GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Unbeaten at home (with a tie). Winless on the road.
That’s not exactly the formula the Green Bay Packers like to follow.
But perhaps the plan they used Sunday to beat the Miami Dolphins -- a whole lot of speedy running back Aaron Jones -- will be the one they take with them when they hop on a plane to Seattle almost exactly 48 hours after they wrapped up their 31-12 victory at Lambeau Field.
“We’re pretty tough to beat at home right now, I think,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. “And as the weather continues to turn in our favor, meaning the colder the better, I like our chances at home, but we’ve got to win some road games or we’re going to be at home in January -- for good.”
For years, Rodgers has said his goal is to go 8-0 at home and at least split on the road to go 12-4. Instead, the Packers are 4-0-1 at Lambeau and 0-4 away from it. And their next two games are Thursday at Seattle, where they’re 1-4 since CenturyLink Field opened in 2002; and at Minnesota, where they’re 0-2 since U.S. Bank Stadium debuted in 2016.
If they lose both, they’ll have to win their final five games just to finish 9-6-1, which might not be good enough for a playoff spot.
Jones isn’t going to run for 145 yards every game like he did against the Dolphins, and Davante Adams isn’t going to catch two touchdowns every game like he did. But if the Packers can continue to play off each other like they did against Miami, then maybe the playoffs aren't out of the question.
“It puts the defense in a bind; it puts them to where they’ve got to load up that box and it allows us to have more opportunities outside,” said Adams, who has seen increased double-teams this season. “If they keep moving the ball like that and slashing and making big plays, it’s pretty tough to figure out what to defend.”
“They’ve got to figure out, ‘Hey, are we going to commit to stopping No. 17 over the top or No. 33 inside?’” Adams added, referring to himself and Jones. “It puts guys and the coaching staff, I guess, in a tough spot and the defense’s eyes are all over the place. 'It’s third-and-1, are they going to run it here? They’ve been running it well. Or are they going to dump it off?' We’ve got a little bit of all that.”
Perhaps Jones can repeat it on a short week because he wasn’t beaten up much by the Dolphins. He averaged 7.9 yards per rush before contact Sunday, which according to ESPN Stats & Information data was the second-best rate by any player with at least 15 rushes in a game this season.
And 15 -- a season high -- is exactly what Jones got.
Jones was headed for a big game the week before in the loss at New England until he fumbled on the first play of the fourth quarter, but the Packers don’t believe the second-year back is a fumbler. That was the first of his NFL career.
“We haven’t had a ton of stress on any back this season getting a ton of carries,” Rodgers said. “I like that range for him. Obviously we didn’t have a ton of plays tonight based on the way the game went, but we have Jamaal [Williams], who’s a talented back in his own right, but I think he can handle 15 carries the rest of the way.”
But no one knows yet if Jones can handle a bigger workload, especially on a short week.
“Live in the cold tub, hot tub. Live in the weight room -- not just lifting but a lot of stretching and foam rolling and massages,” Jones said when asked how he’ll prepare for Thursday. “The Packers do a great job of offering things like that in-house for us.”
As Jones and Rodgers talked Sunday evening, it was almost exactly two days before their team plane will take off for Seattle.
“Forty-seven [hours] and [counting],” Rodgers said. “This is the beauty, if you will, of Thursday night football. Short turnaround. And the beauty in a 12 o’clock game being pushed back to 3:25.”
Coach Mike McCarthy decided to take the team out West on Tuesday instead of the customary day-before-the-game trip, to try to get the players acclimated.
“Everybody knows what our record is,” McCarthy said of the 4-4-1 Packers. “We haven’t won on the road yet. So that’s an obvious emphasis this week. But yeah, we had two tough losses in a row, a lot of travel, heat game, all those things add up. But I think our team has done a good job of dealing with it and you’ve got to win the preparation contest each week and I think our team has done a good job of that. They were beat down on Wednesday, and I thought the Thursday-Friday-Saturday coming into the game was what you’re looking for. And we got the result that we intended to get [on Sunday].”