5 questions with Acme Packing Company: Lions have a ‘very good shot’ at scaring Packers

Things didn’t go as well as Detroit Lions fans hoped they would in Week 1. The Lions lost. They put up one hell of fight and they didn’t give up, but they lost. Still, the Lions’ day was nowhere near as bad as the Packers’ day. What happened to this team? Besides the man bun. The Packers were expected to be the class of the division and instead this is what they are at the point.

Okay, we’ll stop messing around now. The first-place Packers are going to be a tough out for the first-place Lions. But how tough of an out are they going to be? We asked our pal Jon Meerdink of Acme Packing Company to break down the Packers after their tough loss and find out how big of a threat they are to the Lions. here’s what he had to say:

1. What happened to the Packers this past Sunday?

“Well, the biggest problem for the Packers on Sunday was that they woke up and went to the stadium. It was pretty much all downhill from there. If it could go wrong, it did, and the result was the Packers ending up on the wrong end of a serious butt kicking.

“If you want to drill down to what specifically went wrong, you should probably start with Aaron Rodgers. The reigning MVP looked like he’d been body swapped with Jameis Winston. He was inaccurate and indecisive, and when he did make decisions, they were often the wrong ones. Couple that with a Hall of Shame-worthy debut for new defensive coordinator Joe Barry (who Lions fans should know well for all the wrong reasons) and you get what we saw on Sunday.”

2. What are the Packers strengths?

“In theory, the Packers’ strength should be their offense. Between Rodgers, Davante Adams, Aaron Jones, and a simple-but-effective scheme, the Packers should be able to put up points with anybody. The problem is, that offense seems like it can go to heck in a hurry when it doesn’t click from the first snap. That’s what happened on Sunday, and that’s been this team’s downfall during the Matt LaFleur era. If the offense doesn’t hit its stride early, it will trip over itself hard.”

3.What are their weaknesses?

“On top of the previously mentioned microchip-level sensitivity to adversity on offense, the Packers’ defense is wildly inconsistent at best. Under former coordinator Mike Pettine, they frequently rolled out units that we could generously describe as less than the sum of their parts. The Packers have talent on defense — Jaire Alexander is a star in the making at corner, Kenny Clark is excellent up front, and they’ve got solid edge rushers. They just can’t seem to regularly put those pieces together into something resembling a competent unit. If the Packers do get a good defensive performance on a given week, it’s usually just the result of poor quarterback play on the other side.”

4. Conspiracy theorists believe Rodgers threw the game on Sunday on purpose. My question is can you believe that people are that dumb?

“I’ve met a lot of people, so yes.”

5. Who’s winning this thing?

“I’d still lean Packers, but I’m a lot less confident than I was a week ago. The book on Green Bay in the LaFleur era is that if you run the ball hard and well when you’re on offense and get the Packers slightly off script when you’re on defense, you’ve got a good shot at not just a win, but a convincing one. Well, the Lions seem like they’re very interested in running hard on offense and beating people up on defense, so they’ve got a very good shot at putting a scare in the Packers, if not winning the thing outright. I think the Packers are probably a more talented team, but that’s not all that matters in the NFL.”