Acme Packing Company
Sketching up a play to score against the Seahawks
As I tend to do most weeks, I went through all the red zone touchdowns scored against the Green Bay Packers’ next opponent. I typically don’t write about it, because writing takes time and energy and I am often in short supply of at least one of those things.
This week, as I was going through those snaps, I found a little something and I thought it might be fun to draw up something for this week. But first, some numbers.
The Seahawks have been a solid red zone defense this year, allowing a TD on 52.2% of opponent trips to the red zone (11th best in the league, per Team Rankings). Over the last 3 games, they’ve only allowed TDs on 37.5% of opponent trips to the red zone, 2nd best over that span. Three games is a small sample size, but it also matches up with how the defense has looked overall. The defense was a little rocky early in the season, but they’ve been improving over the last few weeks.
The Packers offense had a habit of stalling in the red zone early in the season, but they’ve been on a heater since they came out of the bye. Going into the bye, the Packers were scoring a TD on 47.1% of their trips to the red zone, 29th in the league. In their 4 games since the bye week, they’re scoring TDs on 75% of their trips to the red zone. (The Ravens are currently the best team at scoring TDs in the red zone this year at 75%.)
With both the Packers' offense and Seahawks' defense performing well in the red zone as of late, I was looking for something that has worked against the Seahawks this year that the Packers could work into their offense.
Per NFL Pro, teams have scored 24 TDs in the red zone against the Seahawks this year: 16 of those have been called passes and 8 have been called runs. Four of those TDs have come off a trick play, and that’s where we find ourselves today.
There were a couple of trick plays early in the season - a direct snap to Rhamondre Stevenson and a Philly Special throw from Amon-Ra St. Brown to Jared Goff - but we’ve also seen the same type of trick play be successful against the Seahawks in the last two weeks. I am talking, of course, about a Shovel pass.
The Jets scored on one in Week 13...
...and the Cardinals scored on one in Week 14.
They’re of two different varieties. The Jets are running a more standard Shovel play, pushing to a WR crossing under the line in a condensed formation. The Cardinals run it from spread and it plays out more like a RB middle screen. Those looks - combined with a play the Lions ran against the Packers last week - got me thinking about how the Packers could...
