Acme Packing Company
The Packers rolled out easily their most conservative passing game plan of the year in Sunday’s loss to the Cleveland Browns. While Jordan Love had previously been one of the most aggressive downfield passers in the league, his average depth of target (aDOT) against the Browns was a paltry 1.9 yards.
The spray chart from the game paints a pretty clear picture of what that stat looks like. Love attempted just one pass more than seven yards downfield, a shot to Matthew Golden that may not qualify as a bomb but certainly represented the best effort the Packers made to push the ball down the field.
To an extent, it’s easy to see why the Packers would want to go this route. The Browns have an aggressive and accomplished pass rush, led by Myles Garrett who might be the best show going as a pass rusher right now, given Micah Parsons’ early-season conditioning-related issues. In addition, the Packers’ offensive line was pretty banged up before the game even started, with Zach Tom and Aaron Banks just making their return from oblique and groin injuries, respectively.
Tom lasted just a single play before his injury proved too much to bear, and Banks dropped out after 30 snaps with a new groin problem. That certainly played a factor in the Packers’ reticence to push the ball down the field.
But they weren’t the only team on the field in Cleveland with offensive line problems. The Browns themselves were beset by offensive line injuries this week. Guard Joel Bitonio was a DNP in practice all week and was listed as questionable in the final injury report, though he did end up playing. Tackle Jack Conklin ended up as a no-go after he was limited in practice all week and questionable on the last injury report.
The Browns did have the advantage of gameplanning around Bitonio and Conklin’s theoretical absences all week, but in raw terms they were basically on equal footing as the Packers. Head coach Matt LaFleur has referred to second-year tackle Jordan Morgan as the team’s sixth starter, meaning technically both teams still had four healthy starters for the bulk of this game.
And yet it was only the Packers who turtled. I won’t insult your intelligence and say that Joe Flacco had some secretly great passing game (he had 142 yards on 36 attempts, we can at least be realistic), but the Browns were at least willing to try. Facing the Packers’ pass rushers, just as fearsome as whatever the Browns were rolling out when you account for Parsons, Rashan Gary, and the speedy blitzers coming from the Packers’ linebacker group, the Browns put Flacco in a position where he had to hang tough in the pocket and at least attempt to go downfield a bit.
The Packers certainly had options down the field. A cursory look at the film shows token routes, at the very least, going deep. Had Love put the ball in the air, who knows what...
