Packers Play Action Game, 2023 Week 12

or, singing hallelujah and stumbling home

Time to throw a cut-up of the Packers play action snaps from week 12.

And I guess some numbers? Everyone loves numbers, right? My pivot tables tell me that’s a true statement.

Just as a point of clarification that likely doesn’t need to be made, but I’ll make it anyway: when I chart play action, I don’t include RPOs as a part of that. Those are two entirely different types of plays, meant to do entirely different things. I’ll hit the RPO game later this week, but I wanted to make sure I was up front with that.

The Packers had 22 non-RPO passing plays against the Lions and 9 of them were play action passes. That’s a PA rate of 29% on true dropbacks, their highest rate since 33.3% in weeks 2 and 5.

It may have ranked 2nd in terms of usage, but it was their best week in terms of yards per play on play action passes. When using play action against the Lions, the Packers averaged 16.2 YPA. They averaged 5.5 YPA on non-play action passes, so they averaged 10.8 yards more per play when using play action than they did without play action. That’s insane!

That average is certainly bolstered by the big 53 yard gain to Christian Watson to open the game, but they were consistently gaining solid yardage on other plays as well. Out of the 9 attempts, one was incomplete, one went for 5 yards, and every other attempt went for at least 9 yards.

As is the case with most play action concepts, they were looking to attack the middle of the field and they were successful in doing do: 55.6% of Love’s attempts went to the middle of the field - including some throws that he absolutely ripped - averaging 20.8 YPA. But Love also showed a willingness to take the checkdown if the linebackers were looking to take away the middle of the field.

All-in-all, a really nice day from the Packers play action game.