What is this feeling? Is this…hope? Optimism?
After watching the RPO game falter through the first 5 games, we got saw some signs of life on that front in Week 7. The Packers had 11 RPOs on the day, making up 18% of their total offensive calls. That’s down from their 22.8% rate in Week 5, but up slightly from their 15.7% rate on the year.
And how did they do?
They did well! They only threw twice, but both were successful. The 14 yarder was a nice gain by Romeo Doubs. And the 4 yard one? Well, that’s because they were at the 4 and they nabbed a TD when the ball shot off the hands of Doubs and directly into the loving arms of Jayden Reed.
That play there - beyond the terrific adjustments by Love to fit the ball in and Reed to come up with it - is what I’ve been wanting to see more of this year: a vertical RPO. While that play is technically a post-snap read, the conflict defender cheating up before the play made this a pre-snap read for Love. Reed does a good initial job of walling off the defenders with his route, and then shows tremendous awareness by bringing this in for the go-ahead TD. More vertical RPOs please!
The other thing they did well was just gain yards in general. It’s been a slog this year, so seeing 6.6 YPA on RPOs is pretty nice.
On the plays they handed off, they averaged significantly more yards per attempt when they had an RPO tag than they did without one.
They only ran their RPOs out of limiting personnel groupings, but they were successful with both.
Is this a blip or a sign of good things to come in their RPO game? Only time will tell, but I’m encouraged.
Alright. What else did I get into this week?
As I’ve been doing every week, I got a chance to sit down and talk with John Kuhn about a handful of plays from the Packers game. This week, we talked about 4 plays that showed off what Aaron Jones can give the offense: including that RPO TD I just showed above.
I went solo on a couple videos, as well. I looked at a variation off a concept the Packers use a lot. It ended up incomplete, but I loved the idea behind it. So I talk a bit about that and talk about the lack of details that led to its failure.
I also looked at the game-ending INT, walking through the defense, what the Packers were trying to do and why Love targeted who he did.
And then I wrote some stuff! For Packer Report, I wrote up a concept I really liked then mused on the nature of art for…reasons.
For Cheesehead TV, I dug into some numbers from the passing game, gave some overall impressions from the film, then dug into a couple plays I really liked.
In this space, I wrote a few things. I dropped all of the Packers play action snaps for the season. Then I dropped all of the Packers screen game snaps for the season and added some numbers for context.
Lastly - also in this space - I engaged in a kind of thought experiment. I had been getting a lot of questions about the personnel grouping I would use if I was trying to simplify the offense a bit. I went with 11 personnel out of shotgun/pistol, then wrote about why I chose that, along with some diagrams of core plays the Packers could have success with. It was a really fun idea to dig into, so I hope you read that.