Cheese Curds, 6/23: Will Packers carry over late-season successes on defense to 2023?

The 2022 Green Bay Packers gave up 23 or more points in 9 of their first 12 games. only one of those performances saw the team give up more than 30, but they were consistently in the 23-to-28 point range throughout much of the first two-thirds of the season.

Then, following their worst performance of the year — a 40-point, 500-yard abomination in Philadelphia — the defense seemed to figure something out. The final five games saw the team give no more than 20 points in any contest, forcing 12 turnovers in that span which matched the 12 takeaways they had through the first 12 games.

That late-season surge helped save defensive coordinator Joe Barry’s job, while also giving fans some reason for optimism for the 2023 edition of the defense. They will need that unit to perform well this season if this team is to have overall success, of course; with Jordan Love in his first year as a starting quarterback and the team’s receiving corps consisting almost entirely of first- and second-year NFL players, there should be plenty of bumps in the road on that side of the football.

The pressure is on for Joe Barry and his unit to actually win some games for the Packers. It’s not a stretch to say that they were truly responsible for just one or two wins in 2022 — the games in Tampa and Miami early and late in the season. Given the inexperience on offense, there’s no time better than now for them to step up and deliver.

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