Acme Packing Company
I’m going to take you back to 2023. Bear with me. I’m going to talk about that play.
Yes, that one.
Former Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator called a three-up, three-under blitz against the Las Vegas Raiders, which had 3-4 outside linebacker Preston Smith lining up in the slot against Davante Adams, who ran an option route with a two-way go. Adams, a former Packer himself, ended up taking a slant for an explosive gain. Las Vegas ended up winning that night 17-13.
This was shocking to many, and for good reason. First, it’s a terrible matchup. Second, it’s extremely common for defenses to have checks to formations, especially on blitzes. One of the high alert looks on blitzes is against empty, due to the width the defense has to cover, which is what the Raiders were out in for that play.
When asked later that week about the call, here’s what Barry had to say:
“I wish it was that easy”, Barry said on Monday, when questioned if they couldn’t have shifted coverages. “We called a coverage that required Preston to drop, and he happened to be a boundary dropper, and they happened to put Tae at slot into the boundary. Sometimes you’ll have mechanisms, you have checks, or things built in where you can get out of that. Based on the personnel we were in, and the personnel they were in, we didn’t have that mechanism.”
…
“If you’re Preston, you almost just have to survive the down and try to keep it as minimal as you can. But that’s a poor matchup for him to be in, and that’s totally on me,” Barry added. “For us to put him in that situation, we gotta have a mechanism to get out of it, we just have to have a built-in check, which we will and we can do. But based on the personnel that they were in, we never thought it would come. So it ended up being a bad play.”
The team was unprepared to see empty out of 12 personnel, with two tight ends and a running back on the field. It probably ended Barry’s time with the Packers. Luckily for Green Bay, Jeff Hafley came around, and his unit is not afraid to overcommunicate and check to formations.
If you want to see a great example of that, here’s this play from early on in the Packers’ Week 1 matchup with the Detroit Lions from Sunday.
The play starts with virtually everyone on the Packers’ defense yelling and throwing their hands up to make sure they’re on the same page as a unit. Green Bay must have called a blitz, which would be unsound versus the spacing they’re getting out of the Lions’ formation. In this case, they were going to send cornerback Carrington Valentine, lined up at the bottom of the screen outside of the numbers, on a blitz. But instead of Detroit being in a more condensed formation,...
