About this episode
Chris Lempesis is back in the basement Packer room in Milwaukee to break down what can only be described as… a football-shaped shrug.If you sat through the entire 2 hours and 45 minutes of Green Bay’s 16–3 loss to the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium, give yourself a gold star, a warm blanket, and possibly a small tax credit. Because “meaningless regular season finale” doesn’t even begin to cover what this was. This was a glorified preseason game with Clayton Tune, a bunch of backups, an announcing crew that felt like CBS’s Z-team, and a vibe so sleepy that someone on BlueSky claimed even Larry McCarren sounded disinterested — and folks, if you’ve lost Larry, what hope is there for the rest of us?The Packers sat damn near every key player, prioritizing rest over rust to avoid a Week 18 repeat of last year’s nightmare (Christian Watson ACL, we remember). And hey — mostly mission accomplished… except for the part where Javon Bullard somehow stayed in long enough to tweak his knee (why?) and Bo Melton also left with a knee injury. Otherwise, the main takeaway was pretty simple:Matt LaFleur coached this thing like, “let’s just get this over with and get the hell out of here.”Lemps hits the handful of things actually worth discussing from the “Clayton Tune Game,” including a legit bright spot: a trio of defensive ends Bretton Cox Jr., Baron Sorrell, and Colin Oliver (Oliver’s NFL debut) who combined for 2 sacks, 3 tackles for loss, 6 QB hits, a forced fumble, and a recovery — and who played with more juice in a meaningless game than Green Bay showed defensively against Baltimore. Sorrell, especially, gets the full Lemps stamp: 110 miles per hour every snap, and possibly a real answer for the future with Rashan Gary’s status suddenly very much on the table and Kingsley Enagbare headed toward free agency.Offensively, Lemps highlights Chris Brooks running hard and looking like a “winning player,” and the bizarre roller coaster of Emmanuel Wilson, who somehow went 7 carries for -14 in the first half — including a run so disastrous it became one of the biggest RB losses since 2007 — then rebounded in the second half with 11 carries for 58 yards. Also: Daniel Whelan punted the hell out of the ball, because yes, the Packers absolutely got their full quota of preseason vibes… right down to special teams being the most stable thing in the building.But if you’re looking for negatives, Lemps has you covered: the backup pass protection was so brutal he spent part of the afternoon wondering if Clayton Tune was g
