Acme Packing Company
It feels like it was 2 months between games, but we finally got to watch the Green Bay Packers play football again. It wasn’t a blowout, but the Packers were comfortably in control for the entire game. There were a few stressful moments to be sure, but overall, this was a nice, relatively stress-free watch.
Every week, we take a look at how their passing offense looked, so let’s get into it.
A nice little chart. Slightly left-leaning and the baffling INT on the right side, but a pretty nice little chart.
The numbers look good, too. Per RBSDM, Jordan Love had an ADOT (Average Depth of Target) of 9.5 yards. He started off this season chucking, dialed it back in the Browns & Cowboys game, but came out of the bye firing. Love’s completion percentage of 73.1% is good, especially with that deeper ADOT. On the day, Love had an EPA Per Dropback of +0.27, 6th best in the league this week. For the whole season, Love is sitting at +0.26 EPA per Dropback, tied for the highest mark in the league with Daniel Jones and Josh Allen (per NFL Pro). Not too shabby.
He hasn’t been doing it all with his arm, either. Last season, we wanted to see more scrambling out of Love, but his injuries made that a little difficult. He’s been a more willing scrambler this season, and he’s been effective while doing it. In this game, Love generated +4.6 EPA on his scrambles, the second-best scrambling EPA on the day (behind Jaxson Dart & Tyler Huntley).
The Packers’ aerial attack was a pretty simple one; pair quick game staples with vertical concepts to the other side. They were clearly concerned about the pass rush that Trey Hendrickson could generate, so they gave Love the early option of quick-read, 3-step-drop concepts, with 7-step concepts to the other side if he had time (or if the quick game was muddied). Love operated this well, taking what was given to him but also buying time to push the ball downfield when he felt he had a favorable match-up.
A solid game plan that Love executed well. It helps when you’ve got Flu Game Josh Jacobs out there to act as the checkdown when everything else is covered.
For the film section, we’re going to take a look at two examples of the type of attack I described above.
This is one of the Packers’ favorite concepts pairing: Hank and Middle-Read Dagger. Hank is a 3-step concept, consisting of a hitch route from the outside and a flat route from the inside.
Dagger is a 7-step concept, consisting of a vertical, clear-out route from the inside and an in-cutting route behind it. Middle-Read Dagger is a version of Dagger that gives the vertical route an option; if the defense is in a two-high look, the route will bend to the middle to split the safeties. If...
