As we do every week in this space, we’re looking at some stats from the Green Bay Packers’ most recent game, courtesy of SumerSports. Today we’re looking at the 45-27 win over the New England Patriots in Week 9.
Offense
Let’s start with personnel usage. For the game, the Packers leaned primarily into 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR), but not overly so. If you look at the full game numbers, they weren’t a huge 11 team:
A lot of that is driven by the full-game nature. This game was well in hand by the 4th quarter,
so it’s pretty safe to throw those numbers out. Through 3 quarters, here is what that breakdown looks like:
11 personnel: 65.4% (+0.387 EPA/play)
12 personnel: 30.8% (+0.454 EPA/Play)
13 personnel: 3.8% (-0.604 EPA/Play)
As we’ve seen over the last few weeks, this seems to be their preferred way to operate. The 13 personnel EPA/play is lower than we’ve been seeing, but Whyle’s injury likely factors into that. Either way, an 11 personnel that features Tucker Kraft and a 12 personnel that features Tucker Kraft & Mark Redman seems like the best way to operate.
Let’s talk about the passing game, because that’s what we really need to be talking about.
Before the game, I went on Patriots on CLNS and said that Love was “chucking chucking”, and he proved me correct. The protection was fine, but not elite, with Love being pressured on 42.4 of his dropbacks. That’s been par for the course, so got rid of the ball pretty quickly. For the game, Love’s average time to throw was 2.5 seconds, but his ADOT (Average Depth Of Target) was 13.0 yards. For reference, the highest ADOT for a QB who has taken more than 60 snaps this year is JJ McCarthy at 11.5 yards (for the season, Love is at 9.7 ADOT).
Will those pressure numbers look better if we see a guard tandem of Tomlinson (LG) and Zeitler (RG) going forward? That’s certainly something I’ll be keeping an eye on.
Love was tremendous no matter how you looked at it. When pressured?
When blitzed?
By coverage?
One of the big things was Love in play action. The Patriots’ defense came into the game as a subpar play-action defense, and the Packers dialed up their usage a bit this week. They came into this week with a play action rate of 18.9%. This week they used play action on 31% of their passes, with an EPA per play of +1.16 on those dropbacks.
Love’s success is certainly tied to the receivers, and they did their part. Matthew Golden was a monster. He caught all 10 of his targets (no drops!) for 164 yards and a TD. He had an EPA per target of +1.28 and an ADOT of 12 yards.
Golden’s best route was a Go route (2/2, 92 yards, +2.98 EPA per Reception). He was targeted most on Out routes (4/4, 39 yards, +0.82 EPA per Reception).
Matthew Golden caught 10 passes for 164 yards and 1 TD and was still eclipsed in terms of yardage by Christian Watson. Watson 7 of his 8 targets for 171 yards and a TD (+2.07 EPA per Reception). Golden’s ADOT of 12 yards was high enough, but Watson’s ADOT of 23.75 is insane. He averaged 6.1 yards per route run and 2.4 yards after catch.
He also had a remarkably casual one-handed catch that I’ll be thinking about for a while.
In The New Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football, the late, great Paul Zimmerman (aka, Dr. Z), relayed an anecdote about about a catch from Don Hutson. As Dr. Z tells it:
Edmond F. Rovner, a lawyer from Bethesda, MD, says that he will take a lie detector test that he once saw Hutson catch a low pass, one-handed, in full stride, with the palm of his hand facing downward.
Dr. Z goes on to say that he does not believe this story. Until this week, it always seemed like an insane catch. After seeing this catch from Watson, I’m starting to believe. (That’s one of the all-time great football books, by the way. If you haven’t read it, you should fix that.)
Defense
The Patriots were primarily in 11 personnel (65.6%), but, even then, the Packers leaned more heavily into Nickel than the Patriots leaned into 11 (Packers played Nickel on 77% of snaps). That’s essentially been the trend since Edgerrin Cooper went down, but I like that it’s continuing. Less Nickel means less Javon Bullard, and I’m not really a fan of a defensive group that doesn’t have Bullard in the mix. It’s a fairly common sense thing, but it’s something not every DC would do: find a way to keep your best players on the field.
The Packers dialed up their blitz this week, blitzing on 41.3% of their plays and getting pressure on 47.8% of Drake Maye’s dropbacks.
The blitz worked, too.
We’re 9 weeks into the Jonathan Gannon experience and I’ve been extremely impressed. He does a great job of changing his approach every week, depending on the opponent. More than anything, he does such a great job at putting his players in their best position to succeed. It’s been a remarkably fun unit to watch every week…and Micah Parson should be added to the mix in the next couple weeks.
Albums listened to: Lydia Loveless – Accolades EP; Spanish Love Songs – Future Nausea
