Coming off a short week to face the Commanders at home felt like a pretty good test for this team. Sure, they beat the Lions convincingly a few days prior, but they were breaking in two new coordinators and had some turnover on the offensive line. The Commanders have a dynamic QB and ran for 212 yards in week 1.
As it turns out, it ended about the same: the Packers win 27-18 and head into their mini-bye with a 2-0 record, having held the Commanders to 230 yards (but even that 230 yards doesn’t tell
the whole story: the Commanders had 112 yards through 3 quarters, averaging 2.7 yards per play).
But we’re not here to talk about the defense: we’re here to talk about the passing offense. Let’s start where we always do: with the NFL Next Gen Passing Chart:
Jordan Love was absolutely chucking the ball. In this game, Love had an ADOT (Average Depth of Target) of 14.5 yards. Per NFL Pro, that’s more than a yard higher than his previous career high. The completion% of 61.3% is a bit low, but that’s to be expected with an ADOT that high. That completion% also looks better if you remove his throwaways. The box scores over at RBSDM remove throwaways, which gives Love an adjusted completion% of 70.4% on the day. Not too shabby.
The throwaways is something I wanted to bring up here. One of my main issues with Love since he took over as a starter has been his reluctance to give up on a play. He’s been hesitant to throw the ball away or scramble, instead looking for something downfield. That’s not always a bad thing, but it gets him into trouble sometimes. Seeing him throw the ball away a little more has been a nice development. I’m curious if that’s something that keeps up the rest of the season.
He has only scrambled twice through two games, but seeing him a little more willing to take those openings when he can has also been encouraging.
There are a couple areas I’ll be keeping my eye on as the season goes on. This is a gameplan heavy offense, so they tend to change how they attack in the passing game every game to some extent. Still, the amount of vertical routes on 3rd & 7 is something that gets them in trouble and hurts their 3rd down efficiency (Packers are converting 40.9% of their 3rd down attempts this year, 17th in the league). This was something that was also true last season. The number of times it’s a 3rd and medium and there are no routes at the sticks is a little baffling at times. They do like to pair those vertical routes with an Escort Screen (essentially, a checkdown in the flat with a TE in front to act as a blocker), so that can help, but the all-or-nothing nature of some of those 3rd down calls can make for a high variance offense.
Maybe that’s the way they want to live. Maybe they’re going to be more aggressive on 4th down this year (we’ve already seen evidence of that), so going 1-2-3-checkdown isn’t the worst thing in the world if if gets them to 4th & 3. Just something to keep an eye on this year.
Alright let’s look at a couple plays and then get out of here.
Play 1: 2nd & 6, 6:46 remaining in the 1st quarter
You don’t need me to tell you that Tucker Kraft [85] is a monster, and you certainly don’t need me to tell you that he had a huge game against the Commanders (hauling in 6 of his 7 targets for 124 yards and a TD, with 74 of those yards coming after the catch). Still, I wanted to dig into a couple of his big plays in this space, because they came on some fun concepts.
This first one is a concept that was a huge part of the Packers offense early in the LaFleur era, but has gone the way of the buffalo over the past couple years. Is it making a comeback? Brother, I sure hope so. It’s something that was introduced to me as All Go RB Seam, but I’ve since shortened to All Go (since the RB Seam portion is optional on the concept lately). I first saw it in the NFL with the Chiefs in 2017, but it is said to have been created by North Dakota State University, a team Tucker Kraft is very familiar with.
It started as a creative way to get to Four Verts by flooding a side of the field, but has morphed and changed over the years. Still, it’s a vertical concept that looks to widen the defense to one side then run through those gaps into free space.
The Packers go heavy with 13 personnel (1 RB, 3 TE, 1 WR), with the 1 WR being the speedy (and large) Savion Williams [83]. The Packers are in shotgun in a condensed formation, with John FitzPatrick [86] in-line on the left, with Tucker Kraft [85] and Luke Musgrave [88] in-line on the right. The Commanders respond to this package with 4 down linemen and 3 linebackers.
Williams goes in jet motion pre-snap, bumping the linebackers over. At the snap, Williams turns vertically up the sideline, taking the boundary defender. Jordan Magee [58] drops down to pick up Josh Jacobs [8] in the flat, while Will Harris [3] drops back to pick up Musgrave in the middle, with Quan Martin [20] over the top.
That leaves Bobby Wagner [54] to pick up Kraft. At least, I think that’s what he’s supposed to do. Wagner takes a weird initial angle, turns to see Kraft running by him and points at Kraft to no one in particular (if you’ve been watching Wagner over the past couple years, this is a familiar sight; a whole lot of “someone needs to pick up this man that ran by me.” An All Star finger pointer).
Love throws to Kraft up the seam. Kraft pays tribute to the release of The Long Walk by chugging along at a nice, steady clip. By the time he is brought down, it’s a 57 yard gain.
It’s not the only time the Packers hit that concept in this game, either. With 9:08 in the 3rd quarter, they hit it for another explosive. It wasn’t 57 yards, but 19 yards on 1st & 25 isn’t too shabby.
Per Bobby Peters’ excellent 2020 Green Bay Packers Offensive Manual, the Packers ran some version of this concept 13 times in 2020 for an average of 9.4 yards. This feels like a very gameplanny type of play, so I doubt we’ll see it too much this year, but it’s nice to see they’ve still got it in the bag. Here’s to hoping it pops up a few more times this year.
Play 2: 1st & goal from the 8, 9:01 remaining in the 3rd quarter
We took a long time with that last one, so let’s just take a quick look at the Tucker Kraft TD, which was Kraft’s 6th-and-final catch of the night. The Packers are in 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR). They’ve got their two WRs split out wide to the left while the TEs – Kraft and Musgrave – are in a YY Wing formation on the right (both TEs tight to the same side of the line). The Commanders have a lot of bodies on the line, with a single-high safety aligned over the wide receivers.
At the snap, Love sells the play action, the offensive line crashes forward and all the Commanders up front fire off to meet it. But Kraft releases upfield and Love boots out. Will Harris [3] sees Kraft releasing and reaches out to grab him, but he’s a little too late.
Kraft finds open field, Love finds Kraft and the Packers find a 14 point lead with 9 minutes remaining.
Albums listened to: Japandroids – Celebration Rock; Josh Ritter – I Believe in You, My Honeydew; The Prayer Chain – Communion; John Carpenter – Lost Themes IV: Noir; Brother Bird – Another Year
