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Every week, we use this space to look at the Green Bay Packers’ passing game from the previous week, so let’s get to it.
It was a tale of two halves for Jordan Love. He looked unstoppable in the 1st half, going 17/22 (77.3%) for 215 yards (9.8 YPA) and 1 TD (122.4 QB Rating). He also had 6 explosive plays through the air (gains of 16+ yards).
In the 2nd half, he was 7/18 (38.9%) for 32 yards (1.8 YPA), 0 TDs & 2 INTS (7.4 QB Rating). He had 1 explosive play through the air. There are a multitude of reasons why the numbers fell off in the 2nd half, but the early injury to Christian Watson (two official 2nd half pass attempts on-or-before Watson’s injury) certainly played a role. Matthew Golden catching 2 of his 3 targets for 37 yards in the 2nd half is certainly something to keep an eye on as Watson’s status for Week 16 is still very much up in the air.
The Packers lost Zach Tom (their starting right tackle) late in the 1st half and replaced him with Darian Kinnard. On top of the down-to-down downgrade in protection between those players, Kinnard is also the preferred 6th offensive lineman in the Packers’ heavy packages. They didn’t lean heavily into it in the first half of this game, but that has been a package they’ve had a lot of success with this season: since rolling it out in Week 10, the Packers have run 48 snaps in their 6OL package, and they’ve had a success rate of 58.3% on those snaps. Of those 48 snaps, 15 were pass plays. On those pass plays, they’ve sported a 60% success rate and an explosive play rate of 26.7%.
After Tom went down, the Packers didn’t have a single snap with their 6OL package. Maybe that was because it was a package they didn’t love against the Broncos overall (they had 2 snaps out of 6OL before the Tom injury), but maybe they didn’t prep Jordan Morgan for that role during the week and opted to just stay out of it altogether. As of the time of this writing, we don’t have any information on Tom’s injury in terms of his outlook for the rest of the season, but it’s certainly something to monitor going forward.
The real story of the passing game was the constant pressure Love was under. This week, Love was under pressure on 52.2% of his dropbacks, per NFL Pro. That was the second-highest pressure rate in the league, only behind Shadeur Sanders at 52.4%. The main difference? Sanders’ average time to throw was 3.15 seconds, while Love’s average time to throw was 2.97 seconds. Love’s numbers under pressure aren’t bad – 10/19, 147 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT – but it was a constant throughout the game and pressed harder in the 2nd half.
The most jarring thing is his pressure rate when not blitzed. The Broncos blitzed on 39.1%...
