The Green Bay Packers will face off against NFC North rival Detroit Lions on Monday Night Football in Week 9 of the NFL season.
Monday Night Football in Week 9 will feature a primetime NFC North matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. It wasn’t long ago that the Packers and Lions found themselves at the top of the division and it looked as if fans would see a season-long race between the two.
However, the Lions have now lost four of their last five games and the Packers have lost their last two and star quarterback Aaron Rodgers for the rest of the season. The Vikings have a multi-game lead on both of these teams in the division. Neither team can afford to drop a division game and fall deeper into a hole in the division and the NFC Wild Card race.
Detroit is coming off of a 20-15 home loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night. Despite the fact that the Lions gained 482 offensive yards they were unable to score a single touchdown, instead settling for five different field goals.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford threw 411 yards in that game, 85.3 percent of their total yards. Stafford’s 411 yards mark the seventh-most of his entire career. However, of the 36 times Stafford has thrown for over 300 yards, it was just the third time he did not have a passing touchdown.
The bye could not have come at a better time for the Packers. Green Bay lost two games without Rodgers but their Week 8 bye hopefully allowed them time to create a new gameplan for backup quarterback Brett Hundley. Hundley struggled in his NFL game as a starter in Week 7, throwing for just 87 yards on 25 attempts and failing to throw for a touchdown, although he did rush for one.
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It didn’t seem as though Packers coach Mike McCarthy had implemented anything in that offense for Hundley. Rather it seemed as though Green Bay was running the same exact offense that they ran with Rodgers when, obviously, Hundley is not Rodgers. We will see if that changes this week as they come off their bye to face in division rival in an important primetime game.