Two minutes into the second quarter of Sunday’s game in Washington, the Packers were down 11-0 and in a familiar place offensively.
They’d punted three times, picked up one first down and given up a safety on their four possessions, leaving little reason to think that a breakthrough was about to happen for a unit that was underwhelming for the majority of the regular season. Naturally, that’s just when it came.
The Packers picked up the tempo of their offense and the Redskins struggled to keep pace as Green Bay stormed down the field for a Randall Cobb touchdown that seemed to flip a switch on the game. Kirk Cousins would fumble the ball back quickly, the Packers scored 10 more points before halftime and 15 on their first two possessions in the second half on their way to a 35-18 victory.
Rodgers would finish the day 21-of-36 for 210 yards and two touchdowns with 141 more yards coming from a rushing game that took off once things got going through the air.
“This is huge for us, it really is,” Rodgers said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I talked a lot the last couple of weeks about being able to turn it on. A lot of you probably thought that this was lip service. But we just needed a game like this to get our mojo back. We got our confidence going. I said this week, it just takes one -- one performance to get us going back in the right direction and believing we can make a run.”
The Packers scored all of eight points in a Week 16 visit to Arizona, so they have some work to do this week. Sunday’s performance provides more hope that they can do it than the Packers have had any right to feel in quite a while.