If you’re new to this series, we’re reviewing how the Green Bay Packers offense performed in 2025 by down & distance. We’re doing that by building out a call sheet. I ran it all down in my initial post. This is the 7th article in the series, where we’re looking at 3rd & Medium (where “Medium” is defined as needing 4-6 yards for a 1st down). We’ll reference Success Rate & Explosive Rate in this series, so here are the definitions. On 3rd down, a play is considered a success if it gains 100% of the yards needed
for a 1st down. A play is considered explosive if a pass gains 16+ yards or a run gains 12+ yards.
After a two-month break to write some draft articles, we’re firing our callsheet series back up. It’s a bit tough to shift gears back into this after writing draft profiles, but I think it’ll feel like a nice, warm blanket sooner rather than later.
As we discussed in our last callsheet article, the Packers were killers on 3rd & Long, ranking 1st in Success Rate, Yards Per Play and Explosive Rate. While they don’t rank quite as well in 3rd & Medium, they still proved themselves to be a force in this down & distance.
On 3rd & Medium, the Packers ranked 2nd in Success Rate (61.5%), 3rd in Yards Per Play (8.2) and 7th in Explosive Rate (19.2%).
If we’re going just by the numbers, there’s a pass rate complaint. On the year, the Packers had a 3rd & Medium Pass Rate of 92.3%, 17th in the league. However, when throwing, they had a success rate of 62.5%, compared to a success rate of 50% when running. That’s really just a matter of opportunities. The Packers averaged 1.5 plays per game in 3rd & Medium, the lowest amount of any team in 2025. They called a total of 2 run plays in this situation all year.
With only 1.5 plays per game in this down & distance, our options are limited in terms of what we can pull from. We’re going to roll with 2 plays on our callsheet: we’ll start with a quick game staple, then hit a slight variant of one of my favorite 3rd down concepts.
Two-Man Stick (7.0 YPA, 100% Success)
You can go back 20 years and find this play in the Packers playbook. It’s been a quick game staple for as long as “quick game” has been a thing. There are different versions of it, but this seems to be the one the Packers favor the most. It involves the outside receiver (#1) running a vertical clear-out route while the inside receivers run quick routes. The #2 receiver will run a quick out, while the #3 receiver has the ability to run a quick out or a quick hitch, depending on the position of his defender.
It’s typically read outside-in. The vertical receiver is the Alert (throw only if the conditions are right, but in most cases he isn’t even looked at). The first read is the #2 receiver. If he’s covered, he should be creating room for #3 behind him.
In the clip above, the Cardinals bring a blitz over the #3, so Matthew Golden pulls up on a quick hitch, working as a hot read.
Arch (16.0 YPA, 100% Success)
Before I get to the real diagram, I’ll talk for a minute about something else. The concept we’re looking at resembles one of my favorite 3rd down concepts: Arches.
Arches is a two-man concept, with the outside man (the red route above) running an “Eliminator” route, while the inside receiver runs an “Arches” route over the top (blue route). The idea is that the Eliminator clears space on the inside, while the Arches route works to put the defender outside, then work into the cleared space.
Arch takes that Arches route but kind of works off a different idea.
We get the Arches route, but it’s built to play off more of a vertical switch-release look. In this version, the outside receiver runs a vertical, out-cutting route. His job is to get vertical fast off the line.
The inside receiver breaks outside, making this look like a switch-release at the line. While the defenders look to sort out the assignments, the inside receiver then breaks back inside. Depending on how the defense plays this, you can get situations like the clip above: the defender gets caught outside the vertical route, then has to work back underneath that route to the middle of the field. The vertical receiver creates a bit of a wall, which helps create an extra step of separation.
Here’s how this section looks on our callsheet:
Here is where you can find the other parts of this series:
An Introduction
1st & 10
2nd & Long
2nd & Medium
2nd & Short
3rd & Long
Albums listened to: Widowspeak – Roses; Modest Mouse – An Eraser and a Maze; Sharon Van Etten – Tramp
