Overall, the offense wasn’t terrible against the Lions, but they just weren’t able to punch it in and score points. My understanding is that scoring points is important, which is news to me.
While the offense piled up yards, the RPO game didn’t provide many gains.
This is the highest % of thrown passes off RPOs I remember seeing this year, and it didn’t go particularly well. A measly 2.4 YPA on passes is pretty grim, man. The rushing game performed better, but it’s not like 3.7 yards is gangbusters.
However…
…they performed better in the run game with an RPO tag than they did without an RPO tag. The Lions came into the game as the worst run defense in the league: in fact, they were historically bad. To only average 2.5 YPA on called runs is awful. Truly terrible stuff right there.
I was going to dig in a little more with personnel and all that, but it’s late and I’m tired. It’s bad! All of it was bad! Nothing was good!
I did want to introduce another thing I’m going to start looking at here: run/pass% on RPO by box count. One of the things I like to do is to attempt to dig into commonly repeated “facts” to see if they’re actually facts, or just something someone started saying. The thing we’re going to investigate here is that teams are able to dictate if the Packers run or pass on their RPOs by the number of guys in the box. The thought is that, if you put 8 guys in the box, Rodgers will always throw. So defenses will bait him into throwing the RPO tag by loading the box. So, week-by-week, we’re going to look at that aspect. (I have data back to week 5 on that, but I’m hoping to fully gather that over the next couple weeks to get a full season look.)
For this week, what do we have?
Seeing as how the pass rate was higher than normal this week, it may not be the best week to start this look, but here we are. When the Lions put 8+ men in the box, the Packers threw it 62.5% of the time (1.8 YPA), which was actually better than their run average (37.5% rushing for 1.0 YPA). I’m excited to track this going forward to see what we can glean from this.
Alright. Enough of that. Let’s get to the other stuff I did this week. Buckle up, because there’s a lot.
For Packer Report, I took a look at the return of the Smash Fade concept. I talked about the original Smash concept, the evolution to Smash Fade, look at the numbers on the concept for the week, then dig into an explosive play the Packers hit with that concept this week.
For Cheesehead TV, I took a look at some numbers from the Packers passing game against the Lions, then dug into a couple concepts, including a fun variation on their standard PA Boot concept: a frontside boot.
Now we come to the videos. So many videos this week, you guys. Let’s start with the more critical ones.
I kicked things off by digging into a play that was making the rounds on Twitter that showed Josiah Deguara wide open in the middle of the field and Rodgers not pulling the trigger. I talked about the reads on that concept and all that fun stuff.
Next, I took a look at what can happen when you pre-determine a one-on-one throw, and what you can miss on the concept side.
After that, I dug into the Packers final play of the game: an incomplete pass to Sammy Watkins on 4th & 10. Bad throw or bad route? (Spoiler alert: bad route. Terrible route.)
I got a request to look into a play, so I did that. It’s a play that shows Allen Lazard and Samori Toure wide open on a screenshot, but the play ends up being complete to Tonyan on a scramble drill. I talk about the overall concept, the coverage on the play and what Rodgers may have seen that stopped him from pulling the trigger.
I then took a look at a play that was about 1 foot from being a touchdown: a deep shot to Toure that was just the slightest bit underthrown.
But it wasn’t all negative, I swear. So we’ll end with the positive. I looked at the touchdown to Allen Lazard and his fake block that helped get him open.
Lastly, I took a look at a really fun run from the Packers using their Pony Package. They’d been motioning down a TE then slicing him across the formation to kick out the backside. This time, they use the motion TE to crack the play side and pull the o-line around him. Real pretty stuff.
That’s…a lot. That feels like a lot. Too much, if I’m being honest. I can’t imagine anyone watched all of that. But to anyone who read/listened to even a little bit of it this week, I can’t thank you enough. Selfishly, I’m doing all of this to satisfy my own curiosity, but I’m glad that at least a handful of people are finding value in this. Thank you.