Acme Packing Company
As we do every week in this space, we take a look at the Packers passing game from the previous game. I like to start these off by looking at Jordan Love’s passing chart from NFL Next Gen, but this week we get Malik Willis’ passing chart, because that’s what they had.
That is what I expect from a Malik Willis passing chart. Willis was in the game for 46 snaps, tallying 11 passing attempts and 10 rushing attempts. When he was throwing, it was quick game or calculated pushes of the ball downfield. There were certainly things that were left on the field – the downside of needing to go to a backup – but he ran the offense well. He hit a couple nice throws (we’ll get to one of those shortly), and, if things looked questionable, he didn’t put the ball in harm’s way: he simply tucked and ran.
This is usually the part where I dig into numbers, but, with the weirdness of Willis stepping in after Love took the crown of a helmet directly to the front of his facemask, digging into the stats of a split QB performance just feels a bit off (Love had 14 dropbacks while Willis had 17). Willis’ total EPA (+10.4) was higher than Caleb Williams (+8.0) if you feel like using that around the water cooler. You know how people love to talk about EPA around the water cooler.
Instead of doing a dive into the numbers, we’ll just take a look at a couple plays. Matt LaFleur did a really nice job gathering information and setting up some big payoff plays in the 2nd half. One of the issues is that there was a QB change between some of the set-up and the payoff plays, and the backup QB either didn’t see things the same way or didn’t feel comfortable taking a chance with the throw. But they did have one payoff that worked well, so that’s what we’re looking at.
The original concept is Stick. It’s a quick-game staple across the league and in this Packers offense. There are a handful of ways you can dress it up and run it, but you’ll see a basic version on the left side of this diagram:
They ran some version of Stick 7 times this week, far-and-away their most-used concept. They ran it 3 times with Jordan Love (4.7 YPA, 66.7% Success Rate) and 4 times with Malik Willis (11.3 YPA, 75.0% Success Rate).
This initial clip is the first time they ran Stick with Willis. It was on 2nd & 6 with 3:07 remaining in the 2nd quarter. The Packers are in 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR), starting in a 3×1 look with Romeo Doubs [87] as the iso receiver on the right. Dontayvion Wicks [13] motions under the line before the snap, slowing down as the under man in a stack with Doubs on the right. The Bears had initially been aligned in a...
