Last week, we dove into the Green Bay Packers’ passing attack against the Browns (be it ever so humble). After a two-game stretch that saw Jordan Love chucking the ball to the heavens, his ADOT (Average
Depth Of Target) plummeted to a mind-boggling 1.9 yards. His overall passing numbers didn’t look great against the Browns. Against the Cowboys? It was a different story.
Per RBSDM, Love had an ADOT of 5.6. That’s nowhere close to the 14.5 ADOT in Week 2 or 11.5 in Week 1, but still a bump over his numbers in Cleveland.
He was efficient, too, effectively peppering all areas of the field. On the day, he completed 72.1% of his passes for 7.8 YPA (Yards Per Attempt). His total EPA (Expected Points Added) of 27.1 eclipsed Dak Prescott’s 23 EPA, but they both posted a +0.54 EPA per Play on the day. Right now – four games into the season – Love has an EPA per Dropback of +0.26, second in the league to Josh Allen’s +0.28 (per NFL Pro).
If you take away the throwaways, the numbers look even better (as they tend to do): 86.1% completion, 9.4 YPA.
The Packers had an at-the-snap motion rate of 35.9% in this game, their lowest mark of the season (their high mark was week 2 against the Commanders, when they ran motion at the snap on 68.9% of their plays). The dip this week was mainly due to the end of half/end of game situations. When you’re in a time crunch, you’re getting up on the line and snapping it, so a lot of the motion stuff goes away. I’m assuming we’ll see that number come back up out of the bye.
The passing chart shows a lack of throws to the middle of the field – the field is split pretty cleanly to either side of the inside hashes – but there’s a pretty good reason for that. Cowboys’ Defensive Coordinator Matt Eberflus coaches his linebackers to get a lot of depth in their drops. As a result, the windows in that area of the field are tight. With the linebackers deep – and aggressively retreating against play action – it makes a lot more sense to attack this team outside and underneath the dropping linebackers. The Packers had concepts called to attack the middle, but Love didn’t really pull the trigger on them because it didn’t make sense to do it.
Overall, a great game from the passing offense. Part of that was certainly due to the Cowboys’ defense (NFL Pro has the Cowboys as the worst defense in the league this year, giving up +0.22 EPA per Play), but part of that was due to the operation of the offense. Love was consistently making good decisions and putting the ball in great locations for his receivers, and his receivers rewarded him by coming up with some big catches (we already broke down the 3 TDs to Romeo Doubs). It wasn’t without its lumps – Wicks & Golden competing for the same pass on the first drive didn’t exactly inspire confidence – but they performed well. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do out of the bye.
I’ll do a kind of grab bag post in a couple of days with some concepts I really liked from this game, but, for now, let’s look at a couple of plays from the end of the game. That’s right: we’re heading to overtime.
Play 1: 1st & 10, 00:32 remaining in OT
The Packers are in 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR), with Jordan Love [10] in shotgun. The Packers are in a 3×1 Nub set (three receivers split wide to the same side of the field and the tight end in-line on the other side of the field). They called an RPO (Run Pass Option): a wide zone run with a WR screen passing tag to the Trips side.
This is a pre-snap read for Love. If the Packers have a numbers (or leverage) advantage to the pass tag, Love will throw the ball to Matthew Golden [0] as the #3 receiver, while Dontayvion Wicks [13] and Romeo Doubs [87] will block. If the Packers don’t have an advantage there, Love will hand off to Emanuel Wilson [23] on a run to the left.
Before the snap, the Cowboys are a bit discombobulated to that side, sprinting to get lined up. With the safety to that side backpedaling hard to get into position, the Packers have a numbers advantage, so Love fires to Golden.
However, Trevon Diggs [7] fires down on Golden immediately, splitting the blocks and taking Golden down for a 3-yard loss. I found 4 instances of Diggs playing over a similar pass tag this season, and he never once fired like this. Even earlier in this game, he showed (at best) a disinterest in closing on these plays. Maybe the fact that they were scrambling to get into position led to Diggs just reading and reacting in a way that he hadn’t up until this point. I’m not sure. But, whatever the reason, Diggs makes a nice play to blow this up.
After this play, the Packers use their final timeout. They also have a plan of attack off of that play. With the defenders firing down as hard as they did, there’s an ocean of space behind them.
They could pump fake the flat, then hit them over the head. The Packers ran something similar against the 49ers in 2023, to a nice end.
Play 2: 2nd & 13, 00:28 remaining in OT
So here they come out of the timeout, armed with information and a playcall. They flip the formation – TE on the right, Trips to the left – and show the WR screen tag. There’s no RPO here: they have simply called a screen-and-go pass to the left.
This time, the defenders don’t fire down, and the safety stays over the top, giving Love nowhere to go with the ball.
By this point, the left side of the line has been caved in, so Love is forced off to the right, where he checks the ball down to Wilson in the flat, and the clock continues to tick until their next snap at 6 seconds.
I love this playcall. They used recent, in-game information to dial up a playcall that would have ended the game. I certainly take issue with some of the end-of-game management, but I love this call.
Albums listened to: Big Thief – Double Infinity; Alien Boy – You Wanna Fade?
