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The Green Bay Packers have posted a winning record through Week 4 despite scoring only 75 points over that stretch. The last time the Packers were able to do that by scoring 75 or fewer points was in the 1978 season. 75 points over four weeks are the fewest points Green Bay has scored since their 2006-2004 seasons, when the team collectively started 2-10 over those three years.
The sky isn’t falling. The team still has a back-to-back MVP quarterback under center and rookie receivers Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs seem to be growing into their roles each week. With that being said, it’s healthy to set realistic expectations for the team after this slow start in the scoring department.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how the teams that have scored 75 or fewer points over their first four games have panned out to see how serious the Packers’ scoring woes are.
Among the 72 qualifying teams in the last decade, their collective record coming out of Week 4 was 74-205-1 — good for a 26.6 percent win percentage. Generally, their win percentage improves over time as after Week 4 those same teams would go on to win 40.6 percent of their games, still significantly below average over a large sample. None of these teams managed to stay undefeated through four games, as just six teams came out of their first four games with a winning record, all at 3-1. At least Green Bay has that going for them. Two teams (2016 Rams and 2012 Eagles) actually finished 1-11 down the stretch after starting off the year with a 3-1 record.
After a slow start, only seven teams would go on to win double-digit games on the season. Only nine teams would go on to make the playoffs. Two-thirds of the playoff teams would go on to lose their first playoff game and none of them made it to the conference championship round of the postseason.
The teams that did win a single playoff game were the 2012 Seattle Seahawks, the 2016 Houston Texans and the 2018 Dallas Cowboys. The Seahawks managed to go from scoring 17.5 points per game in the first four weeks of the season to more than doubling their points per game average to 42.5 points per game over the final four weeks of 2012 in quarterback Russell Wilson’s rookie season. The Texans managed to beat quarterback Connor Cook, in the first and only NFL start of his career, in the postseason. Cook completed 18 of 45 passes for 161 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions and was sacked three times for 22 yards. The Cowboys played so poorly on the offensive side of the ball to start the 2018 season that they trade a future first-round pick to the Oakland Raiders for receiver Amari Cooper in October.
There aren’t many case studies of a team scoring as few points as the Packers have over the first four weeks of the 2022 season and later posting a successful postseason run, if they even manage to get there. Could Green Bay put it together late in the year? Sure. They have the quarterback, developing receivers and all the talent they can ask for on the defensive side of the ball. History isn’t on their side, though.
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