Acme Packing Company
Alright, it’s time for this week’s edition of “Who did the Green Bay Packers play, where did they play them and why?” As always, we released the official Week 3 snap counts on the night of the game, but our detailed snap counts include plays where post-snap penalties occurred, ignore kneels, ignore spikes and include where players lined up on the field for these plays.
Let’s dive into the Packers’ usage against the Cleveland Browns.
As a reminder, each cell represents snap counts played, beyond the first column. A cell highlighted in red means that a player was injured for that game and was inactive. A cell highlighted in yellow means that a player was active for a game but left with an injury. W1 is the data from Week 1, etc.
Slowly, the Packers have started playing more and more three-receiver sets. In Week 1, only 38 percent of their plays, about a third, featured more than two receivers on the field. That number jumped to 49 percent in Week 2 and finally 67 percent, over two-thirds, in Week 3.
Green Bay had plans to be a heavier team on offense, but they just can’t seem to get enough juice out of playing Luke Musgrave, who is now losing snaps to John FitzPatrick as the team’s second tight end. The Packers also only played 1 two-back or three-tight-end set against the Browns, despite playing 17 over the first two weeks of the season.
For whatever reason, they wanted to spread Cleveland out and pick them apart that way, instead of blocking things up inside out and taking shots down the field versus the Browns, who are known for stacking the box and playing man coverage. The result? Quarterback Jordan Love went from averaging 12.5 air yards per attempt with the highest deep pass rate in the league through two weeks to a passer who only threw two balls of over 10 yards all game: A Cover 2 hole shot to Matthew Golden and a Romeo Doubs pass that ended up being flagged for defensive pass interference.
Note: I’m including Bo Melton as a receiver for these purposes, just to make the personnel easier to consume.
The Savion Williams wildcat package is doubling. By Week 17, he’ll record 32,768 wildcat quarterback snaps in a single game. (This is not a serious prediction.)
Okay, so there was actually movement on the running back front this week. For the first time this year, Emanuel Wilson actually received more snaps in a game than Chris Brooks, who is mostly a blocking back.
Overall, Brooks was the single back in only 1 of the Packers’ first 47 snaps, but was the lone back in 4 of the final 17. It’s an interesting choice to basically sit your blocking back in a game where you ended up playing eight offensive linemen…who knows if head coach Matt LaFleur wants that decision back.
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