After the Packers started the 2014 season with two losses in their first three games and an offense ranked 28th in total yards, quarterback Aaron Rodgers told those concerned about the state of affairs to “r-e-l-a-x.”
The Packers went 11-2 the rest of the way and the offense finished the year sixth in yards while the team led the league in scoring. It’s no surprise, then, that Giants quarterback Eli Manning would want to channel the Rodgers approach when discussing his team’s dismal three-point outing against the Cowboys last Sunday night.
“We’ll bounce back,” Manning said, via Ralph Vacchiano of SNY.tv. “We just need to slow down, everybody take a breath.”
Without comparing the personnel of the respective teams and the talent of the respective quarterbacks, there’s one significant difference between the two situations.
The Packers had ranked eighth in points and third in yards during the 2013 season and, at that point, had never ranked lower than 10th in points or 13th in yards under coach Mike McCarthy. The Giants, meanwhile, ranked 26th in points -- they last scored more than 20 points in Week 12 of last season -- and 25th in yards last year.
The results were better when Ben McAdoo, who is in his second season as head coach, was the offensive coordinator in 2014 and 2015, but the history isn’t one that suggests one bad game is the kind of outlier those three games were for that Packers team. That’s not to say that it is time to panic and Odell Beckham’s return should help, but expecting a reversal of fortunes for the Giants offense isn’t quite the same as expecting the sun to rise in the morning.