Micah Parsons Wasn’t Only Packers Defender Who Made Game-Changing Plays

GLENDALE, Ariz. – How many times have you heard the cliché about the NFL being a game of inches? Or that just a play or two can be the difference between winning and losing?

Probably a bunch.

Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals came down to one or two plays, and most of them were made by the Green Bay Packers’ defense in a 27-23 victory.

Green Bay’s defense has been good for most of the season but had been missing game-changing plays to help the offense with shorter fields. Plays like that can turn close games into blowouts and losses into wins.

Sunday’s game had a variety of those.

Micah Parsons had three point-saving plays with two sacks that turned potential touchdowns into field goals and a third that helped preserve the victory on the final series. All of it would have been for naught, however, if not for the two other game-changing plays on defense.

The first of these plays came from Parsons’ running-mate, Rashan Gary.

The Packers’ defense was reeling after giving up a third-and-5 conversion by way of a pass-interference penalty by Evan Williams against Marvin Harrison Jr. The penalty gave the Cardinals the ball at their 46 and in business to extend their 13-3 lead early in the third quarter.

Instead, Gary turned the game on its head.

The Packers’ defense, after emphasizing turnovers throughout the offseason and training camp, had been devoid of takeaways through the first five games. The Packers were 31st with two takeaways and hadn’t produced one since Joe Flacco’s arm-punt interception on fourth down at the end of the first half at Cleveland in Week 3.

That was on Sept. 21, nearly a month ago.

For whatever reason, those takeaways just have not come after the team finished fourth with 31 last season.

That is until the 11:52 mark of the third quarter on Sunday.

Gary broke off his rush lane and found Jacoby Brissett attempting to extend a play. He delivered a punishing blow from behind and hit Brissett’s hand, knocking the ball loose.

If the ball is the Packers’ lifeline, then their life was sitting on the turf of State Farm Stadium, waiting to be claimed by anybody.

The anybody in this case was Williams.

With the Cardinals nearly at midfield and moving the ball, the Packers were staring at, at minimum, a 16-6 deficit.

“Yeah, huge, huge. I’m just happy that we gained the momentum and we finally got a turnover,” Parsons said.

“That turnover was (a) crucial part of winning the game because we scored off of it, so without R.G.’s fumble, we may not win this game, so just finding ways to get the ball, getting to the quarterback is extremely important.”

Huge play is right.

Green Bay Packers defensive lineman Barryn Sorrell (99) and Nazir Stackhouse celebrate a play against the Arizona Cardinals. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

If the Cardinals had finished the drive in the end zone, Green Bay would have been down two touchdowns in the second half and forced to play in fastbreak mode. Instead, the forced fumble was a turning point for a defense looking for more splash plays.

“It’s huge and I think that’s an area we’ve been harping on so much throughout the week,” quarterback Jordan Love said. “It hasn’t been up to the standard that we wanted as a defense of finding ways to create turnovers.

“And that’s one of those things that every week we have ball meetings on trying to find ways to come out with turnovers. And what a big-time play by R.G. right there to get that strip-sack, and that’s when you can play complementary ball. We get the ball in great field position, we have to find a way to go out there and score. I think anytime the defense can create turnovers, it’s going to put us in a great position as an offense. But we just have to find a way as a defense to keep going out there, hunting those turnovers and, as an offense, finding ways to keep not giving the ball up.”

The Packers cashed in Gary’s turnover with a touchdown when Josh Jacobs ran in from 8 yards out to tie the game at 13.

The defense was not done making game-changing plays, however, needing one more big one to give them a chance to win the game.

Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon’s team was leading 23-20 with less than 6 minutes to play in the fourth quarter when it faced a fourth-and-1 on its 48. Arizona played to win the game, keeping the ball in Jacoby Brissett’s hands for a quarterback sneak. In this era of the Tush Push, those sneaks are almost automatic.

With high-priced defenders like Parsons and Gary making big plays, now it was time for one of the lowest-paid defenders on the roster to make one.

Nazir Stackhouse was stuck in the middle of the defense, and asked to do something simple.

Make a pile.

“I love that s*** gets me excited,” Stackhouse said.

“It’s one of my favorite things to do. Me, I’m trying to shoot at his front ankle or his front toe. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. We want a pile created at the line of scrimmage. We’re not trying to push them back. We want no movement at all.”

Stackhouse and the rest of the defensive front created a pile, and Brissett was stuffed by linebackers Isaiah McDuffie and Edgerrin Cooper, giving the offense the ball back with a chance to win the game.

It does not go on the stat sheet as a takeaway, but Matt LaFleur was thrilled with his defense on that play.

“Those are takeaways. I don’t care,” LaFleur said. “A fourth-down stop is a takeaway. Those were probably two of the most complementary moments in the game in regards to defensively getting a stop, taking the ball down and scoring on both occasions.”

If you include that stop as a takeaway, the Packers had two, which they turned into 14 points. Both big plays gave the Packers a short field, and they capitalized with touchdowns.

On a day when their offense did not play its best game, those are the types of complementary plays that a team needs to steal a win on the road.

The Packers’ defense did that with an old formula.

Down-to-down plays are fun, but the splash plays are what makes a defense special.

Green Bay finally found those, and it’s a big reason it left Arizona with a win.

“It was good. We needed that turnover,” Xavier McKinney said. “That’s something we’ve been preaching and preaching and preaching. It was a big stop for us. I feel like it was a momentum shift in the game, and rush continued to be resilient throughout the game. R.G. made it, and it was good to see those boys making a play.”

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