Bijan Robinson gained 194 yards and two touchdowns on 29 carries as the Atlanta Falcons routed Green Bay 35-14 on Thursday night. The more damning number belongs to the Packers: 17, the total rushing yards they managed on their own field, in front of their own fans, in a building that spent the fourth quarter booing the team wearing green and gold.
Michael Penix Jr., back from a torn ACL and still finishing the quarterback competition Atlanta swore it didn’t have, threw for 256 yards and a touchdown, mostly because he didn’t need to do much more. Drake London caught nine passes for 194 yards, including gains of 68 and 40, and by the time Atlanta had reeled off 27 unanswered points, the chants inside Lambeau Field weren’t coming from the home section at all.
They were coming from the away one.
Multiple outlets confirmed the “ATL” chant that broke out in the fourth quarter belonged to traveling Falcons fans who’d effectively taken over a building the Packers were supposed to own on their home opener. The actual home crowd wasn’t chanting anything. It was booing, over and over, described by Green Bay beat writers as “lots and lots and lots” of it. There’s a difference between a fanbase losing patience and a fanbase losing the room entirely, and Thursday night in Green Bay was the second one.
https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/2103312346206933472
The football reasons aren’t complicated. Atlanta out-rushed Green Bay 242-17, which turned Jordan Love into a one-read quarterback throwing behind an offensive line missing two starters and bleeding pressure across all 54 of his dropbacks. Love still threw for 312 yards and two touchdowns. That says more about how far behind Green Bay fell than how well he actually played.
But the play that broke the game open was a flag. Brenton Cox Jr. drew a roughing-the-passer call on a third-and-long that should have forced a Green Bay punt and kept the game scoreless. Instead it handed Atlanta a free first down, and the very next snap was Bijan Robinson’s 55-yard touchdown run, tying the game at 7-7 right before the floor gave out under the Packers.
Green Bay fans have seen this movie before. In Week 1, a marginal roughing call on Chris McClellan extended a Vikings scoring drive in a game Green Bay went on to lose. Same shape, different jersey — a third-down defensive stop erased by a flag that turns directly into points for the other sideline. A Packers fan account made the exact comparison before I’d finished writing it down myself.
https://twitter.com/packers_access/status/2103286805546058115
Matt LaFleur called Thursday “a humbling night” and “a butt-whoopin’” afterward, and he wouldn’t touch the penalty, which is the smart financial call and the honest tell in the same breath. Green Bay is 1-2, reportedly 1-7 in its last eight games under LaFleur, and the calls for his job started before the final whistle blew, not after it.
My mom doesn’t follow football, but even she texted me during the fourth quarter asking why an entire stadium looked ready to riot. That’s the read from someone who couldn’t tell you what a roughing-the-passer penalty is — a building out of patience, live on national television, in the first home game of the season.
Falcons fans didn’t just show up in Green Bay on Thursday. They stayed loud long after the home crowd had nothing left to give, in the building Green Bay fans are supposed to make miserable for everyone else. Check out the rest of our NFL coverage if you want to see what a real divisional race looks like right now, because Thursday night in Green Bay wasn’t it.
A building that boos its own team already knows how this ends.
