Paul Bretl | 12/24/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — An injury to Evan Williams late in the week resulted in Zayne Anderson making his first ever start on Monday night against the New Orleans Saints, and it’s a role that he will have to continue to fill through the final two weeks of the regular season.
Williams was not on the Packers’ injury report the first two days of the week leading up to the matchup with New Orleans. However, Williams popped up on the Saturday injury report with a quad, an injury that, as Matt LaFleur described, happened on the first play of practice that day and could keep him sidelined for a period of time.
“There’s concern,” said LaFleur of Wiliams’ injury after the win over New Orleans. “I would think that he’s going to be out a period of time. Nothing like long-term. Just one of those deals. It’s unfortunate I think it happened on the first play of practice. He just pulled up.
“I know he’s bummed, because it’s the second time it’s happened to him. But he’ll persevere, and we’ll hopefully get him back, hopefully in time for the playoffs.”
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Although Monday night was Anderson’s first start of his NFL career on defense, it wasn’t the first time that the Packers had turned to him this season. During Green Bay’s Week 14 matchup with Detroit, Williams exited with a concussion.
Rather than moving Javon Bullard from the nickel to safety in the middle of that game, the Packers wanted to maintain as much continuity on the back end as possible and instead called upon Anderson to lineup next to McKinney. Anderson would make three total tackles in that game, including a third down stop at the line of scrimmage on Lions’ running back David Montgomery.
Coming into this season, Anderson, a core special teams player, had just 21 career defensive snaps with that playing time coming in mop-up duty. However, while Anderson may still be a relatively inexperienced player in terms of playing time on defense, his preparation on a day-to-day basis and attention to detail in the meeting rooms and on the practice field had him prepared to step into a much larger role.
“It’s just focus,” said Xavier McKinney about Anderson. “It’s in the meeting rooms. We sit next to each other. Me and Zayne sit next to each other, so we steady bouncing ideas off of each other, bouncing ideas just around the room and just trying to get the communication 100% clear just within the room.
“But just the focus man, how he prepares in meetings, how he goes out there and practices, how intentional he is about making sure he’s in the right spots and I think that’s really the biggest thing, always being in communication with myself or just everybody in the room.”
Anderson would play 47 defensive snaps against the Saints, often filling the deep safety role as McKinney roamed the defensive backfield as he does. Anderson was in on two tackles, forced a pass breakup on the one target that came his way in the passing game, and also came away with his first NFL interception.
“They ran a wiley, is what we call it, and they sell it with a backside screen,” said Anderson of the interception. “So I saw the screen and I was in the down safety, we practice this a lot, our offense does it against us. As soon as I saw the screen, bailed out, usually the wiley comes late and so bailed out, saw it, the ball was in the air and just made a play.”
Making Anderson’s performance even more impressive was that he had very little time to prepare for this start. With Williams’ injury occurring so late in the week, he took the bulk of the starting reps in practice. This again is a testament to how Anderson prepares.
“He’s done an outstanding job,” LaFleur said of Anderson. “That was big-time for him. That happened on Saturday. So, Evan had been taking the majority of the reps all weeklong, and it just shows his ability to go in there and perform at a high level, make some key plays.
“It was cool to see after our Sunday walk-through, I’m walking through our CRIC area and X has all the guys out there and they’re going through some things, because we had Omar up, as well. But it was cool to see.”
It wasn’t only Williams who the Packers were without in this game, but also sidelined were Jaire Alexander, Javon Bullard, and Quay Walker. Having to rely on their reserves, which included Keisean Nixon lining up in the slot, along with Carrington Valentine, Eric Stokes and Corey Ballentine on the boundary, as well as Eric Wilson taking over the Mike linebacker responsibilities, the Green Bay defense put together a dominant performance against an, albeit, shorthanded Saints’ offense.
In each phase defensively, the Packers controlled the game. The defense pitched the first shutout of the season in the NFL. Rookie quarterback Spencer Rattler threw an interception, totaled just 153 passing yards, and averaged only 5.1 yards per attempt, while facing constant pressure from the Packers’ defensive front.
According to PFF’s metrics, Rattler was under duress on nearly 53% of his dropbacks–the third-highest rate among quarterbacks in Week 16. The Green Bay run defense would also hold the New Orleans backs to just 3.4 yards per rush.
“We can do whatever we want to do,” said Kenny Clark. “We write our own story at the end of the day. We’ve just got to keep on building. Each and every week, we’re just trying to get better and be able to play our best football into the postseason. So we’ve got, what, two more games left, we’ve got to keep stacking these wins.”
Now, a much bigger challenge awaits this Packers team and the defense with a matchup on the road against Minnesota looming. Led by a passing attack that features Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, the Vikings’ offense is averaging the ninth-most points per game this season.
We will see what the week holds once the Packers return to the practice field, but from the sounds of it, they will again be without Williams, while the statuses of Alexander, Bullard, and Walker remain up in the air at this time, potentially testing the depth of this unit once again and against a much more dangerous opponent.
“It’s a very big game,” said Jordan Love of the matchup against Minnesota. “Division game, and then obviously we lost to them earlier this season so one of these games we need to get back. We’ve got to go win this game, and we talked about it earlier, we’ve got to be able to beat these good teams.
“The Vikings are a very good team and we’ve got to be able to go into their place and handle business. But it starts with the work we put in throughout the week, get the good game-planning going, but yeah, we definitely owe these guys and we’ll be motivated to go play them.”