If you want to talk positives there are a few.

There is the way the Green Bay Packers defense played for the most part, hanging on and making game-turning plays, waiting for the offense to get things going.

There is the way Julius Peppers made a classic Peppers play with the Detroit Lions in the red zone, stripping Matthew Stafford and cleaning up his own fumble because Peppers is a grown man and can take care of this all by himself, thanks.

There are the two interceptions and signs of a secondary getting more accustomed to making plays on the ball, along with a good amount of buzzing pressure surrounding Stafford for most of the game.

There is the fact that the defense played better than even 19 stupid points indicates, responsible for only 10 of those against a highly-flammable Lions offense and in a game many, including ourselves, thought could reach comic levels of back-and-forth scoring.

There is the fact the Packers have started the last three seasons now at 1-2. Looking back now none of them feel like seasons that started slow like that, even last year’s, when Green Bay was hitting a certain well-paced stride when Aaron Rodgers went down.

There is Andrew Quarless, out there making catches. His snare of Green Bay’s first  only touchdown was a thing of beauty, and even if he’ll never have the presence of Jermichael Finley, it was encouraging to see a tight end getting looks and making an impact.

There is, oh, I don’t know. James Starks made a few knifing runs when he found a rare gap at the line of scrimmage. Eddie Lacy had his best run of the season, which was a 17-yarder up the middle and is also exactly as depressing as that sounds for a best of the season run for Lacy through three football games in 2014.

There are What Ifs to consider, because there are always What Ifs, but specifically we’re thinking What if the Packers didn’t fumble away first possessions of the game? We think curbing this trend would help.

There is confidence, which is a good thing to have. Because, and this is an inexact science, but out of three whole games so far we’ve seen about two pretty good quarters, give or take a stalemate or two in Seattle. The Packers have confidence in things going forward, and we’ll have to believe in that, because if we start trying to trust our eyes we’re not going to enjoy ourselves this week before Sunday’s game in Chicago.

There is so much more season left. Hopefully that’s a good thing.

If you want to talk positives, there they are. If you want to talk negatives, such as: Nonexistent run blocking, shaky pass protection and a quarterback that appears jittery in the pocket behind it, missed throws, offensive weapons going underutilized, wasted possessions, stretch plays from your own 1-yard line, okay fine just the entire flat, sterile offense, the Lions converting 11-of-18 third down attempts, the general feeling of stagnation, the growing concern that, right now, the Packers are just not very good at playing football as we embark on another major NFC North meeting next week. If you want to talk negatives, there are a few. They are pretty obvious at this point.

The positives are, for the most part, still hidden in the unknown, in the idea that we don’t know, or don’t want to know based on these three weeks, what to expect going forward in this regular season. The Packers have been here before, though never quite like this. On a positive-negative scale, we guess you can take that one either way.