Green Bay’s Offense Trending Wrong Way at Wrong Time
GREEN BAY, Wis. – After Sunday’s victory over Washington, Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur was questioned about the state of the offense. The queries continued on Monday, a day after a 20-15 victory gave the Packers a 10th win but hardly was a perfect 10 from a stylistic perspective.
The Packers were a few plays away from scoring a lot more than 20 points. Some of the missed opportunities were obvious, such as the overthrow to Jimmy Graham early in the second quarter that should have been a touchdown and the sack-strip late in the second quarter. Other missed opportunities weren’t quite so obvious. A few plays before the strip-sack, Aaron Rodgers turned a potential long touchdown pass to Allen Lazard into a sack by stepping up in the pocket rather than sliding to his left. Early in the fourth quarter, Aaron Jones went inside rather than outside and couldn’t haul in a deep pass from Rodgers on third down that would have resulted in a huge gain, if not a 64-yard touchdown.
Nobody has a better feel for the real state of the offense – from the big-picture stuff to the subtleties that only the players and coaches would understand – than LaFleur. So, after all those negative questions about the offense, is it trending the right direction with three games left in the regular season?
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“I just know about this league, you’re only as good as your last game. And if you don’t put together the best performance, then you’re trending down,” LaFleur said toward the end of a long new conference on Monday. “I’ve been around a lot of guys and they always talk about you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. You’re never staying the same. We have a tough task in front of us, not only as a football team but specifically as an offense vs. a really talented [Chicago Bears] defense. We have to make sure that we get back to work this week and make sure we’re disciplined in our approach and that our process is on point in order for us to make sure we get better this game.”
In other words, the offense isn’t trending to the coach’s satisfaction.
It was an honest answer to what would seem to be obvious from merely looking at the numbers. From Game 5 through Game 8 – the so-called second quarter of the season – Green Bay was second in the league with 32.5 points point game and Rodgers was second with a 118.7 passer rating. From Game 9 through Game 13, the Packers are 22nd in scoring with 18.8 points per game and Rodgers is ninth with a 93.7 passer rating.
That’s trending the wrong direction – at the wrong time of the season.
LaFleur dismissed out of hand the notion that the problem is Rodgers. As has been the case throughout his first year on the job, LaFleur pointed the finger at himself first. In retrospect, LaFleur said he should have given more reps to a running game that piled up 174 yards.
LaFleur also dismissed the premise that Rodgers was holding onto the ball too long. According to Pro Football Focus, Rodgers’ average time from snap to pass was 3.36 seconds, his first time over 3.0 seconds this season and far greater than his 2.73-second average entering the week.
“I think it’s totally dependent upon what we’re seeing,” LaFleur said. “Everybody wants to make a big deal about how long or how quick the ball is coming out. Some of these are designed play-action passes where we’re getting him out on the edge. Like the throwback to Jimmy is a great example. That ball needs time to develop, and our protection allowed it to develop. So he held onto it as long as he needed to. In some of those third-down situations, they did a really good job of dropping eight. I don’t care what concept you have, if teams are dropping eight on you, chances are it’s not going to be there in rhythm. We as coaches have to do a better job making sure we get a couple runs sprinkled in there so teams don’t do that to us.”
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Green Bay’s offensive struggles shouldn’t have come as any great surprise. As outlined in the World’s Best Preview, Washington’s defense has played much better under interim coach Bill Callahan. While the Redskins are only 3-5 in his eight games, they’re eighth in points allowed (19.9 per game), 10th in opponent passer rating (85.9), second in sacks (31) and tied for sixth in takeaways (13).
The challenge won’t be any easier on Sunday against Chicago. The Bears aren’t as dominant on defense as last season but they are fourth in points allowed (17.8 per game), third in rushing yards per play (3.74) and sixth in passing yards per play (6.18).
“I think it’s going to start with the coaching,” LaFleur said. “Just making sure that we are super-detailed so these guys understand what the expectations are and exactly who they’re going to. I think the details separate you. And when I talk about all the plays that we left out there, I think not all of us were on our details. Again, it starts with the coaching. We’ll make sure that we do a great job of communicating what we’re trying to get accomplished on every play and why. I think the why is absolutely imperative for these guys to understand what it is they’re trying to do.”
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