With the short-week turnaround, I didn’t get a chance to do an RPO Report last week. I didn’t hear any complaints, so I assume it was all good. I’ll do a full-season RPO look during the offseason (including the Packers run to win the Super Bowl, of course), so those numbers will eventually be seen. I’m gonna call that good.
Alright. How did the Packers do against the Lions in the RPO game?
Not many passes thrown - and one of those blown up for a loss - but that rush YPA. THAT RUSH YPA. Man that’s beautiful.
The Packers didn’t log a lot of run snaps for the game, but that’s more a product of them not running many plays overall. Their run rate of 37.7% was actually slightly higher than their season rate of 36.8%. They only ran 53 plays in the game, tied for their lowest number of plays in a game this season (also against the Lions, but in week 4). The low number of plays this time were a result of some big plays and their highest YPA of the season (they averaged 7.1 yards per play in this game, topping their previous high of 6.4 in week 10 against the Steelers).
Anyway, the Packers fared much better in this game when running off RPO looks than they did off regular run looks. Just as God intended.
They went heavier for a couple RPO looks, but the bulk of their RPO looks came out of 11 personnel, and they did very well in those.
Overall, a nice week in the world of RPOs for Green Bay. The offense as a whole has been coming together really well over the last few weeks, so it’s not a shock that the RPO portion is part of that as well.
Let’s see. What else did I get into.
As I do every week, I got a chance to sit down with John Kuhn and walk through a few plays. This week we talked about Love’s decision-making and some fun arm angles. This episode is a little longer than normal, but that’s on me: Kuhn pointed out a nice blitz pick-up from Patrick Taylor and I couldn’t wait to ask some follow-up questions on exactly what he was looking at there.
Over on my YouTube channel, I broke down Love’s first TD pass of the day: a bullet to Reed that seemed to pass through people. After the game, Love said that Watson had run the wrong route, so I took a look at what the concept was meant to accomplish and what Love was looking at when he let the ball go.
I also did a longer-form film room: a look at some things that Christian Watson did well against the Lions. I mainly looked at the passing game, but I did look at one rep in the running game and talked about some of his strengths and limitations there.
These longer film-room videos are a fun way for me to force me to look a little deeper at a specific player, as opposed to just the overall play design and execution. They’re not meant to be the end-all, be-all: I think of it more as a peek behind the curtain of how I typically look at these. They can be a little meandering at times (surprise surprise), but I enjoy them. Hoping to find time for more in the future.
Now for some writing.
For Packer Report, I wrote about the Arches concept. It’s something I’ve been wanting to see the Packers work into their arsenal, so I was hyped to see it against the Lions. The ball ended up being dropped, but they showed that it’s in their playbook and that’s enough for me.
For Cheesehead TV, I wrote about the performance of the passing game against the Lions, then dug into a few plays. I focused on the Packers use of the Middle-Read Dagger concept and the different ways they were able to run it against the Lions. I love seeing them able to dress these core concepts up in different ways.
I also looked at the Tucker Kraft TD, because it’s really fun.
Lastly, in this very space, I briefly wrote about the Packers play action game against the Lions. Part of that was included in my CHTV piece, but, after doing my own charting, I had the numbers slightly different. So I dug into the numbers a bit and dropped the cut-up.
I always love digging into what the Packers do, but a win like this is particularly fun.