Acme Packing Company
A few days ago, we looked at Middle-Read Dagger, the Green Bay Packers’ most-used passing concept of 2024. Today we’re looking at a concept that wasn’t nearly as widely used, but may be making a return to the offense. Buckle up, because we’re talking about Mesh, baby.
Back in 2020, Mesh was a core passing concept in the Packers offense. According to Bobby Peters’ excellent offensive manual of that season, he has the Packers charted with 34 instances of Mesh, averaging 8.4 YPA.
In his book, Peters opens the Mesh section with this: “The Packers are the best Mesh team in the NFL. They run more variations than any other team I have studied.”
That 2020 Packers offense was a wagon and Mesh was a big part of that. Sadly, Mesh got blown up in a couple of high-profile spots in their loss to the Bucs in the playoffs that year, and the concept as a whole went by the wayside. In 2022, they only ran Mesh 4 times.
But first, let’s back up a second. What is Mesh?
Mesh is a concept said to have been created by BYU legend LaVell Edwards and brought to prominence by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach as the centerpiece of their Air Raid attack. There are a ton of variations to it, but the heart of it lays in two shallow crossing routes to the middle of the field, creating a “mesh” point where the routes cross each other.
Like I said, there are a ton of variations — so the concept itself can take different forms — but those two routes are at the heart of the concept. It can be a good way to widen zone defenses in the middle, but its true strength lies in attacking Man coverage.
Last year, the Packers didn’t come close to matching their 2020 usage of Mesh, but 2024 found it ticking up slightly from previous years with some good numbers. Overall, they ran Mesh 11 times for 8.2 YPA. It was most commonly used on 3rd & medium (4-7 yards to go), as they ran it 4 times in that scenario, averaging 7.5 YPA with a success rate of 50% and 1 TD.
They liked to run it in the red zone, but without great results. They called Mesh in the red zone 5 times, with a success rate of 20% and 1 TD. Outside of the red zone they used it 6 times, with a success rate of 66.7% and an average gain of 10.7 yards. (Just for reference, the top team in success rate in 2024 were the Lions, with a success rate of 49.28%, per SumerSports).
It wasn’t a super explosive concept (2 explosives, and 1 of those ending with a fumble), but it was a good chain-mover. Overall, this was a good concept for the Packers in 2024. I hope we see even more of it in 2025.
Albums listened to: Autolux – Future Perfect; The Beatles – Revolver;...
