Acme Packing Company
In this space, we take a look at the Green Bay Packers’ passing game, be it ever so humble.
The Packers came into this game with Jordan Love banged up, and there seemed to be a strong desire to get him out of this game, taking a minimal amount of hits. At least, that was likely the hope. They came out of the gate throwing a little heavier, with a pass rate of 62.5% in the 1st quarter. After it was clear they wouldn’t need to do much more than run the ball and let their defense slowly drain the life from the Vikings’ offense, they dialed back significantly on the passing game. After that 62.5% pass rate in the 1st quarter, they had a 29.8% pass rate for the rest of the game.
In the 1st quarter, the Packers had a 1st down pass rate of 42.9%. For the rest of the game, they had a 1st down pass rate of 18.2%. In a vacuum, that’s not how you want to run an offense, but in this scenario? A banged-up QB staring at the Lions on a short week and playing this game against a QB who didn’t seem to understand what he was looking at? Adjusting the plan to a more run-heavy approach was a perfectly fine call.
And Love performed well when he dropped back. He missed a couple of throws, but he turned in an EPA per Dropback of +0.22, the 4th best mark of Week 12.
As was expected, Brian Flores blitzed early and often. Love was blitzed on 56.5% of his dropbacks, the highest mark in the league in Week 12 (per NFL Pro). He did well against the blitz, going 8/12 (66.7%) for 74 yards (6.2 YPA). His ADOT (Average Depth of Target) of 8.5 yards against the blitz was just under his season average of 8.7.
Overall, a limited passing attack, but an effective one. We saw some 3-step quick game, but we also saw a fair bit of the vertical attack they’ve been leaning into more as the season has gone on. The only official attempts behind the line of scrimmage were a TE screen and a checkdown. We saw some bubble screen tags on run plays, but Love didn’t pass on any of those calls (that makes 2 straight weeks where Love has not thrown an RPO).
They continue to lean heavier into some pass concepts each week, depending on the match-up. This week their most-used concept was some version of Smash, an old West Coast concept. Coming into Week 12, they had run Smash 6 times. They called it 6 games in this game and did well with it: 66.7% success rate, 7.7 YPA.
Their biggest gain off Smash came on the Packers’ opening drive on 2nd & 6. They ran mirrored Smash, with a version of the concept on each side of the field. Smash is a two-man concept, with the outside receiver running a short route and...
