Acme Packing Company
If you’re new to this series, we’re reviewing how the Green Bay Packers offense performed in 2025 by down & distance. We’re doing that by building out a call sheet. I ran it all down in my initial post. This is the 8th article in the series, where we’re looking at 3rd & Short (where “Short” is defined as needing 3 or fewer yards for a 1st down). We’ll reference Success Rate & Explosive Rate in this series, so here are the definitions. On 3rd down, a play is considered a success if it gains 100% of the yards needed for a 1st down. A play is considered explosive if a pass gains 16+ yards or a run gains 12+ yards.
The fewer yards the Packers needed on 3rd down in 2025, the worse they were at converting a 1st down. They were the best team in the league on 3rd & Long. They were the 2nd best team on 3rd & Medium. On 3rd & Short, they dropped all the way down to 15th, with a success rate of 63.3% (the Bills were the best team in the league, with a success rate of 73.9%).
Before I go too much further here, I just want to take a beat to say that the best teams in 3rd & Short success rate don’t exactly mirror the best offenses in the league. Yes, the Bills sit at the top, but the Giants are at #2 (72.7%). The Browns (the worst offense in the league last year, per DVOA) are at 5th (69.0%). The Rams (the best offense in the league per DVOA) are at 23rd (59.3%). It’s not exactly the list I thought it would be.
Either way, the Packers sit at 15th in Success Rate. That Success Rate is roughly the same whether they were in shotgun (63.4%) or under center (62.5%). Their best combo was actually run plays out of shotgun, where they had a success rate of 68.4% (under center runs were at 60%).
While they were only a tick above average in Success Rate, they were #2 in the league at generating explosives on 3rd & short, with an explosive rate of 16.9% (behind the Bills at 21.7%). On the season, the Patriots were the best team in the league at generating explosives on all down & distances (16.2% explosive play rate), so the Packers were generating explosives on 3rd & Short better than the best explosive team in the league. If you’re not efficient, you can at least be explosive.
On the season, the Packers average 3.8 plays in 3rd & Short per game, the highest rate in the league (the Chargers & Bucs were tied at 2nd with 3.4 plays per game). I wanted to look at what the Packers did by run & pass in this situation, so I threw together a quick chart.
They’re slightly better in Success Rate when running, but a much higher Explosive Rate when passing.
My first thought...
