If you watch football for any amount of time, you have no doubt heard the same talking points repeated hundreds of times. Thousands of times. An ocean of times, spreading out over the vast and speckled horizon. Some of those things are good, some of them are bad, and some simply roll off your back and find a nice home somewhere outside of your mind.
One of those things is this: “after forcing a turnover, the offense should take a deep shot.” While it’s not something you can do every time, it is something that
you can have success with, and it’s something you’ll see coaches looking to do. Whether it’s a straight deep shot or a trick play, you’re trying to catch the defense on the first play of the series when they’re not expecting to be out there. Maybe they were in the middle of sitting down with a coach to look at the last possession. Maybe they were in the middle of drinking a Gatorade and are now cursing their QB for making their rest so short.
The thinking is that maybe you can catch a defense that is not quite as focused as they could be. It’s something the Packers took to heart in their Week 5 win over the Chicago Bears and had some nice success with.
While the Packers had 5 turnovers on the day, I’m only going to look at the plays following the 3 interceptions, as the score was 31-7 midway through the 4th quarter when the first of two fumbles occurred.
Play 1: 1st & 10, 5:32 remaining in the 1st quarter
The Packers are up 7-0 when Tyson Bagent throws a pass to Luther Burden that is tipped up by Javon Bullard and intercepted by Xavier McKinney:
That sets the Packers up at the Bears 45 yard line. This is the least aggressive of the calls, but they’re still looking to push it with the primary concept. The Packers are in 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR). They shift to a balanced formation (an in-line TE to each side, a WR split wide to each side, the RB aligned directly behind the QB).
They’re running deep curls off play action against a two-high look. It’s a good call against that defense, but the Bears linebackers are dropping back deep, taking those away.
With the linebackers dropping that deep, Jordan Love [10] takes the checkdown to MarShawn Lloyd [32] under the linebackers.
Not much, but 6 yards is 6 yards.
Play 2: 1st & 10, 00:34 remaining in the 3rd quarter
The Packers are up 23-7 when Tyson Bagent throws to Colston Loveland and is, once again, intercepted by Xavier McKinney. McKinney is initially dropping down to pick up the motion TE, but, when that man stays back to block, he drops back to the middle, reads Bagent’s eyes and jumps the throw.
That sets the Packers up at their own 45 yard line. Once again, they come out in 12 personnel in a balanced formation, but this time they’re looking to drive the ball downfield. Love sees something pre-snap and he Cans the call to a variant of High Cross. It looks like Matthew Golden [0] and Christian Watson [9] are going to be running deep over routes, crossing each other in the middle of the field. Instead, they both reverse course and break back to their respective sidelines.
Watson gets a little tied up in his route, but Golden does a nice job at creating separation off the line, keeping that separation down the field and breaking back outside over the defender. Golden really shows his speed here: he gives up quite a bit of ground to the inside on the release, but he’s able to burn up that distance throughout the route and create late separation as he breaks back outside.
With the single high safety breaking to the middle of the field, Golden has a lot of room to work back outside to.
Love lays it up to the outside. Instead of tracking the ball to his outside shoulder (and potentially giving the safety a chance to knock it free), Golden jumps up and twists back to high-point the ball.
36 yard gain.
Play 3: 1st & 10, 12:49 remaining in the 4th quarter
The Packers are up 31-7 when Case Keenum throws to Rome Odunze in the red zone and is intercepted by Ty’Ron Hopper. Hopper returns it 19 yards, setting the Packers up on their own 19.
Once again, the Packers are looking to push it. They trot out Yankee, a two-man concept that has a receiver from one side (Watson) running a deep over route and the receiver from the other side of the formation (Golden) running a deep post route. The Packers are in 12 personnel and shift to a balanced formation. The Bears are in a single-high look and Love is reading the single-high safety.
That safety drops down to pick up Watson on the crosser, giving Golden inside leverage on his man. So Love chucks deep to Golden. The defender from the other side is looking to fall under this route as soon as Watson is passed off to the safety in the middle (good communication there), but the throw is far and Golden is fast.
Once again, Golden goes up for the ball and comes down with a 50 yard catch (in front of a tumbling ref).
Here’s what Jordan Love did on the play immediately following an interception by the defense: 3/3 for 92 yards (30.7 YPA). Not too shabby.
Albums listened to: Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s – The Dust of Retreat; Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation – Cherry
