World’s Best Preview Two-Minute Drill: The Davante Dilemma

It’s impossible to argue that the Green Bay Packers’ offense isn’t better with Davante Adams.

However, almost impossibly, the offense hasn’t been better without its Pro Bowl receiver this season. With Adams in the first four games, the Packers averaged 21.3 points per game. Without Adams for the next four games, the Packers averaged a second-ranked 32.5 points per game. With Adams back in the lineup for the last three games, Green Bay averaged 14.3 points per game.

How is that possible?

“I don’t know,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said on Wednesday. “I’m not sure. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with him. I don’t think we’ve been forcing the ball to him, either. I don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Maybe the Packers will find some answers against the New York Giants today. The Giants have one of the worst pass defenses in the league and will have three rookie starters in the secondary. If the Packers are going to rebound from last week’s pounding at San Francisco and regain its contender status, it must figure out how to get the best out of Adams while also maximizing the talents of the other skill players.

“Football is not really that complicated, so I’m not going to act like it’s super-complicated,” Rodgers said. “I just think the key for us, if you look at the two losses, we gave up a number of sacks, we had a lot of penalties, we started terribly each game and that just changes the whole dynamic of the football game. Just compare, say, L.A. (Chargers) game compared to the Kansas City game, we had a bunch of yards, had a lot of points. I don’t think the plans were way different. We had a lot of stuff in there for 33 (Aaron Jones) being involved. We did it in Kansas City, it worked. We converted about 50 percent of our third downs, and we were terrible on third down against L.A. and terrible on third down against San Fran, so we just couldn’t get to any of the stuff that we wanted to get to. So, people are going to point to whatever they want to point to, but the fact is we had two terrible offensive games and I don’t think it was related to ‘17’ at all.

Video: In playoff chase, Rodgers says 'ignorance is bliss'

SPEAKING OF ‘33’: From Game 5 through Game 8 – the four games Adams missed – Aaron Jones’ 4.93-yard rushing average ranked seventh among all players with at least 30 carries. It was as a receiver where Jones really made his mark. Jones led the team during that span with 22 receptions, 280 receiving yards and three touchdowns. Jimmy Graham and Allen Lazard were next with 12 receptions, Marquez Valdes-Scantling was next with 203 yards, and fellow running back Jamaal Williams tied Jones with three touchdowns; nobody else had more than one.

What happened? Rodgers explains in this video.

THIRD-RATE THIRD DOWNS: The Packers converted just 1-of-15 third-down opportunities in the loss to San Francisco. For the season, Green Bay has moved the chains just 33.6 percent of the time. That’s the team’s worst rate since at least 1991, according to Pro Football Reference.

“I think a lot of it is predicated on what are you doing on first and second down? I mean, when you get in third-and-long yardage situations against a real pass rush, you’re not going to be very good that day,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “That’s just reality in this league. And so the emphasis has been on first- and second-down, we’ve got to be more efficient so you can get into those third-and-short yardage situations. Third-and-6 or less, I think we’ve been pretty solid. When you go third-and-7 or more, it’s just, I mean, look at the percentages. They start going down, down, down. You couple that with a really good defense, especially one that has a good pass rush, it creates for a long day.”

THIRD RATE ON THIRD DOWNS, PART 2: During the first six games, Green Bay’s defense allowed an opponent third-down conversion rate of 34.2 percent. The last five games, that’s plunged to 48.1 percent.

“I think the biggest thing, what we all have to master as football coaches and players, is that ability to compartmentalize it. When a week is over, good or bad, put it behind us and we’re on to the next one,” defensive coordinator Mike Pettine said of his sagging unit. “We don’t change our approach or our mentality. Each week we start fresh and who do we have available? What are we defending? What is best to defend this team? We work it that week, put a plan together and work it that week. I just think we’ve tweaked some things. As we’re moving forward, you’re still feeling like this is a relatively new unit with a bunch of new faces and half the coaching staff new. We’re still finding out who we are at times but you feel good about where you are after this many games knowing if we keep plugging away and get hot at the right time, obviously we can get to where we want to go.”

TIME TO TEE OFF: Time and again, the play clock wound down to 1 second in the loss to San Francisco. While there were no delay-of-game penalties against the 49ers – “I don’t think they’re giving out too many ribbons for that,” Rodgers said with a wry smile – they have been guilty of a league-worst nine infractions this season. It’s a problem that will be addressed in the offseason.

For now, it’s not just the penalties, or the timeouts burned to prevent a penalty. If the clock is down to 1 second, isn’t that a green light for the defense to go?

“That’s a great one,” offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said. “It’s one of those things, you want Aaron to be able to take advantage of the time as much as possible and be able to evaluate the defense and what they’re doing. So it’s kind of one of those things, you want to let him understand what’s happening but at the same time you don’t want them to know that ‘OK, the ball’s probably going to be snapped at some point.’ So, it’s just a fine line. We just need to try to mix that up as much as possible.”

CHEMISTRY LESSON: Last week, we wrote about how the Packers’ team chemistry. In light of how soundly the Packers were beaten by San Francisco, that chemistry will either show up as real or fake on Sunday.

“That’s obviously the most difficult part of this business – you’ve got to wait so many days in between games,” Rodgers said. “Especially if it’s been a bad performance, it’s kind of eating at you most of the week. But we’ve got a road game against a team that’s been in one-score games in the last six in the fourth quarter. Like I said last week, these are going to be games you guys are expecting us to win, and we’ve got to go out and put good performances together and improve. I think that’s the thing, is we have to get that mojo going all the time and start to expect to win games – and start to expect to win games against great opponents, and expect to win games against opponents with not as great a record.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Receiver Davante Adams grew tired of the line of questions about what happened at San Francisco.

“First of all, I mean, we didn’t just lose seven games in a row, so we can stop acting like it’s the end of the world. Obviously, we win that game and we put ourselves in a much better position and everybody’s happier, but let’s stop being dramatic. It was one game; it was a big game because it was the current game that we had, but at this point we’re just focused on the next opponent. We just want to move on from that. Like I’ve said I feel like a thousand times, we’ve had so much success in this locker room to where we’re not going to be rattled by one game, no matter who it is or where it was.”

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