little argument to the idea that Aaron Jones is not only one of the best/most important players on the Green Bay Packers – he's the team's leader. It's heart and soul.But not even that good standing can shield him from the mistakes he made during Sunday's loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The first miscue occurred […]
There's little argument to the idea that Aaron Jones is not only one of the best/most important players on the Green Bay Packers – he's the team's leader. It's heart and soul.
But not even that good standing can shield him from the mistakes he made during Sunday's loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The first miscue occurred when Jones dropped an easy pass on 3rd and 4 that forced the Packers to punt after they cut the Steelers' second quarter lead to four points. The second miscue was the awful drop during a well-designed and timely-called trick play on 3rd and 11 that, yes, led to another punt.
Jones' most egregious error, however, came at the end of the game when the Packers were desperately trying to drive down the field and score the game-winning touchdown in the waning seconds.
The drive couldn't have started any better as Love miraculously found Jayden Reed for a 46-yard pass that immediately put the Packers at the Steeler 35 with :51 to go in the game. Reed was able to get out of bounds, which was huge considering the chunk of yards he gained. That allowed the Packers to gain their composure and get the next play in motion without having to hurry, too much.
Jones, the veteran -the Pro Bowler- could've learned something from Reed on that play – get out of bounds during drives like this.
A blitz forced Love to check it down to Jones, who was behind the line of scrimmage when he caught the ball. A bevy of Steelers defenders immediately came tearing after him and instead of running out of bounds, Jones tried to cut upfield and gain yards, which put a timeout-less Packers offense in an awful position.
It was a brutal mistake and Packers head coach Matt LaFleur had no issue in calling it out after the game.
"We had an opportunity there, I thought, when we moved [the ball and] checked the ball down to Aaron Jones – I thought there was an opportunity to get out of bounds, right there. And we didn't," LaFleur told reporters after the game. "That was critical because that wasted a ton of time. We would have had a couple opportunities at the end of the game. That was, like, 20 seconds or so. It felt like forever. He was trying to get us in a position where we were going to have one of the receivers chip the edge and that took too long. Just the whole operation there was not good enough."
LaFleur even brought the play up a second time later on during his postgame presser.
"I really think that the play that really hurt us; obviously, it just wasted so much time, when we checked it down there to Aaron Jones."
Aaron Jones just looks out-of-synch, right now
Obviously, Jones has been dealing with a hamstring injury all year, but the star running back still looks out-of-synch after playing over 50% of offensive snaps the last two weeks. Including a season-high on 57% against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 9.
He's dropped easy passes in multiple weeks. He's looked pretty good running the ball, but overall, he hasn't been the dynamic playmaker we know him to be. The lapses only make the situation even more confusing.
Now, of course, the entire offense is out-of-synch on most occasions, but Jones is the one guy that needs to be on his game. The team looks up to him and looks to him in time of need and that time is now, more than ever, in Green Bay. It's key for both he and the Packers offense to find some way to put together a complete game, at some point.
