The Green Bay Packers defeated the Detroit Lions together with Jordan Love,their division foe, on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday afternoon, bringing their record to 5-6 on the 2023–24 NFL season. Though few predicted the Packers to win against a redesigned Lions team that leads the division by a wide margin, Love turned in maybe his best performance of the year (and his career) to lead the team to a final margin of victory of 29-22.
Love and the Packers wasted no time getting to work on Thursday in Detroit. In fact, on the very first play of the game, Love hit wide receiver Christian Watson with a 53-yard bomb to immediately set the Packers up deep in Lions territory. They would go on to score a few plays later.
Still, despite that play’s success, head coach Matt LaFleur was very hesitant on whether his team should go for the home run shot that early in the game.
“As a matter of fact, I almost changed the first play call. I was mulling it over quite a bit,” said LaFleur, per Mike Spofford of packers.com. “I texted Jordan this morning and told him I was going to change it to something else, and he said he wanted this call.
I informed Christian that there was a high probability that he would be the recipient of this play just before the game. Simply go up and attack the football is what he did.
The Packers are now 5-6 and very much in the running for a berth in the competitive NFC postseason race after the win.
