Packers gain season-low 21 yards in 20-17 loss to Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings don’t have much punch without injured quarterback Daunte Culpepper, but they had enough to send the Green Bay Packers back to the ranks of the reeling on Monday night.

With rag-armed but savvy 37-year-old Brad Johnson at quarterback and halfback Mewelde Moore slicing through a wilting Packers defense in the second half, Minnesota rallied for 13 points in the final 16 minutes.

For the second time this season, the Vikings gave kicker Paul Edinger the chance to beat the Packers as the clock ran out.

For the second time this season, Edinger came through.
This time, it was a 27-yard field goal as time expired that gave Minnesota a 20-17 win over the Packers at Lambeau Field.

His 56-yarder as time expired gave the Vikings a 23-20 win in the teams’ first meeting on Oct. 23 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

The loss is the Packers’ sixth of the season by seven points or less.
“You have no idea how frustrating and disappointing it is,” Packers coach Mike Sherman said.
The loss dropped the Packers to 2-8 and abruptly ended the good feeling they’d created with a win at Atlanta last week.

Minnesota, in the meantime, improved to 5-5 and stayed in the running for the NFC North Division race, where it trails 7-3 Chicago by two games.

The Packers lost this game because they were unable to generate any kind of running game — they finished with a season-low 21 yards rushing — and couldn’t hold a seven-point second-half lead against a Vikings offense that was struggling to do anything for much of the night.

Samkon Gado, a hero in the Packers’ win over Atlanta, gained only 10 yards on seven carries and fumbled again, though fullback Vonta Leach bailed him out with the recovery.

Gado played little in the second half, but that was more a result of the Packers turning to the passing game and using halfback Tony Fisher in his place.

“The fumble didn’t help,” Sherman said. “But we were in a different type of game. We weren’t having any success with anybody running the football.”

Quarterback Brett Favre, who threw two costly interceptions, rallied the Packers late after going scoreless most of the second half.

With the Packers trailing by three points with just under 5 minutes to play he moved 39 yards on four completions, and kicker Ryan Longwell hit a 46-yard field goal that tied the game at 17 with 3 minutes, 3 seconds to play.

However, Moore’s running and a crucial coverage gaffe by Packers cornerback Jason Horton set up Edinger for the chip-shot field goal to win the game.

Moore, who rushed for 90 of his 122 yards in the second half and had great success bouncing inside runs to the outside, gained 18 yards on three runs to start the drive. Two plays later, Horton blew coverage by releasing receiver Koren Robinson, and Johnson found him and connected on a easy pass for a 35-yard gain that put Minnesota in easy scoring position at the Packers’ 6. After three kneeldowns by Johnson, Edinger punched through the game winner as time ran out, sending the Vikings into jubilation as the game clock hit 0:00.

The Vikings are 3-0 in games Johnson has started this season. He finished with only a 65.4 passer rating and no touchdowns.

“He deserves a lot of credit for where they are right now,” Sherman said, “because they didn’t take a step backwards.”

In a season filled with close losses, this one will dog coach Sherman and his team as much as any of them because they appeared to be in position to run away from the Vikings in the first half.
From the game’s first drive it was clear the Vikings greatly miss the strong arm and freight-train scrambling that Culpepper provided at quarterback before he blew out a knee three weeks ago.

The Vikings, and Moore in particular, nevertheless wore down the Packers’ defense in the second half even though Johnson doesn’t have the arm strength to threaten a defense downfield.

Minnesota coach Mike Tice was bent on running the ball even though the Packers crowded the short passing game, and he continued that in the second half even with the Vikings trailing 14-7.
What made Moore’s second-half success on the ground even more surprising was that the Vikings came into the game ranked 27th in the NFL in rushing yards, and their makeshift offensive line has been a disaster this season with the loss of center Matt Birk in training camp. The Packers exploited that by keeping Johnson under constant pressure and sacking him a season-high five times.

By early in the third quarter, it looked like the Vikings’ only points were going to be cornerback Dovonte Edwards’ 51-yard interception return for a touchdown in the first half. This was much like the Vikings of last week, who defeated the New York Giants even though their offense scored only three points; their defense and special teams combined for three touchdowns in that game.

Packers defensive end Aaron Kampman had the first two-sack game of his four-year career, including a forced fumble in the second half that the Packers recovered but failed to convert into points.

Defensive end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila helped force a team sack in the first half when Johnson lost hold of the ball just before getting hit — the Vikings recovered that one — and shared another sack with defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins.

As importantly, the Packers had several pressures that forced Johnson into quick and errant throws. He finished the first half with only 82 yards passing and a passer rating of 42.0 points. The Vikings’ long pass play of the first half was only 11 yards.

Johnson, though, managed to engineer one touchdown drive and two field goals in the second half. The touchdown drive benefited from three Packers penalties: a 5-yard encroachment on nose tackle Grady Jackson; a 5-yard illegal contact on safety Mark Roman that converted a third down at the Packers’ 7; and an interference penalty in the end zone against Horton that gave Minnesota first-and-goal at the 1.

The short-handed Packers had some offensive struggles, but Favre made a handful of plays that put the Packers ahead early on two touchdown passes to receiver Donald Driver.

In the first quarter, Favre scrambled away from a potential sack by defensive end Erasmus James, and he then found Gado down field for a 30-yard gain that set up the Packers at Minnesota’s 30. Favre finished the drive by splitting the seam of a zone defense with a line-drive pass into the corner of the end zone for a 15-yard touchdown that put the Packers ahead 7-0.

Favre didn’t get anything going again until the end of the half, when the Packers got the ball back after Edwards’ interception for a touchdown.

With only 34 seconds left and the Packers at Minnesota’s 47, Driver inexplicably ran free through the secondary on a post pattern. Cornerback Antoine Winfield got caught cutting in front of the pattern and was several yards behind Driver, and neither of the Vikings’ safeties, Darren Sharper and Corey Chavous, was in position to help over the top early enough.
Favre made the easy throw and hit Driver in stride for a 53-yard touchdown that put the Packers ahead 14-7.
source : http://www.packersnews.com/