Three Overreactions From Packers’ Loss to Lions: Refs Screw Packers

DETROIT – Based on the Green Bay Packers’ financial report, the NFL generated $14.5 billion in national revenue last year.

$14.5 billion with a B.

The league has revenue oozing from its every nook and cranny. The “shield” logo should be colored green and gold – not for the Packers, obviously, but to represent money in its paper and metallic form. Replace the stars with dollar signs and it’d be perfection.

And yet the league can’t find some loose change to fix its officiating crisis. Are full-time officials the way to go? I don’t know but it couldn’t hurt. Does technology need to have a greater role? Should there be more officials at the league office to right the on-the-field wrongs?

The officiating leads off this week’s Packers Overreactions.

1. The NFL’s Officiating Crisis

Let’s make something abundantly clear. Officially, the Lions beat the Packers 20-17 on Sunday. The officials beat the Packers. And, most importantly, the Packers beat the Packers. Imagine facing arguably the worst defense in NFL history and going 1-of-4 in the red zone and squeezing out 60 rushing yards. Dropped passes, bad blocking, bad tackling and stupid penalties combined to snap a three-game winning streak and drop the Packers into the NFC North basement.

But the officials were terrible. There’s no two ways about it.

“I don’t know how the NFL’s going to treat it but I’m not a big fan of the refs right now,” safety Xavier McKinney said in the most matter-of-fact tone you can imagine. “I don’t think it’s great officiating, if I’m being completely honest. I think it’s bull**** a lot of the times. I think there are drives where they make calls that don’t even make any sense.”

One of those came on second-and-11 in the third quarter. Packers defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt tackled receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who was continuing to run after a short catch on second-and-11. The umpire on the play got knocked over and, flat from his back, penalized Wyatt for unnecessary roughness. 

The postgame pool report featuring referee Alex Moore offered this incredible explanation.

“I can’t honestly hear if there was a whistle or not,” Moore said, “but the tackler made the tackle, the play was over. Then, there was an additional action, and he basically tackled him again with force after the play was over.”

The “play was over” following a whistle that nobody – not Moore, not St. Brown and not Wyatt – heard. So, Wyatt was penalized because reasons. 

To borrow tennis legend John McEnroe’s legendary rant, “You cannot be serious.”

So, instead of third-and-7, the Lions were given a first down. One play later, they scored the go-ahead touchdown.

The Packers were guilty of two more roughing-the-passer penalties. The first was particularly comical, with Brenton Cox shoving Jared Goff and trying to hold him up before Goff hit the turf. Jordan Love was knocked to the turf probably a half-dozen times on similar plays against the Vikings in Week 1. No penalties were called on those plays, nor should there have been.

Protecting the quarterback is a worthy mission for the league. Nobody wanted to see Tyrod Taylor against Josh Dobbs on Sunday. They wanted to see Love vs. Goff. But it’s gotten beyond ridiculous.

This season, the Packers have been guilty of eight roughing calls. No other team has been flagged for more than four. According to NFL Penalties, the league average is 1.53 per team.

Meanwhile, the Packers are one of seven teams who have not been the beneficiary of a roughing call.

Coach Matt LaFleur no doubt has sent in a bunch of clips to Troy Vincent, the NFL’s vice president of football operations. Maybe those communications have wound up in Vincent’s spam folder. Maybe LaFleur forgot Vincent’s birthday and he’s holding a grudge. Maybe Vincent was out for tea or at the movies. 

Whatever, the Packers are down 8-0 in roughing calls. No other team is worse than minus-3.

Bad calls are unavoidable. The Packers have benefitted from plenty of questionable calls over the years. But all anyone wants is for the officiating to be fair to both sides. These are humans, after all. But there needs to be some sort of mechanism for the league to fix obvious mistakes. Or to prevent them from happening in the first place.

The NFL is big business. It’s gone all-in – pardon the pun – on gambling in its never-ending thirst for money. Bad officiating raises some uncomfortable questions. But it’s not even about that. Winning and losing isn’t only about the teams on the field or the fans watching the games. With millions of dollars changing hands in every game, the league has to do everything in its power to make sure the game is being officiated as correctly as humanly possible.

