NFC Notes: Lions, Packers, Aaron Rodgers, Vikings

Lions

• Lions first-round rookie OT Penei Sewell impressed 49ers DE Nick Bosa: “He’s going to be good. He’s more comfortable on the left. I could tell. The tape I saw on the right was…I told him after the game he’s better on the left and he’s more comfortable on the left. He’s going to be a solid player for sure.” (Kyle Meinke)

Packers

The Packers put together a miserable Week 1 performance on the road against the Saints. 

Aaron Rodgers admitted as much to reporters after the game, but says he’s hoping this will get them moving in the right direction. 

“This is a good kick in the you-know-where to hopefully get us going in the right direction,” Rodgers said, via NFL.com.

“They beat us. They played way better than us,” Rodgers said of the Saints. “We played bad. I played bad. Uncharacteristic of how we’ve practiced in training camp, obviously how I’ve played over the years. This is hopefully an outlier moving forward. We’ll find out next week.”

Green Bay’s new defense struggled mightily, but Packers HC Matt LaFleur put the blame on himself. 

• The Packers converted $1.213 million of CB Chandon Sullivan‘s salary into a signing bonus, creating $970,400 in cap space and adding four void years to his contract. (Field Yates)

Vikings

• Vikings WR Adam Thielen said that the team’s negative offensive plays and penalties made it hard for Minnesota to get into a groove offensively: “It was tough to be able to call our plays. Whenever you talk about an offense, you talk about giving yourself opportunities to open up a playbook. When you’re second-and-20, when you’re third-and-15, third-and-12, your playbook goes from wide open to very narrow. So we have to be able to put ourselves in good positions on first and second down and then (that) allows us to open up that playbook up and really make it tough on defenses.” (Courtney Cronin)

• Vikings HC Mike Zimmer was surprised with the number of false start penalties committed by his team today: “I have no idea about the false starts. We haven’t had hardly any of those in camp. We’ve been harping on them about where their hand placement is and things like that. We’ve just got to clean it up.” (Cronin)