I’ve been musing a lot lately about the state of the Packers offense. Part of that is because these are things I think about when I can’t sleep at night, but the other part of it is that people have been asking me. A few days ago, I said something about wanting the Packers to “lean heavy into an Air Raid approach.”
On the Pack-A-Day podcast this week, I said that I would like to see the Packers run the bulk of their offense out of 11 personnel, single-back, shotgun/pistol.
On both of those thoughts I received a lot of questions and comments, so I wanted to take some time to explain my thinking.
[A MASSIVE disclaimer: I do not think I am smarter than anyone on the Packers staff, nor do I think changing up the way an offense operates midseason is something that could work. This is simply the result of a thought experiment.]
The “Air Raid Approach” is central to my thinking, so let’s start there.
When I say Air Raid Approach, I don’t necessarily mean to just throw the ball every down. With the running game in shambles, I wouldn’t mind if the scales tilted more towards the passing game (the Packers currently throw the ball on 62.2% of their snaps, 15th in the league), but it’s more about the sheer number of plays and what that allows you to rep.
When I think Air Raid, I think back to accounts of Hal Mumme & Mike Leach installing it at Iowa Wesleyan, where stories say they came in with 15 pass plays and 6 run plays, but with various formations to run them out of. Initially, they didn’t even have a playbook because they wanted to commit to keeping it simple and stay away from the players memorizing the lines on a page. You want to talk about “the illusion of complexity”? Buddy, this is boiling that down to the bare essentials.
One of the benefits to this is that the players get a ton of reps on the same plays so they know them inside and out, and I think you know where I’m going with this.
The main issue the Packers have had on offense is not the play design. It’s not the system. It’s not the overall philosophy. Not on its face, anyway. The issue that has consistently plagued this Packers offense has been too many instances of players not being where they’re supposed to be. Whether that’s a blocking assignment or a receiver running a wrong route or something else along those lines, mental mistakes have plagued the Packers this year. By scaling the offense back to its base elements, it allows them to get intimately familiar with the core concepts to the point where they can run the offense in their sleep. Once you’ve got the basics buttoned up, you can start expanding.
I’m not suggesting they only have 21 plays in their arsenal going into a game. But also I think I’m kind of suggesting that. They wouldn’t only have 15 pass plays, for example: they’d have a core of 15 pass plays, with constraint plays built off of those. Scale it down to your fastballs, but keep your change-ups on hand.
Next up is where I want to base this. 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR), single-back, shotgun/pistol. With the rookie TEs, I’m fine with limiting their time on the field while we’re getting this back on track. It’s clear that the most dynamic group of playmakers on this team is the WR group, so I want to lean into that. (Aaron Jones has been the most consistent player in the skill group, but he’s been limited and, while I like AJ Dillon, he doesn’t really fit into the “dynamic” tag.)
If we look at some of their most effective concepts out of 11 personnel this year, they’re all base concepts that could be run out of shotgun/pistol. We’d be basing the run game primarily out of Inside Zone/Duo. While the 3.9 YPA on Inside Zone from 11 personnel doesn’t great, it’s better than the 2.1 YPA it has been doing in all other personnel groupings. We can also mix in some power in the form of their pin-pull scheme (in which they usually have a TE or WR as the pinner, allowing us to run it from 11).
In our pass game, the most successful concepts are ones we can run from 11 shotgun/pistol and easily have constraint plays off of them. Dagger (both Middle Read and Cross-Country). Four Verts. Spin. Sail. Strike. Even some of the shots they’ve tried but haven’t quite hit (something in the Mills family) can work from this.
I did all of these from 11 personnel, shotgun in a 3x1 set with an in-line TE to the 2WR side. With a couple exceptions, the WR splits are basically the same. I threw a couple variations in there (the inside zone RPO, the motion on Cross-Country Dagger) just to give a couple examples of things you could do to keep the same core concept but mix it up a bit.
Obviously if we were going to install this, we would dig even more into the different ways to run these. Different formations out of 11 personnel. Using motion, switch releases, changes to routes, use of stacks & bunches, etc. My point is, I’m not building a comprehensive offense in this space (yet); I just wanted some quick examples of core concepts in the Packers offense that have been run effectively, and how we could get to those concepts from the same basic look.
I’ve been going on for a while and I’m tired so I’ll stop in a minute, but I do want to wrap this up, so let’s hit it.
In my day-to-day job, one of my roles is to determine the pain points in a process then find creative solutions to solve them. One of the best things I learned is to always come up with at least 3 possible solutions, even if one of them is totally outlandish. The idea is that, even if it’s outlandish, it may spark another idea, or spark a conversation among the larger group that may lead to a solution you may have never considered before. At the root of it all, of course, is the problem we are trying to solve. That’s the driver of the whole thing.
For the Packers, the problem we are trying to solve revolves around execution. The idea I built this off of is that execution improves if you are able to spend more time practicing a handful of plays, instead of spreading yourself too thin. I fully understand that the NFL is not that easy: you can’t simply choose to pare down your playbook in the middle of the season. But this approach - this Air Raid install, simplification of personnel groupings, etc. - is my outlandish approach. Would it work? Man, probably not. But it’s a fun road to walk down for a bit.