Turnovers are a part of Jeff Hafley’s defensive identity. In his introductory press conference, he mentioned getting takeaways, especially from the safety position, as one of the hallmarks of his philosophy.
He couldn’t have scripted a better example of that philosophy in action than his first season as the Packers’ defensive coordinator. Xavier McKinney was an eraser in the middle of Hafley’s secondary, picking off eight passes en route to an All-Pro bid.
Now in year two, Hafley and the Packers’ defense
are all-in on forcing turnovers as a core part of their identity. It’s highlighted in practice every day, and “Ball King” Wendel Davis tallies up how many takeaways the defense forces as a part of an ongoing internal competition.
Building on the success of 2024 is an admirable goal, and it’d never be a bad thing if the Packers were able to do so. There’s just so bad news: it’s not very likely that the Packers will be able to repeat their performance from 2024, especially as it pertains to one of Hafley’s goals.
Generally speaking, turnovers are not a stable metric of year-over-year defensive performance simply because turnovers largely aren’t within the realm of the defense’s control. Sure, there are things you can do to put yourself in better position to create turnovers, but in general, the offense has to make a mistake for a turnover to take place.
League-wide, takeaways have steadily trended downward over the past 25 years. In 2000, the average NFL team generated 30.1 takeaways. In 2024, that figure had dwindled to just 20.6. The league-wide average for takeaways in a season hasn’t been above 25 since 2013.
Generally, the Packers’ turnover fortunes have followed league trends. Most of the time over the past 25 years, the Packers’ takeaway figures have been right in line with the league average, plus or minus a couple of takeaways. Last year, the Packers had 31 takeaways, and it was the first time they’d been ahead of the league average by more than 10 takeaways since 2011. In the intervening decade-plus, there were only three other seasons where the Packers were three or more takeaways above the league average. In the same span, there were three seasons where the Packers were at least three takeaways below the league average in a given year.
For those reasons alone, it seems unlikely that the Packers will again be among the league’s premier takeaway teams, though anything is possible. But returning to Hafley’s goal I mentioned above, he specifically wants the Packers to force more fumbles this year.
“We took the ball away last year. We didn’t force enough fumbles,” said Hafley via the same Packers.com article I linked to earlier in this piece. “That’s not good enough, so the emphasis coming in is one, our play style, how hard we’re gonna play, how physical we’re gonna play, how we run to the ball. That’s non-negotiable. The other is we’re gonna attack the football, so we need to emphasize it more. We need to coach it better and we need to put it out there on tape.”
Again, forcing more fumbles is an admirable goal, but the Packers were already among the league leaders in forcing fumbles a year ago. Their 16 forced fumbles were tied for eighth most in the NFL, putting them in the top quarter of the league and comfortably inside the top 10. More importantly, the Packers recovered 14 of the 16 fumbles they forced last year, the highest figure of any team in the league with at least 15 forced fumbles.
Even more than takeaways in general, fumbles in particular are a very unstable metric, and it’s really hard to count on forcing more as a key plank in your defensive platform. Again, it’s not a bad thing to want to, and if the Packers did manage to force more fumbles there would be a much better chance of their fumble recovery numbers staying strong. The important figure there is the total numbers of fumbles recovered, and if the Packers still recovered 14 while forcing 25 they’d still be in great shape.
But overall, it’s hard to plan on the Packers being a heavy takeaway team again this year. If they’re going to field a strong defense again, that strength will have to depend on something other than forcing turnovers.
