Acme Packing Company
As we do every week, we’re looking at how the Green Bay Packers’ passing game performed the previous week, so let’s fire up the analysis from the Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day loss.
Now that’s a pretty chart. Coming into this game, one of the questions was how much the Lions would blitz. The Lions blitzed Love on 43.5% of his dropbacks in Week 1, and he excelled against it, going 6/10 for 122 yards and 1 TD (+0.58 EPA per Dropback per NFL Pro). On the season, the Lions blitz 31.1%, the 10th highest rate in the league, but they are gameplan specific in terms of its usage. Some weeks, they’re blitzing on nearly 50% of dropbacks, while other games will see them much lower. They only blitzed Jake Browning on 11.1% of his dropbacks and Patrick Mahomes on 5.1% of his dropbacks. So, with what Love did in Week 1, how would that approach change?
Not much, as it turns out. The Lions blitzed Love on 43.8% of his dropbacks, the 5th highest mark of the year for Love. Against those blitzes, Love went 7/14 for 70 yards & 2 TDs, good for a QB Rating of 104.2 and EPA Per Dropback of +0.32. Love’s ADOT (Average Depth of Target) when blitzed was 10.3 yards, up from his season ADOT of 8.7 when blitzed.
Of course, his numbers when not blitzed were even better. When not blitzed, Love was 11/16 for 164 yards and 2 TDs, good for a QB Rating of 141.7 and EPA Per Dropback of +0.59. When not blitzed, Love had an ADOT of 12.5 yards. In technical terms, Love was chucking that thing.
On the day, Love had an ADOT of 11.4 yards, his 3rd highest mark of the year. He also turned in an EPA per Dropback of +0.47. That’s the same mark he put up against the Cowboys in Week 4. All-in-all, a good day for Love, no matter if they sent extra bodies at him or not.
The Packers leaned heavily into the play-action game, going play-action on 40.6% of their dropbacks. That ties their highest mark of the season (they were also at 40.6% against the Bengals in Week 6). On those play-action dropbacks, Love was 6/11 for 62 yards and 1 TD (101.3 QB Rating, +0.17 EPA per Dropback, 11.4 ADOT).
As far as what the Packers were running in their passing offense, it was about exactly as you would expect when facing a heavy Man Free/Cover 1 team. Lots of Smash Fade & Verts, Mesh and High Cross. Concepts designed to either isolate coverage or create conflicts by running defenders through congested areas. All season, I’ve talked about how gameplan-specific LaFleur has been this year (since last year, really), and nowhere is that more evident than in games like this.
Before we get out of here, we’re going to take a look at a big play from Wicks. We already broke down his 4th down receptions, but today we’re...
