Last week I talked about how the RPO game in week 1 was bad. Bad and not good. This week was kind of the same, although with less to say. And also…maybe a plea to lean into it more?
By my count, the Packers only had 3 RPO calls on the day and they didn’t throw a single one of them. We got the standard Bubble call, and we also got our first instance of a Bubble-Slant variation this season. In the past, the Packers ran this about once a year, so seeing it in week 2 leads me to believe they may be looking to use it a little more going forward, which is truly thrilling.
Watch Romeo Doubs at the top of the screen. He starts with the lateral bubble motion, then sticks his foot in the dirt and cuts back to the inside. It’s something we’re used to seeing from a guy with #17 on his jersey, but #87 looks pretty good, too. It’s a good change-up to the Bubble - which the Packers show a lot - and can be especially devastating against press coverage, as you get a chance to create immediate separation off the line.
We also got our first instance of a Snag RPO. A kind of angled hitch route, and an example of some of the more vertical RPOs I was hoping to see from the Packers this season. It’s a post-snap RPO, with Love reading the defenders to Love’s side. Neither of them really commit one way or another, so Love just hands the ball off.
Anyway, only 3 RPOs this past week. All handoffs and none of them particularly effective. However…
…it’s not like the non-RPO run game was really setting the world on fire.
Let’s talk about the nature of RPOs for a second. When people disparage RPOs, it’s usually for one of two reasons:
The QB throws them too often
If you’re running RPOs instead of just committing to running the ball out of run-specific packages, you’re giving up some of the benefit of blocking on the edges in favor of giving yourself another option other than running
It’s the second point I want to talk about. When you see a big running play, it’s usually because you have WRs blocking on the second and third level. Recently studies have shown that a perfectly-blocking run play is the most efficient play in football, but you can’t really perfectly block something if you’re committing a player to a play that is different than the run. All of that is true.
However, with a young WR group, they’re going to take some lumps in the running game. When I look at the Packers WRs, I’d say they’re all willing blockers, but I don’t know that any of them are great yet (I’ll put Christian Watson in the “great” category, but he hasn’t seen the field yet this year). That leads to some less-than-stellar blocks. Slow-playing some blocks as they’re trying to read the movement and make sure the guy is lined up. There’s nothing wrong with that: the fact that they’re all willing is a good sign for the future, but it’s just inconsistent in the early going.
Which is why leaning into more RPOs makes a little more sense right now. If you’ve got a group of guys who aren’t lockdown blockers in the run game but have the speed to widen the edges of the defense with a bubble motion, I’m inclined to lean into that a little more. That goes for post-snap RPOs as well. If you don’t feel great about your guy digging out a safety in the run game on a play-by-play basis, but his presence on a Glance route as part of the RPO prevents the safety from screaming to the line to be part of the run fit, then that’s a win, and it’s a good use of your receivers’ skill set and where they currently are in their development.
If you want to commit to the run, by all means, work towards that. But, until those guys are a little further along, leaning into RPOs to soften the edges and cause hesitation with the safeties seems like a viable path.
Alright. What else did I get into this week?
For starters, I did Packers Playbook, the new video series I’m doing with John Kuhn over at Cheesehead TV this year. We took a look at 3 plays: the sack on Jordan Love (talking some protection calls and why that breakdown occurred), the Falcons flea flicker (and the Packers coverage of it) and the High-Cross incompletion to Wicks late in the game (and why the position of Jesse Bates and the drop of Jordan Love may have influenced that). Really fun week. I hope you all are learning half as much watching these as I am recording them.
I looked at a really fun variation on the Packers Two-Man Stick concept: a quick-game staple. Love didn’t hit this play - he went to Musgrave on his first read on the other side of the field - but it’s a fun variation that we’ll absolutely see again this season.
I walked through a nice completion to Romeo Doubs off the Strike concept. The Falcons LBs did a good job of taking away the middle of the field off play action, so this play was fun to dig into to see Love’s recognition, as well as some of the built-in answers the Packers had on this core concept.
I went into this idea even more over on Packer Report this week. The Strike concept has been one of the Packers most consistent (and explosive) concepts over the last few years. But, as more teams have upped their usage of play action, more defenses have started adjusting to it and finding ways to take away the middle of the field with their linebackers. Over on that article, I take a look at 3 ways the Packers used variations of Strike to attack the Falcons. With the LBs aggressively bailing to take away the intermediate crossing routes, the Packers shorted the intermediate dig route to a shorter slant…
…and they also set up a screen against the retreating LBs.
I also dug into two plays from this past week that seemed to cause a lot of commotion among Packers fans. The first play was the ball that Love threw to Malik Heath that was almost intercepted by AJ Terrell. “Why did Jordan Love throw that ball?” was the question going around, so I dug in. We talk about the pressure look the Falcons were running, Love’s read on the play and why he ultimately threw to Heath.
The second play was the final offensive play of the day for the Packers: a perfectly placed, diving ball to the middle of the field that ultimately fell incomplete. The concept is something we’ve seen a lot with Love, but how he had to adjust due to coverage was pretty cool to see.
Lastly, for Cheesehead TV, I fired up The Passing Chronicles. I get into some numbers for the passing game from this past week, talk about what goes into the CPOE calculation that I’ll likely be looking at every week, then look at 3 plays I really liked from this past week. I know it’s only been two weeks, but I’m a big fan of what LaFleur has been doing with this passing offense so far.
Another fun week of digging into this team, man. Even in a loss, there’s always something interesting to learn.