Green Bay Packers Fans Are Furious with Joe Barry After Comments Regarding the Defense’s Play in Week 16

The Green Bay Packers, at 7-8, are on the outside looking in at the NFC Playoff picture. Just three weeks ago, hopes were high as the Packers, then 5-6, held onto the seventh and final seed. Since then, though, Green Bay has gone 1-2 following three embarrassing performances by their defense. While they now have a good chance

The truth is that defensive coordinator Joe Barry has little faith in his team’s ability to win their last two games and qualify for the postseason.

Barry’s defense gave up two touchdowns in the fourth quarter of the Packers’ most recent game, a thrilling 33-30 victory over the struggling Carolina Panthers, and would have allowed the game-tying field goal had the clock not run out just as rookie quarterback Bryce Young led his team into field goal range. Young hadn’t thrown a touchdown pass in more than a month before this game. Against the Packers, he had two.

Frustrations with Barry have been boiling over among the fanbase for years now, and it is easy to see why. So far this season, Barry’s defensive scheme has allowed Young and other bad quarterbacks such as Tommy DeVito, Desmond Ridder, Kenny Pickett, and Baker Mayfield to have the best games of the season and/or their careers.

When the Packers made the decision to suspend cornerback Jaire Alexander for their Week 17 matchup with the Minnesota Vikings, many fans understood and supported the decision, but also questioned why a player is being punished and held out of a game for hurting the team when Barry has been allowed to keep his job. Barry’s comments during his press conference on Thursday certainly did not help matters.

Green Bay Packers Fans Are Irate with Defensive Coordinator Joe Barry [Again]

Sunday’s fourth quarter saw the Packers ahead 30–16 at one point. Despite the fact that the Panthers had only averaged 14.7 points a game up until that moment, it is important to note that this may look like an impressive lead. As was previously indicated, Barry’s defensive strategy gave Carolina two more touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

Put another way, Green Bay was lucky to escape yet another defensive disaster. If Jordan Love and the offense hadn’t shown remarkable late-game performance, the Packers would have lost and would have been virtually out of the postseason picture.

Yet it does not appear that Barry thinks his defense played all that bad on Sunday. When addressing the media on Thursday, Barry said:

“I thought we played very well for 53 minutes, but we gave up two crucial third downs and had a couple penalties that hurt us in the last seven minutes of the game.”

It would be safe to argue that the defense did not play “very well” for 53 minutes if one were to observe the game. They may have performed “okay” for that amount of time, but they never took control of the match or behaved as the better team on the field.

Naturally, Packers supporters were incensed by Barry’s assessment of his own team’s performance:

As seen, fans and Barry have two very different definitions of what “extremely well” looks like. One has to assume that LaFleur may have a different definition as well, and hopefully that leads to a change in the offseason, a change that frankly should have been made this past offseason.