Acme Packing Company
The Green Bay Packers’ offense is sputtering. They have no idea how to handle split-safety looks that take the extra coverage defenders into the deeper portion of the field. So far, head coach Matt LaFleur’s answers this year have been to check down the ball in the passing game and to run the football. Unfortunately, they haven’t been efficient at doing either.
LaFleur believes that 3.5 yards per carry is “effective” enough on offense. That would be the worst season-long mark by any NFL team this season. If he truly believes that, then there literally isn’t an ineffective running game in football. The bar is the floor.
On checkdowns, the point is to get yards after the catch. Tucker Kraft, now out for the year, averaged 43 yards after the catch per game in 2025. The rest of the Packers’ tight ends and wide receivers combined average…43 yards after the catch per game. Oof.
The story of Green Bay’s offensive struggles is such:
Against the Cleveland Browns, defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz went out of his way to play split-safety looks, something that is not in his DNA at all. Schwartz has been an NFL play-caller since the 2001 season with the Tennessee Titans. He’s only called one game in his NFL career where his defense played split-safety looks at a higher rate than the Week 3 win over the Packers, which limited Green Bay to just 10 points.
This plan was replicated by the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 8, but Kraft, amazingly, had 143 yards after the catch against the Steelers — the most by a tight end since a 2018 George Kittle performance. The Packers will not be able to get that type of YAC production for the rest of the 2025 season.
Since the Steelers game, the Carolina Panthers and Philadelphia Eagles have committed to playing split-safety looks against Green Bay, which has led the Packers’ offense to produce just 20 total points over the last two games. Basically, Green Bay’s opponents have learned that if you just line up in a certain way, even with an average-ish defense, you can keep LaFleur’s Packers out of the end zone, because they aren’t efficient on the ground or in the yards after the catch department.
The response many have to this problem is to simply run the football better, but that’s not going to be as easy as advertised, especially in future seasons.
First of all, the Packers are now out their starting center in Elgton Jenkins, who dropped out of the Eagles loss with a fractured leg. Because of Green Bay’s highly leveraged cap situation, Jenkins is likely to be cut next year for $20 million in cap relief. Even with the release of Jenkins, if all of the Packers’ nearly two-dozen unrestricted and restricted free agents leave the roster and Green Bay backfills them with minimum contract players, the team will be right around $0 in cap space after they sign their rookie draft choices. Help isn’t...
