No one in charge of the Packers can tell us what it will take to "finish" games better, and that's the problem

Brian Gutekunst reiterated the party line that the Green Bay Packers need to finish games better. File that under, "Duh, No." What does that actually mean?

Everyone can see the problem with the 2025 Green Bay Packers: they could not close out games. But that’s like diagnosing someone with erectile dysfunction and missing that the cause is a blood flow issue. Sure, they can’t perform when it matters, but that’s a symptom of a larger, underlying malady. The quandary facing the Packers isn’t that they can’t close games; it’s that they can’t play complete games, and that has led the franchise to play whack-a-mole with the ever-changing symptoms of that hidden affliction.

“We’ve talked a lot about this, you know, our ability to be more consistent in situational football and finishing off games: A number of our games the last couple of years, we’ve been up in the games and just not been able to close them out. We’ve got to get to that point,” Brian Gutekunst said Tuesday at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.

Gutekunst said they’re on their way there. But … are they?

In general, the situational football for the 2025 Packers was excellent. They were the best third-down offense in the NFL, Jordan Love led the league in EPA/play in the fourth quarter by a comfortable margin, and they finished 11th in points per red zone drive.

What’s even more perplexing is that finishing games wasn’t an issue in 2024. There were times they let some games get away from them — Week 18 against the Bears being a notable and inglorious example — but the 2024 Packers played clutch football. Love led the game-winning drive against the Houston Texans. Malik Willis sealed a road win in place of Love against the Jacksonville Jaguars.