Not Surprisingly, Special Teams Sink The Green Bay Packers’ Season

Brandon Bostick can pass the goat horns.

They belong to Maurice Drayton now.

And when Drayton is cleaning out his office in the next few days, those horns would be a perfect parting gift.

Drayton coached the Green Bay Packers special teams in 2021. After what happened Saturday night, it’s a virtual certainty he won’t hold that position in 2022.

After a season in which Green Bay’s special teams ranged between dreadful and incompetent, they reached a new low Saturday night. The Packers had a comedy of special teams errors which were the eventual difference in San Francisco’s 13-10 win in the divisional playoffs.

“Yeah, it’s extremely disappointing, especially when you look at what happened tonight,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said. “These are things I’ve got to do a better job obviously in being more involved to make sure that those types of things don’t happen, that we’re putting those guys in the right position and coaching them the right way. And ultimately, it all falls on me.”

Green Bay’s special teams finished dead last in annual rankings compiled by Rick Gosselin. The time for LaFleur to make a move, though, and fire Drayton was in early December, when the Packers were stumbling, bumbling and fumbling on a weekly basis.

That would have given the new coordinator more than a month to try to fix many of the issues that had plagued Drayton’s units. When LaFleur refused to pull Drayton’s plug, the misery continued and hit an apex Saturday night.

The biggest disaster came with 4:41 left in the game. Green Bay led, 10-3, and had a fourth-and-19 from its own 12-yard line.

Punter Corey Bojorquez lined up 2 yards deep in his own endzone and 49ers defensive lineman Jordan Willis shot up the middle and blocked the punt. Safety Talanoa Hufanga picked up the ball at the 7-yard line and raced to the endzone to tie the game.

Larry McCarren, the longtime color commentator on the Packers’ radio network, summed it up best.

“What a nightmare,” McCarren screamed. “What a meltdown.”

Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who had a rough night himself, wasn’t thrilled with the less-than-special teams.

“Special teams obviously hurt us, taking points off the board and giving them points,” Rodgers said. “In crucial, critical situations, we had obviously some issues.”

They sure did.

At the end of the first half, Jimmie Ward raced off the right edge and blocked a 39-yard Mason Crosby field goal. That would have given the Packers a 10-0 lead at halftime instead of the 7-0 advantage they held.

“We had two blocks in this game, and it obviously played a big part in us coming up short,” LaFleur said.

San Francisco wideout Deebo Samuel returned a kickoff 45 yards to midfield to open the second half, which led to a 49ers field goal. JaMycal Hasty had a 32-yard kickoff return to the 40 on San Francisco’s first possession.

And on the final play of the game — a 45-yard field goal from San Francisco’s Robbie Gould — the Packers had just 10 men on the field.

“Yeah, that can’t happen,” LaFleur said. “It’s unacceptable. Again, that’s on me.”

LaFleur’s biggest mistake came last offseason when he promoted from within after firing special teams coordinator Shawn Mennenga. Instead of going outside the building to replace Mennenga, he stayed in house and gave the job to Drayton, who was part of Green Bay’s units that ranked 26^th in 2019 and 29^th in 2020.

Not surprisingly, the Packers’ special teams went from bad to worse in 2021.

Among the low points this season were a 32^nd place finish in punt coverage and kickoff starting point, a 31st place ranking in field goal percentage, a 30^th place finish in kick return average and a 28^th place showing in punts inside the 20-yard line.

In 2014, the Packers reached the NFC Championship game despite special teams that ranked dead last in the league. In that game, though, Seattle executed a fake field for a touchdown. And then with the Seahawks’ only hope being an onside kick in the final minutes, the infamous Bostick fumbled the ball away and the Packers eventually lost in overtime.

This season, in which Green Bay never could fix its special teams issues, had an eerie feeling to 2014. And almost predictably, the Packers’ season ended thanks to a dreadful special teams performance.

“We thought our special teams had an advantage in this game,” San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan said. “And we thought they had an opportunity to possibly win us the game. To be able to say that and for it to actually come to fruition, those guys pulled it off. It was huge for those guys and huge for our team.”

And once again, devastating for Packer Nation.