Paul Bretl | 11/20/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Struggling out of the bye week against what was a stagnant Chicago Bears offense, the Packers’ defense must correct and adjust quickly, with the San Francisco 49ers’ offense awaiting them on Sunday.
While previously, the Green Bay defense has often been a key contributor to many of the Packers’ victories, against the Bears, the Packers won in spite of that unit.
“The thing I make out of that is we’ve got to be better,” said Matt LaFleur on Monday. “Just after watching the tape with the guys, I would say we’re all in agreement with that. There were opportunities to get off the grass, and for one reason or another, we didn’t make the plays. It’s a credit to them, I thought they had a good plan.”
This was a Bears’ offense that entered Sunday’s matchup on a three-game losing streak. Offensively, they had totaled just 27 points during that three game span, which included 241 yards of total offense in Week 9 against Arizona and 142 total yards last week against New England.
These struggles prompted head coach Matt Eberflus to make a change at coordinator early in the week prior to the Packers game, firing Shane Waldron and promoting passing game coordinator Thomas Brown.
However, the Bears would go on to produce nearly 400 yards of offense, more than their previous two games combined, and found the end zone twice after not scoring a touchdown in the previous two weeks either.
This success for Chicago started in the run game. With Brown as the play-caller, the Bears utilized more designed quarterback runs, which Kenny Clark and Xavier McKinney acknowledged after the game, caught them off guard. Green Bay also didn’t seem to have any answers for the quick passing game either.
The trickle-down effect of moving the ball on the ground keeps the offense ahead of the sticks and in manageable down-and-distances, helping the Bears convert nine of their 16 third down attempts.
The run game can also open up opportunities in the passing game, which Caleb Williams was able to take advantage of, particularly in man coverage, and the long drives allowed the Bears to control the time of possession, holding the ball for nearly 13 more minutes than the Packers and running 25 additional plays.
“We’ve just got to clean it up, man,” said Xavier McKinney after the game. “It’s tough because I think that we can play way better ball than what we did today but it’s hard to win in this league. When you do win, you’ve got to be somewhat happy about the win because it’s hard to win. But also, you’ve got to know that there’s a lot of things to improve on and we’ve got to do that moving forward.”
So if the Bears can surprise this Green Bay defense, what could the 49ers do? Awaiting the Packers this week will be Christian McCaffrey and an unpredictable 49ers’ passing game with Kyle Shanahan and Brock Purdy at the helm.
Everything begins with the ground game for the 49ers. Even without McCaffrey for much of the season, San Francisco is still averaging 5.0 yards per rush as a team–the fourth-best mark in football–and included 2022 undrafted rookie Jordan Mason coming out of nowhere to produce over 700 rushing yards in only 10 games.
McCaffrey has now been back in the mix the past two games and is coming off a 1,700-yard MVP season in 2023.
Moving the ball successfully on the ground then sets up the passing game for Purdy. As already described, staying ahead of the sticks gives the offense the advantage. The entire playbook is open to them at that point, forcing the defense to spread out and keeping them off-balanced, oftentimes not knowing whether its a run or pass play that’s coming.
The utilization of play-action off of that run game success and the marrying of the running and passing games through run-actions and similar play designs only further complicates things for a defense as they try to decipher what the offense is going to do.
“The motions, the misdirections, the things that they try to disguise in that offense,” said Javon Bullard of the 49ers. “They just make you dial in on alignments, like very critical, you bump too far against this team, they can take it 75 yards. Everything got to be critical.”
Couple that element with a bevy of versatile players, which includes McCaffrey, George Kittle, and Deebo Samuel, all of whom can fill a variety of roles from where they are asked to line up to what their responsibility is on a given play, and it’s easy to see how this 49ers’ offense continues to put up points and yards, even as they’ve navigated injuries on the offensive side of the ball this season.
“You gotta know where everybody at all the time,” Bullard added. “Like I said, those guys can be in different spots at any moment. You see Deebo out-wide, you see him in the backfield, same thing with McCaffrey. So you just gotta be dialed in to where those guys are, just being able to call that out and not being blind to the fact that they can be at any place and can take it at any time.”
If containing the San Francisco run game is step No. 1 for the Packers’ defense, then step No. 2 is getting after Purdy on passing plays. While not an easy task against the 49ers offensive line, it is a defense’s best chance of disrupting a potent passing game that averages 8.5 yards per pass by forcing Purdy off his spot, thus impacting the timing and rhythm of the play, hopefully resulting in off-target throws, or even better, sacks.
“I think he’s a damn good quarterback,” said LaFleur of Purdy. “You don’t put up the kind of numbers that they’re able to put up offensively without a quarterback that can go out there and do it. And I think the one thing that makes him so special, just studying him over the last couple years is just, I think he’s got a great feel in the pocket of when to escape or when to hang in there, because if, if the rush is a non-factor, he’s going to hang in the pocket until he can’t.
“I think he does a great job buying time. And he’s, he’s deceptive in terms of his ability to get out of the pocket and beat you with his legs as well. So I’ve been really impressed with him, his ability to throw on time, and he, he looks like a really decisive quarterback, and he’s got some really good weapons to throw to as well.”
Coming into Sunday’s game, Purdy is dealing with right shoulder soreness and is “day to day,” as Shanahan put it, although LaFleur said he fully expects him to play. McCaffrey, meanwhile, is averaging just 3.7 yards per rush in his two appearances this season, while Kittle missed last week’s game with a hamstring injury. Brandon Aiyuk is also out for the season with an ACL injury.
At 5-5 on the season, perhaps this hasn’t been the same juggernaut Niners team that the Packers have run into during past seasons, but as the numbers show, they can still very much hurt opposing defenses. And if Green Bay is unable to clean up the issues that plagued them for four quarters in Chicago, well, the 49ers are one of the best in football at taking advantage of those miscues.
“They got a lot of playmakers,” Bullard said. “A lot of guys they can get the ball to. A lot of guys that are dangerous with the ball in their hands. Nice O-line, nice physical O-line. They’re a complete football team.”