After an offseason of drama, I was happy to have a game to look forward to. Until the game started, and then I was dreaming of an offseason that seemed quaint by comparison.
I said things like, “Hey Rodgers! Get a haircut.” In public. Where people could hear me.
I’m going to assume that the rest of the season will be better than whatever I witnessed on Sunday, but I guess we’ll see. For now, let’s throw some quick-hitters from the Week 1 loss to the Saints in Jacksonville.
We’ve got dots! This is Rodgers’ second interception, otherwise known as, “The ball he chucked entirely too far to MVS.” Rodgers likes the MVS/Gardner-Johnson match-up in the right slot, as that looks like a man-to-man match-up. #43 of the Saints is Marcus Williams. Williams initially is looking to bracket Davante Adams on the left. Rodgers actually does glance over and Williams does a good job selling it. As soon as Rodgers shifted to throw, Williams took off like a bat out of hell and got over the top of MVS. It was a poorly thrown ball, but it falls harmlessly to the turf if Williams didn’t play it as well as he did.
This is Rodgers’ Red Zone INT (something that is as rare as a unicorn. But, like, an ugly unicorn). It’s on the Mesh concept, with Davante Adams and Marcedes Lewis as the crossers. The Saints show pressure, and, while they drop one, they end up bringing 5. The pocket breaks down and Rodgers forces a throw to Adams, but the throw is behind Adams and Paulson Adebo easily picks it off and finds a lane. If the ball it out on time, Adams likely makes the catch, but the single high safety completely abandons Dafney running up the field and crashes on the drag from Adams. The Saints were looking for this and they attacked it.
Per Football Outsiders, a play is successful if it gains 45% of yards needed on 1st down, 60% of yards needed on 2nd down or 100% of yards needed on 3rd & 4th down. By that metric, 2nd down was the only successful down for the Packers in this game. They gained 63.2% of yards needed on 2nd down. Everywhere else, they fell woefully flat. They gained 38.7% yards needed on 1st, 42.9% of yards needed on 3rd down and 83.3% of yards needed on 4th down.
Packers gained 3.7 yards per play when executing their script which is…bad. Real bad. They performed better after the script was completed, but only because it would have been real hard to do worse. After the script was completed, they averaged 4.2 yards per play.
The Packers gained 12 yards rushing in the first half with their running backs, while the Saints gained 103. Tough to gain more rushing yards when you only have 4 attempts in the 1st half.
One of the reasons for their low number of attempts is because they just didn’t have the ball. The Packers offense had 3 total possessions in the 1st half, and the last one of those started with 1:07 remaining in the half and the Packers on their own 25.
They had 6 possessions in the 2nd half, but they weren’t able to do much with them. They had 11 rushing attempts for 26 yards.
Not that the passing game was doing anything. Rodgers had a QB Rating of 69.1 in the 1st half and 16.0 in the 2nd half. The 2nd half saw Rodgers go 9/19 for 64 yards and 2 INTs.
After setting a career high completion % last year, Rodgers was dreadful this game. When targeting within 15 yards of the line of scrimmage, he was 15/25 (60%) for 102 yards (4.1 YPA) and 1 INT. When targeting over 15 yards, he was 1/6 (17%) for 31 yards (5.2 YPA) and 1 INT, for an almost comical 9.0 QB Rating.
All-in-all, this was just a dreadful performance. It’s tough to do much when you only get 3 possessions in the 1st half, but the Packers had their chances to try to mount a comeback and it fell short every single time.
We’re on to Detroit, the Motor City and kneecap biting capital of the world.