Coming out of week five, the Green Bay Packers’ defense has been a pleasant surprise on the season. Without Micah Parsons for a single snap yet, they rank eighth in EPA allowed per dropback and they rank an outstanding third in ANY/A value, as seen below from Justis Mosqueda.
Under the hood, though, things look shakier. Firstly, the Packers are tied with the Seattle Seahawks for the league lead in interceptions. Turnovers are notoriously
noisy, and often a product of who you have played against, most notably which quarterbacks you have faced, and that is a lot of the story for Green Bay thus far. In week one, the Packers mostly faced Carson Wentz, the Vikings’ backup quarterback. In weeks two and three, the Packers faced Geno Smith and Michael Penix Jr, both starters, but then faced an undrafted rookie backup in week four and then both a second and third string quarterback in week five.
So while the numbers look promising early on, the grain of salt they should be taken with is larger than a boulder. In success rate, the cracks are already there. While Green Bay is eighth in EPA allowed per dropback, they are 17th in success rate allowed through the air. Again, this is against mostly backup quarterbacks and a Jets passing game that ranks 20th in EPA-per-dropback and 19th in dropback success rate. By DVOA, which doesn’t know that a backup quarterback played in a specific game but only takes the season-long performance of a unit, the Packers defense has played the fifth easiest schedule in the NFL thus far. The gap between Green Bay and the top three is relatively small, about as large as the gap between Green Bay and eighth, and much of that can be made up when taking into account they faced two full games of snaps of Jalon Daniels, Tyson Bagent, and Case Keenum rather than Baker Mayfield and Caleb Williams. And that’s before getting into whatever perceived differences you have between Carson Wentz and Kyler Murray.
This week, Green Bay will have no such luck. While the Dallas defense is a travesty, their offense can still hum. Their passing game ranks fifth in passing DVOA and fourth in EPA-per-dropback. Their two wide receivers could present significant problems for the Packers. The Packers do not have the typical archetype to match up with George Pickens’ size, and the struggles at cornerback with tackling could present significant problems with CeeDee Lamb’s YAC ability. Former Wisconsin Badger Jake Ferguson also presents a matchup problem for Green Bay’s linebackers, with both Zaire Franklin and Isaiah McDuffie being stumpier thumping linebackers, so expect to see just as much if not more Ty’Ron Hopper than we did against Chicago.
The challenge gets no easier going forward, as Green Bay will face Dak Prescott, Jared Goff, Drake Maye, and Matthew Stafford all before December, with Micah Parsons maybe back for the matchups with Maye and Stafford in November. As the offense is finally clicking the past two weeks (drops against Tampa aside), whether or not the defense can continue to produce, forcing more punts as the turnovers inevitably subside and the opposing quarterback schedule improves, will decide if the Packers can keep themselves on track to a playoff spot. They don’t need the defense to be great, particularly without Micah Parsons, but they need it to be just good enough to let the passing offense win them games.
The Packers will see across the field on Sunday a team that has run into the problem of what happens when the defense falls apart with that exact formula. They need to avoid a similar fate.
