LaFleur's gamble cost Green Bay a game it had no business losing — and this secondary cannot afford more charity

The Packers lost to Minnesota in Week 1, and the margin came down to a late-game decision that will haunt Matt LaFleur for at least the next seven days. That much is the story on the surface. Underneath it is something Green Bay fans have seen before: a roster thin enough in the right places that one bad call, one coverage breakdown, one missing body becomes the difference between a win and a reset of everything the offseason was supposed to fix.

This is the same team that finished last December losing four straight, watching a season that went 7-3 through its best ten-game stretch dissolve into a minus-1.2-point-per-game slog over the final stretch. The collapse wasn't random. It was structural. When depth ran out, so did the season. Nothing about Sunday suggests the structure has changed enough.

Start with the secondary, because that is where this game was decided and where the vulnerability is most acute. Micah Parsons is out — not questionable, not limited, out — until at least mid-October. Savion Williams is on injured reserve. Brandon Cisse is questionable. Behind Keisean Nixon at cornerback, there is effectively no one who logged meaningful snaps last season. Xavier McKinney is the anchor at safety, but the depth behind him is untested at best. You can scheme around one absence. You cannot scheme around a position group that is running on faith and preseason tape.

The linebacker situation compounds it. Zaire Franklin is a legitimate starter. After him, the drop is severe — Kristian Welch handled a fraction of the snaps last season, and the production gap between the two is enormous. Against a Vikings offense that will test the middle of the field, that gap is not an abstraction. It is a liability that shows up on third down, in the red zone, in the fourth quarter when LaFleur needs his defense to hold.

Here is my declaration: this defense will not survive the first month at the level required to keep Green Bay in playoff contention. Not with Parsons out until Week 6, not with the cornerback and safety depth this thin, not with a linebacker room this top-heavy. Jordan Love threw for 3,704 yards and 27 touchdowns last season and will give this team a chance every single week. Tucker Kraft, back from an ACL tear in under nine months and now locked into a long-term extension, gives Love a weapon the offense was missing for half of 2025. The offense will be fine. The defense will be the reason this team is fighting for its playoff life again in December rather than coasting. The only question is whether the hole dug in September is too deep to climb out of by then.