GREEN BAY — Xavier McKinney was stumped. Rashan Gary, perplexed. Evan Williams, flummoxed. 

And Matt LaFleur? He had no answer, either.

“That’s a great question,” the Green Bay Packers head coach responded.

There’s an old adage that NFL coaches live by: You get what you emphasize. And while there may be other teams who emphasize the importance of forcing turnovers as much as the Packers do, there’s no way there’s a defense that emphasizes takeaways more than coordinator Jeff Hafley’s crew.

This is, after all, the group that appointed a “Ball King” and installed a flashing red light and siren in the defensive meeting room for emphasis.

And so, the Packers three defensive stalwarts were asked, if you get what you emphasize, and nobody emphasizes takeaways more than you guys do, why on earth do you enter Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals with just two takeaways — TWO! — through four games?

“Uh … um … uh … man … I don’t know. I think … I think sometimes the ball goes your way, and then sometimes it don’t,” said McKinney, the team’s star safety and team captain who was a first-team All-Pro last season with eight interceptions — but has just one so far this year (at the end of the first half against Cleveland).

“We know we don’t have a lot right now but we’re going to keep trying to stick with the same routine, the same plan, and hopefully those turnovers start to come.”

Williams took even longer to answer.

“I guess that’s what we’re all trying to figure out right now. That’s the question,” said Williams who has the team’s other takeaway, an interception against Detroit’s Jared Goff in the opener. “I do know that they come in bunches, so the more you focus on it, the more the opportunities will come.

“Sometimes you just go through dry spells. But I feel like that result shouldn’t deter you from putting the effort forth. We have to keep putting it as a main point of emphasis, and as long as we keep that mentality, I feel like good things will happen eventually.”

And Gary? He was no help, either.

“Ah, I really got no reason, man,” said the veteran defensive end, who leads the team in sacks (4.5) but hasn’t generated a turnover play. “The process has been good, the motivation and the hunger have been there, the will has been there.

“We’ve got to be consistent in getting more ball attempts — shots at the ball. The more shots that you take, it’s going to end up happening.”

Despite a training camp-long emphasis on forcing more fumbles — with the publicly stated goal of forcing 43 fumbles, which would be an NFL single-season record — the results aren’t there.

Entering Week 6’s games — the Packers, Chicago Bears, Atlanta Falcons and Pittsburgh Steelers all had their byes last week, so they’ve played one fewer game than the other 28 teams in the league — the Jacksonville Jaguars lead the league in takeaways with 14 (an NFL-best 10 interceptions, four fumble recoveries) while the Steelers have 10 (and are tied for the NFL lead in fumble recoveries with five) and the Bears and Detroit Lions have nine.

Meanwhile, the only team in the league with fewer takeaways is the 0-5 New York Jets, who have gone five games without forcing a single turnover.

“I think there’s been a couple more out there for us that we haven’t quite capitalized on,” LaFleur said as the Packers (2-1-1) prepped for Sunday’s matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals (2-3) at Lambeau Field. “[Give] credit to the teams we’ve played; they’ve done a nice job of not allowing us to get a bunch of takeaways — just like our offense has done a fairly decent job of not giving the ball away.

“It just hasn’t rolled our way up to this point. Now, we’re going to continue to emphasize it and continue to work on it. I do think it’s a matter of time before we get a couple to go our way.”

To LaFleur’s point, the Packers have turned the ball over only twice this season, albeit both crucial ones: Quarterback Jordan Love’s late fourth-quarter interception in the Packers’ Sept. 21 loss to the Browns, and Love’s late first-half fumble that set up a touchdown for the Dallas Cowboys in the teams’ Week 4 tie.

Last season, in their first year in Hafley’s system, the Packers finished fourth in the 32-team NFL in takeaways (31), with 17 interceptions (tied for third) and 14 fumble recoveries (also third). They finished tied for third in the league with a plus-12 turnover differential.

Which is why Hafley believes it’s only a matter of time before things change — even after the Bengals benched fill-in starter Jake Browning, who’d thrown eight interceptions in three-plus games following Joe Burrow’s toe injury, in favor of Joe Flacco, whom they acquired from the Browns on Tuesday.

“[If] you’re process driven, you put in a lot of work, and you do it over and over and over again, and you emphasize it, and you coach it. And if it falls up short, you don’t give up on it,” Hafley said. “Now, maybe you tweak certain things that you’re doing, or maybe you have new thoughts, and you look hard at yourself why they’re not happening.

“But we’ve emphasized that more than we’ve emphasized it last year. It just so happened last year at this time, I think we had nine, and my belief is that they’re coming.

“I mean, we’re swinging at the ball more than we did last year. And that’s the truth, because we’re even charting that. But, yeah, I want to get more takeaways. We want to get more takeaways. I don’t think anybody’s sitting here happy with that.

“So if you want to think about something that we need to do better — and there is other things we have to clean up, and I think we can play better — that’s one of them And I’ll do my best to make sure we get ‘em.”

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