Well, scratch that. The NFL doesn’t have to do anything. Doing something would require it to care. Other than generating revenue, it’s not clear the NFL cares about anything.

2. Kicker Calamity, Starring Trey Smack

A good argument could be made that a team should never draft a kicker. Historically, there is no difference between drafted kickers and undrafted kickers.

This season, 14 drafted kickers have kicked in a game. The median success rate on field goals is 85.0 percent. Of the 19 undrafted kickers, the median is 87.5 percent. That’s a small sample size, so let’s look at it another way.

There were 19 kickers drafted between 2016 through 2026. Using 20 career field-goal attempts as the threshold, the median career success rate is 84.3 percent, ranging from 89.3 percent to 71.0 percent. Over that same stretch, the median for undrafted kickers is 84.6 percent, ranging from 92.6 percent to 68.6 percent.

Rookie sixth-round pick Trey Smack missed two short field goals in the friendly confines of Ford Field on Sunday. He’s 11-of-16 on field goals, his 68.8 percent marksmanship tied for 28th out of 32 kickers (minimum five attempts) this season.

The obvious response is to say Smack choked.

Matt LaFleur said the Packers will stick with Smack, though that’s not necessarily his call and there’s not a lot of time to do anything about it before Thursday night’s game against Carolina.

General manager Brian Gutekunst drafted Smack because he likes what he can be. Because Gutekunst drafted him and sees that potential, he perhaps feels compelled to ride it out. Will his patience be rewarded or will it be the equivalent of throwing good money after bad?

Regardless, it’s impossible to not think back to how the Packers got to this spot. Should they have drafted a kicker in the first place? Should they have had a real kicking competition with Brandon McManus? A semi-real kicking competition with Lucas Havrisik?

Instead, the Packers gave Smack a stress-free offseason and training camp and, lo and behold, he seemed to melt under the stress of the moment against Detroit. It would be simplistic to say the Packers would be 5-2 had Smack made those kicks, but it’s perhaps reality.

3. “We Got to Grow Up Fast”

In the final question of Matt LaFleur’s postgame press conference, Matt Schneidman of The Athletic and one of my podcast partners, asked a big-picture question about the state of the team.

“I think we’ve been building some momentum,” LaFleur said. “I think our defense is balling out, doing a lot of great things. That’s a really good offense. I think you hold them to 20 points, you have an opportunity to win the game.

“Obviously, offensively, we got to score points in the red zone – didn’t do that (and) missed a couple kicks – still have too many drops. But then there’s some things defensively we got to do better, too, in regards to just the offsides penalties are killer and especially in situations where you know they’re going to hard count.”

Then came the money line.

“We continue to have these repeated mistakes and we can’t do it. We got to learn from it. We got to grow up. We got to grow up fast.”

He’s right, of course. But will they?

At some point, you are who you are. It doesn’t mean the Packers can’t grow and evolve, but a team that has been committing stupid penalties, dropping passes and squandering red-zone opportunities through seven games is apt to commit stupid penalties, drop passes and waste chances next week, the week after and so on.

The Packers went 9-8 in 2024 and 9-7-1 in 2025. Even with a bunch of new players, it looks like the exact same team this season. Every week’s a new week and every season’s a new season, the coaches and players will say, but they all seem to lead to the same destination.

Mediocreville.

The Packers are like about 20 other teams located in the murky middle of the league. They are as capable of beating the best teams in the league as they are of beating themselves against the worst teams in the league.

The Lions are a good team that didn’t play a good game. They handed the Packers two gift-wrapped turnovers and turned it over on downs inside their 25. And they still won.

It’s the type of verdict that you just know is going to haunt the Packers in January, whether it’s because they missed the playoffs or they’re buried alive as the seventh seed.

Unless the Packers grow up, like LaFleur said, it will be another wasted season. The thing is, there is zero evidence to show the Packers are capable of growing up, which is why the officiating is such a focus. The Packers should have won the game. Instead, they beat themselves.

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