Packers High-Fives: Keys to Season Success
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Ready or not, the Green Bay Packers will kick off their 102nd season on Sept. 13 at the Minnesota Vikings.
And, really, who’s going to be fully ready? With no offseason practices, an abbreviated training camp and no preseason, profound challenges await general manager Brian Gutekunst and coach Matt LaFleur. “I think you’re running on faith a little bit,” Gutekunst said in regard to Saturday’s roster cut from 80 players to 53.
Meanwhile, when the Packers line up in Week 1, they’ll do so without the key players going through any live tackling. “We want to have all our horses for the race coming in two weeks,” LaFleur said of the tradeoff between getting battle-tested but staying healthy.
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With roster cuts due by 3 p.m. Saturday and then the page officially flipped to Minnesota, here are five keys for the Packers as they attempt to match, and surpass, last year’s success.
Aaron Rodgers
The quarterback is always the key and that’s especially true for Rodgers. It seems like ancient history when Rodgers was considered the baddest man on the quarterbacking planet.
In Rodgers’ running-the-table brilliance in 2016, he had a 100-plus passer rating in six of eight games with 21 touchdowns vs. one interception. In 2017, Rodgers had just gotten rolling with a three-game stretch of 10 touchdowns and one interception when he suffered a broken collarbone at Minnesota. In his 34 total starts in 2018 and 2019, Rodgers ranked 23rd of 29 quarterbacks (minimum 600 attempts) with a completion rate of 62.7 percent and 13th with a 97.0 passer rating.
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If the Packers are going to take the next step, it will be up to Rodgers to return to form. He’s had a strong training camp, a byproduct of his comfort in Year 2 of Matt LaFleur’s scheme and a fresh outlook, but a wait-and-see approach is necessary going into the season.
“I feel like I’ve had a pretty accurate training camp,” Rodgers said. “I’ve said it many times, accuracy comes from the timing and rhythm and balance, but it also comes from timing up your drops with the correct progressions, and now I feel really good about the progressions.”
Marquez Valdes-Scantling
Davante Adams is Davante Adams, one of the better receivers in the NFL. Allen Lazard, with his size and rapport with Rodgers, emerged as a key weapon, especially on third down. But it’s the size-speed combination that Valdes-Scantling possesses that is unrivaled on the roster. The NFL is a big-play lead and he’s the receiver who can deliver. He’s coming off a strong training camp and has re-emerged as a potential weapon. Lazard is the clear No. 2 but what would it do for the offense to have Valdes-Scantling contribute, say, 40 receptions for 700 yards?
“Based off of his camp and the attention to detail he’s had, he’s had a lot more consistency around here,” Adams told SiriusXM NFL Radio. “I think that’s what we were waiting to see because he’s shown flashes a bunch of times and he’s done a lot of great things.”
Kingsley Keke
Like Valdes-Scantling with the receiver corps, Keke is the one player on the defensive line with real upside. Kenny Clark is a stud but where is the room for growth in Dean Lowry and Tyler Lancaster? Keke’s explosiveness has been evident. If he takes a big step forward, the defense should, as well.
“I’m a stickler on the little things. So, he makes me really happy when he does things the right way,” defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery said on Thursday. “And there’s days where he’s still trying to play backyard ball and not play within the system and so those days, we just take a step back. But he’s done some really nice things at times. He’s being tougher at the point of attack. We all know he’s a good athlete. We all know he’s a kid that should be able to get after the quarterback. But, absolutely, you have to stop the run in order to get the quarterback to throw the football. So, he’s really made some progress there so we’re excited to see how this thing plays out throughout the year.”
Third Down
Last year, Green Bay’s offense finished 23rd in third-down efficiency with a move-the-chains rate of just 35.96 percent. Other than 2015, when the Packers were without Jordy Nelson, that was Green Bay’s worst rate since at least 1991, when third-down data became available. During Rodgers’ first seven seasons as the starter, Green Bay never was worse than 41.2 percent.
The ending point was a lot of punts but the starting point was first down, where Green Bay ranked 23rd with 4.9 yards per play. The first-down running game was good; the first-down passing game was bad. Either LaFleur needs to fully commit to running the football or Rodgers’ comfort level must show up on first down.
Forcing Fumbles
Green Bay’s defense finished in the top 10 in points allowed for the first time since the Super Bowl season of 2010. Where is there room for growth? Forcing fumbles. The Packers finished tied for 19th with 12 forced fumbles.
Sacks are the prime time to draw fumbles. Za’Darius Smith (13.5 sacks, one forced fumble), Preston Smith (12 sacks, one forced fumble), Kenny Clark (six sacks, one forced fumble) and Rashan Gary (two sacks, no forced fumbles) combined for 33.5 sacks and three forced fumbles. Fifteen individuals had more forced fumbles than those four defenders combined. Compare that to Tampa Bay’s Shaquil Barrett, who had a league-high 19.5 sacks and six forced fumbles, Arizona’s Chandler Jones, who had 19 sacks and eight forced fumbles, and Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt, who had 14.5 sacks and eight forced fumbles.
