Packers Notebook (Nov. 10)

No panic in Packer land

In the span of about three hours on Sunday, the Green Bay Packers went from Super Bowl contenders to a team shrouded in doubt.

At least that’s the outside perspective.

It’s true that the Packers performed miserably in a 26-11 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. It’s also true that good teams sometimes play bad games.

Just look at this week’s opponent, Carolina. The Panthers took a four-game winning streak to San Francisco for a showdown against the undefeated 49ers on Oct. 27. Instead of a heavyweight slugfest, it was a first-round knockout. Carolina lost 51-13, having been dominated in every phase — just like what happened to Green Bay against the Chargers.

Ron Rivera has been Carolina’s coach for eight seasons. Along with his playing career with the Bears, he’s been part of the NFL for more than 30 years. “Without a doubt” good teams inevitably play a bad game, he said.

“I told our guys, I said, ‘Hey, this (crap) happens,’” he said in a conference call. “That’s just the way it is. That’s the nature of the game.”

Relayed Rivera’s comments, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers laughed. Rodgers is in his 15th season in the NFL and isn’t about to panic over one bad game.

“Like I said after the game, it was important for us to be very critical,” Rodgers said. “I don’t think it helps to just brush it under the rug as they say. I think it’s important to correct the correctable things and then move forward positively and learn from the mistakes and set your eyes on the next performance.”

More than a punter

Punter J.K. Scott was born in Denver, so he knows a little bit about how to take care of business in a snowball fight.

“J.K. has a cannon,” running back Aaron Jones said.

Defensive tackle Montravius Adams found that out during a post-practice snowball fight on Wednesday. Scott drilled Adams right in the mouth from across the parking lot.

“He ate snow. He literally ate snow,” Jones said.

It wasn’t a laughing matter — immediately, at least — for Scott.

“I’ve seen people get hurt with snowballs when they get hit in the face,” Scott said. “As soon as I threw it, I was like, ‘Dang, I shouldn’t have thrown it.’ But he didn’t get hurt.”

Adams got the last laugh — against Jones.

“I guess it was for laughing at him,” Jones said. “We were getting out of the car and I pulled out the helmet from the back seat. There was snow on top of the car and the next thing I know he’s just wiping it and I could feel a chunk hit my head and my shoulder. So, I guess he got me back. He was a little salty.”

Soup’s on

The Packers activated safety Ibraheim Campbell from the physically unable to perform list on Tuesday.

He could be a shot in the arm for a defense that has struggled to replace safety Raven Greene in the dime linebacker role. Greene won that job in training camp and had a strong opening game against Chicago but suffered a season-ending ankle injury the next week against Minnesota.

“It’s been kind of a revolving door,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “We’ve had to put a lot of different people in different spots and I think this will help us in terms of allowing guys to stick to one spot.”

Campbell was signed last November and played in three games before suffering a torn ACL against Arizona on Dec. 2. The Packers re-signed him early in training camp, even though he wasn’t fully back from the injury.

“I think I can help this defense,” Campbell said. “I look forward to when that opportunity presents itself to doing so. When Raven went down, I kind of knew why I was here, to be able to fill in with worst-case-scenario kind of thing. I’m looking forward to when the time comes.”

Remember the running game?

The Packers were the most pass-happy team in the NFL last season. LaFleur made it an emphasis to direct a more balanced attack. However, after running the ball 43.8% of the time in the first three games, that figure has drifted down to 39%.

The Packers have fallen from 10th to 20th in run percentage between the end of Week 3 and the end of Week 9.

“I think that would help” to run more often, Rodgers said. “Based on the way teams have played us, we’ve had some good matchups (in the passing game) the last five or six weeks, but we’ve got to get those guys going. We need to get them the touches. We’ve got to get Aaron (Jones) 15 to 20 touches and Jamaal (Williams) 10 to 15 touches. I think that’s when we’re playing at our best, and Matt knows that and I think he said that, as well.”

Adams’ toe

After missing four games due to turf toe, Davante Adams returned against the Charger and caught seven passes. However, he turned those into only 41 yards with a long gain of 9. On the bright side, he didn’t aggravate the injury and should be even stronger this week.

“It gets beat up a little bit but it’s definitely no setbacks. Nothing like that,” he said. “We just want to be smart so I can heal up and continue to get better and better. Like I said last week, I’m obviously healed at this point but as far as being a thousand percent back to myself, I wouldn’t quite say I’m quite there yet. But I’m able to do a lot of things right now and do what I can to contribute.”

No Cam, no problem

The Panthers not only overcame a 0-2 start but they overcame a potentially season-ending foot injury for star quarterback Cam Newton.

Kyle Allen, an undrafted free agent last year, is 5-1 as the starter this season and 6-1 for his career. Panthers coach Ron Rivera swears this is what he expected, though he was quick to credit the rest of the team — from running back Christian McCaffrey to a big-play defense.

“It’s one of those things that sometimes you watch a guy and you see a guy do things and you say, ‘Wow, this guy’s got a chance,’” Rivera said. “But it’s not just all about Kyle. We’ve been able to protect him, we’ve been able to run the ball effectively, we’ve been able to distribute the ball to the different playmakers we have as far as our tight ends, our wide receivers and our running backs.

“Football’s the ultimate team game. The thing that you’ve got to be able to have is 11 guys on the field working together as a group. We’ve been very fortunate. That’s really what we’ve been able to do. Our guys are doing it well as a unit, they’re doing well as a team. Hopefully we continue that trend.”

Up next: vacation

The Packers are on their bye next week. They’ve won their final game before the bye three of the past four years.

“We just want to focus on the game,” Adams said. “You don’t really want to think about all that stuff. Obviously, you don’t want to have a bad taste in your mouth over the bye, but that doesn’t really motivate us any more to win than any other win. So we’re going to take this one serious and make sure we go out and handle business.”