Acme Packing Company
Walking through the Packers performance on their most-used passing concept
As we ramp up to the 2025 season, I wanted to take a look back at a passing concept that the Green Bay Packers have leaned on heavily over the years. It’s not unique to the Packers - it’s a concept that has been around for years - but it has become a core part of the Packers' passing offense.
It’s called Dagger, and it’s really pretty simple. It’s a two-man concept with the inside man running a vertical, clear-out route and the outside man running an in-cutting route. The idea is to have the vertical route clear out the middle, while the in-cutting route works behind it. You can get a good look at the core concept on this page from the Packers' 2012 playbook:
There are a handful of popular variations to this concept. The one we’re focusing on today is one I typically tag as Middle-Read Dagger. The overall idea is the same, but there’s an option on the vertical route depending on the safeties over the top. If the defense is in MFC (Middle Field Closed), the vertical receiver will bend the route to the inside and cross the face of the single high safety. If the defense is in MFO (Middle Field open), the vertical receiver will take a route a little skinnier, looking to split the safeties in the middle. You can see this illustrated in a page from the Packers' 2019 playbook.
The Packers ran this 51 times in 2024, making it their most-used passing concept (it accounted for 9.1% of their passing plays). When running this play, they averaged 10.6 YPA and had an explosive play rate of 29.4%. Of their 10 most used passing concepts, that 29.4% explosive rate ranks 3rd, behind High Cross (35.3%) and Verts (34.2%). The 541 yards generated off Middle-Read Dagger were the most amount of yards generated by any one passing concept in 2024, and the 15 explosives generated were also the most explosives generated by a single concept.
The Success Rate of 45.1% doesn’t measure up to the level of some of their other highly used concepts (Verts was at 55.3% success, High Cross at 52.9% and PA Boot at 61.1%), but it’s not a bad return on the concept. I didn’t chart all the drops this year (sorry I failed you), but I know there were a handful of drops on this concept. If those aren’t dropped, the success rate looks a lot better.
From a success rate perspective, this was at its best on 2nd down, coming in with a success rate of 55.6%. This was their most widely used concept on 2nd & long (7+ yards), and it was a good one. They ran is 16 times in those situations, with a success rate of 50.0% and 8.2 YPA.
Due to the option on the vertical route, some of the underneath routes and all the varied ways they can run this, Middle-Read...
