The Green Bay Packers battled back in the second half of the Week 8 game versus the Pittsburgh Steelers after being down 16-7 at halftime. They held the Pittsburgh offense to nine second-half points while the Packers offense scored on each possession of the 2nd half. In the end, the defense held their former quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, and the Steelers offense to just 1-10 on third down conversions, allowing the defense to ultimately dictate the pace of the 2nd half.
They sacked Rodgers five times,
including a strip sack and recovery by the defense, and broke up five more passes. They also only gave three explosive pass plays, though one at the end of the game was inconsequential as the score was already 35-19. Overall, this felt like a much better version of the defense we saw early on in the season.
The biggest change on defense the week leading up to the game was the benching of Nate Hobbs for Carrington Valentine. Valentine had a pass break-up in the end zone on DK Metcalf and allowed three catches for 31 yards with one of them being the garbage time touchdown. Before that, Valentine surrendered just two catches for 10 yards and earned the third-highest defensive grade on the team for the game per Pro Football Focus.
The defense only surrendered three points in the third quarter, which allowed the offense to cut into the lead, and by the 4th quarter, the score was 19-14 Steelers. On the first play of the 4th quarter for the Steelers, a 1st and 10, Micah Parsons’ sack turned the tide of the game for Green Bay.
The Steelers aligned in a 12 personnel formation YY formation before motioning a tight end over to the left to make it a balanced line. They’re running a play-action dig concept from under center.
The Packers are in cover-3, showing 2-deep safeties pre-snap before the motion and rotating late in the pre-snap to a cover-3 alignment.
Rodgers was forced to hold onto the ball as nothing was open downfield on the concept. The coverage took both the primary and secondary reads away and when he tried to find his checkdown, Parsons was splitting a double-team block into the backfield, forcing Rodgers to eat the sack and 10-yard loss.
On the next drive, with the Steelers facing 3rd and 17, Rashan Gary came away with a sack. The play was set up by a 2nd down holding penalty that pushed the Steelers back 10 yards. With no choice but to pass, the Packers shifted around their front on the Steelers to create confusion as Rodgers dropped back.
The defense is playing a standard cover-2 alignment here on 3rd-and-17 with the zones a bit deeper than a traditional cover-2. Rodgers had nowhere to go with the pass and tried to buy time to escape but as soon as he moved forward up in the pocket, Rashan Gary came from the side to sack him
The defense sacked Rodgers one other time. It came early in the game on the Steelers’ first drive, also by Gary. But the pressure was created initially by Parsons, whose interior rush from an off-the-ball linebacker position shot him through the line, forcing Rodgers to step up.
This alignment is becoming a normal addition to the defensive call sheet in recent weeks, taking Parsons and aligning him off the ball with plenty of movement to confuse the offensive line and cause them to panic a bit. This alignment actually set up the sack above.
With Parsons aligned off the ball behind the defensive tackle, the offensive line naturally slides their protection to account for Parsons. Parsons doesn’t change his rush lane, he rushes right at the right guard in the B-gap with the right tackle 1-on-1 with Gary. Parsons easily dips by the blocker into the backfield. The pressure forces Rodgers to step up where he ends up running into a sack by Gary.
The defense also recorded five pass breakups on Rodgers as well. The most notable being a Carrington Valentine deflection in the end zone on a deep shot down the left sideline from Rodgers to DK Metcalf.
Valentine and Metcalf are aligned at the bottom of the screen. The defense is playing cover-1 across the board here. Since Metcalf is outside of the numbers and inside the “divider,” (closer to the bottom of the numbers) Valentine will funnel him inside by playing trail technique, low and outside with the safety help outside the hash.
Valentine jumps outside and low as Metcalf releases downfield. Rodgers looked to the right at the route concepts but nothing was available to him to take a shot on so he reset and looked to Metcalf on the left 1-on-1 with Valentine.
Rodgers read the leverage and threw the ball inside to Metcalf but as the pass approached, Valentine reached over and knocked it away as it hit Metcalf’s hands.
I’ll leave you with Rodgers’s reaction to it.
