Acme Packing Company
Coming off a short week to face the Commanders at home felt like a pretty good test for this team. Sure, they beat the Lions convincingly a few days prior, but they were breaking in two new coordinators and had some turnover on the offensive line. The Commanders have a dynamic QB and ran for 212 yards in week 1.
As it turns out, it ended about the same: the Packers win 27-18 and head into their mini-bye with a 2-0 record, having held the Commanders to 230 yards (but even that 230 yards doesn’t tell the whole story: the Commanders had 112 yards through 3 quarters, averaging 2.7 yards per play).
But we’re not here to talk about the defense: we’re here to talk about the passing offense. Let’s start where we always do: with the NFL Next Gen Passing Chart:
Jordan Love was absolutely chucking the ball. In this game, Love had an ADOT (Average Depth of Target) of 14.5 yards. Per NFL Pro, that’s more than a yard higher than his previous career high. The completion% of 61.3% is a bit low, but that’s to be expected with an ADOT that high. That completion% also looks better if you remove his throwaways. The box scores over at RBSDM remove throwaways, which gives Love an adjusted completion% of 70.4% on the day. Not too shabby.
The throwaways is something I wanted to bring up here. One of my main issues with Love since he took over as a starter has been his reluctance to give up on a play. He’s been hesitant to throw the ball away or scramble, instead looking for something downfield. That’s not always a bad thing, but it gets him into trouble sometimes. Seeing him throw the ball away a little more has been a nice development. I’m curious if that’s something that keeps up the rest of the season.
He has only scrambled twice through two games, but seeing him a little more willing to take those openings when he can has also been encouraging.
There are a couple areas I’ll be keeping my eye on as the season goes on. This is a gameplan heavy offense, so they tend to change how they attack in the passing game every game to some extent. Still, the amount of vertical routes on 3rd & 7 is something that gets them in trouble and hurts their 3rd down efficiency (Packers are converting 40.9% of their 3rd down attempts this year, 17th in the league). This was something that was also true last season. The number of times it’s a 3rd and medium and there are no routes at the sticks is a little baffling at times. They do like to pair those vertical routes with an Escort Screen (essentially, a checkdown in the flat with a TE in front to act as a blocker), so that can help, but the all-or-nothing nature of some of those 3rd down calls can make for a high variance...
