It’s a truism in football that young teams need to learn how to win. People say it all the time, but I’m not really sure what it means in most cases. It’s one of those things that has an air of truthiness about it, so I think it’s fair to let it slide most of the time, because I think it’s generally describing something that really does happen.

This weekend’s loss to the Falcons, though, gives us a better description of what it means for a team to need to learn how to win. The Packers have an inexperience problem, and between their young quarterback and even younger pass catchers they have a severe lack of institutional and functional memory when it comes to what it takes to succeed at an NFL level.

Two plays come to mind. On the Packers’ first drive, just two plays after a 44-yard defensive pass interference penalty had set the offense up with terrific field position, Jordan Love missed Luke Musgrave on a crossing route. Importantly, he missed because of what Musgrave did.

The Falcons were in a zone look, but Musgrave read it as man coverage and carried his crossing route all the way across the field rather than “sitting down” in the zone, or stopping his route once he reached an opening that would stay open because the Falcons were in zone.

This is simple inexperience at play. Musgrave, at that point, had had a grand total of one NFL game plus two plays under his belt. He’s still learning how NFL defenses move and operate, and he made a mistake that even veteran plays make from time to time. It happens, but it also cost the Packers.

The next play was 3rd and 7, and a false start by Rasheed Walker pushed the Packers back into a 3rd and 12. After an incomplete pass on third and quite long, the Packers sent out the field goal unit, but incurred a delay of game penalty, pushing the team out of field goal range. A missed read led to a penalty which set up a difficult conversion which led to a long field goal which the Packers never attempted. Mistakes built on mistakes, to be sure, but it started with a simple error of inexperience.

The second notable play — though there are surely others — came on the Packers’ final drive. On 3rd and 10, Love looked for Romeo Doubs on the left sideline, but overthrew his intended target. Fox color analyst Jonathan Vilma observed that there appeared to be a miscommunication between Love and Doubs as to where Doubs would break his route and where Love would put the ball following that break. Doubs rounded off the route toward the sideline, but Love apparently assumed Doubs would push deeper. Either way, the ball fell harmlessly to the turf, and the Packers’ last-gasp drive ended with an incompletion (and illegal shift) a play later.

The Doubs play sticks in my mind because it really comes down to preference. I don’t know if there’s a specific way the Packers want that play to be run (there probably is), but what matters more in that situation is that the quarterback knows where the receiver is going to be, and that may change depending on what both players read from the defense.

In any case, it looks to me like another case of a lack of experience — a lack of functional knowledge — biting the Packers. This is good and bad news. The bad news is that there’s no way to give someone that knowledge other than through experience. You can’t download it into someone’s brain like the Matrix or have them read a playbook or see it on film. It only comes through playing together.

But the good news is that every play fills that tank of experiential knowledge a little bit more. Every rep that Love and Doubs and Musgrave and every other young player plays together moves the needle just a little bit, and the next time they run into a situation like this, hopefully everything runs just that much more smoothly.