After giving up 35 points in their Week 3 meltdown against the Atlanta Falcons, the Green Bay Packers have allowed just 34 points combined over the three games since. Defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s disguises are a big reason why. On Sunday night against the Dallas Cowboys, he had quarterback Dak Prescott in a blender, forcing him to read and react to a defense that hardly ever played its pre-snap shell.
Gannon had defenders lining up in one spot and finished in another. They were mugging
the front and showing cover-0 or single high man coverage all game long, forcing him to hesitate, resulting in three interceptions.
Coverage players appeared out of nowhere. Free rushers got home. At times it must have felt to Prescott like Green Bay had 12 or 13 men on the field.
No quarterback is immune to that. When the picture keeps shifting, it’s harder to get into the right call at the line, harder to trust what you see, and harder to process and react, because the pre-snap read may have nothing to do with what the defense actually plays. The result was a Dallas offense that never found a rhythm.
The biggest play of the night may have come early in the second quarter, because it had planted doubt in Prescott’s mind and it kept the Cowboys from putting badly needed points on the board.
The Packers offense had just turned the ball over on the previous drive and gave the Cowboys the ball on the wrong side of the field. The drive started at the Green Bay with Dallas getting into the red zone a few plays later, trailing only 7-0 at this point.
Here, Dallas faced 3rd-and-8 from the Green Bay 17 and came out of a 3×1 formation. The outside receiver and the middle slot receiver both ran shallow in-breaking routes, with the inside slot receiver running up the seam.
The Packers showed a single-high blitz look with seven potential rushers on the line, then rotated into red zone quarters at the snap.
Evan Williams ends up as the weakside safety playing “trix,” meaning that he’s reading the route of the #3 receiver inside and up.
The key was Williams (#33). He started on the line to Prescott’s left showing pressure, then knifed out to take away the #3 receiver inside and up.
Prescott never accounted for him and likely never saw. His only thought was likely that he’d need to get rid of the ball quickly and never really checked the post-snap rotation until it was too late.
The end zone angle shows Dak staring down the middle before working right to his inside receiver, never picking up Williams, who undercut the throw for an interception.
Defenders materializing from nowhere like that is the kind of thing that can rattle a quarterback for the rest of the game.
