Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft did not spend much time praising Minnesota after Sunday’s season opener. He spent it warning his own team.
The Packers led 22-10 with 5:09 left in the third quarter at U.S. Bank Stadium, then watched the Vikings score 29 unanswered points in a 39-22 loss. It was a familiar kind of ending for Green Bay, and Kraft made sure nobody in the locker room missed the point.
“That momentum swing was due to our own fault,” Kraft said. “We allowed that to happen… The only people who can beat us are us. That’s it.”
“We’re the best team in the NFL, but if we don’t go out there and play like it, no one’s going to believe us.”
The collapse stretched Green Bay’s losing streak to six games when last season’s playoff loss is included. In four of those games — twice against the Chicago Bears, including the NFC wild-card round, once against the Denver Broncos, and now this one — the Packers held a lead of more than one score and still walked off losers.
Kraft, back after tearing an ACL last season, finished with three catches for 65 yards. He was one of the few Packers who consistently moved the chains. Christian Watson was the bigger threat through the air, catching two touchdowns as quarterback Jordan Love threw for 389 yards.
Love also spent too much of the night on his back. Minnesota sacked him four times for a loss of 34 yards and hit him 15 times. The Vikings’ pass rush win rate reached 90.6 percent, the highest by any team in a game since 2022, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
The ground game offered little help. Without star running back Josh Jacobs, who remains on the commissioner’s exempt list, Green Bay ran 21 times for 66 yards, a 3.1-yard average. That lack of balance made Love easier to tee off on once Minnesota started sending extra rushers after halftime.
Coach Matt LaFleur’s late-game decisions became part of the postgame conversation. After rookie kicker Trey Smack made a 40-yard field goal that would have made it an eight-point game in the fourth quarter, a Vikings offside penalty gave Green Bay another chance.
LaFleur took the points off the board and went for it on fourth-and-1. Love was stuffed on a sneak.
“We’re going to be aggressive. It was going to be an eight-point game. If it would have been a two-possession game, I probably would have thought otherwise. But I thought we had a chance,” LaFleur said.
Minnesota took the ball the other way and never looked back. Backup Carson Wentz, in after Kyler Murray left with a concussion in the first quarter, threw two touchdown passes to Justin Jefferson and directed a second-half surge that buried the Packers. Aaron Jones, a former Green Bay favorite, scored the go-ahead touchdown.
The Packers’ offense also stalled on its own. Drives ended on downs twice. Love threw an interception and lost a fumble on a strip-sack. First-year defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s unit could not get off the field once the Vikings found their rhythm, with penalties wiping out stops that might have slowed the rally.
“We need to realize that it’s us versus us all the time,” Kraft said. “Teams can’t beat us as long as we’re locked down, and you saw that.”
Love sounded just as frustrated by the pattern.
“All these games find ways to be close at the end. We’ve got to find ways to be at our best. We’ve talked about it time and time again, and I think we’ll keep talking about it until we figure it out and do something about it,” he said.
Linebacker Edgerrin Cooper did not sugarcoat the timeline.
“We need to figure this out ASAP. We got to take what we did on the field, correct the things we need to correct and prepare for next week.”
LaFleur has spent the offseason preaching one word: finish. The Packers started fast again Sunday. They still could not close.
“I think it’s going to be a topic of conversation for all you guys until we do it,” he said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Green Bay is the only winless team in the NFC North after Week 1. A road game against the New York Jets is next.
Kraft’s message was simple enough that nobody should need it repeated: the Packers believe they are good enough to win a Super Bowl. They just have to stop beating themselves first.
