Paul Bretl | 1/8/2024
GREEN BAY, Wis. — The Packers “stagnant” passing game must find a way to get back on track this week and that phase of the game will have to do so against a very stingy Eagles’ secondary.
Philadelphia will enter the postseason allowing just 5.5 yards per pass attempt–the fewest in football. As that figure illustrates, this unit has also surrendered the fewest explosive plays through the air this season as well.
Individually, this group is made up of rookie Quinyon Mitchell and Darius Slay on the boundary and rookie Cooper DeJean at the nickel. Deep at safety are CJ Gardner-Johnson and Reed Blankenship. The collective completion percentage allowed by these players of 62% is the sixth-lowest in football while they’ve generated the fourth-most pass deflections.
“They’re very good,” said Matt LaFleur on Wednesday. “They do a great job of eliminating explosives. They do a great job of keeping a lid and then when they challenge, you gotta be physical because these guys are going to grab you and you gotta fight through contact. That’s what they do. They got a veteran corner in (Darius) Slay and they got a rookie in (Quinyon) Mitchell that’s playing really, really well. You got the two safeties, I just think collectively they’ve all done a great job.”
Even if the Packers’ passing game were rolling coming into the postseason, this would be a difficult matchup. Unfortunately, however, that isn’t the case for Green Bay. One of the bigger issues that they’ve run into in recent weeks is their inconsistency through the air. The trickle-down effect of that has been slow starts, struggling to move the ball consistently, and of course, all that makes putting up points extremely difficult.
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From Week 11 through Week 15, both Jordan Love and the offense appeared to be heating up just as they did a season ago, which included four straight games of scoring at least 30 points. However, since that New Orleans game, where the offense still managed to score 34 points, the passing attack has felt disjointed.
Over that three game stretch against New Orleans, Minnesota, and Chicago, Love is completing just 60% of his throws, which ranks 28th out of 36 eligible quarterbacks. His 6.2 yards per attempt during that span also ranks 28th and Love is 22nd in passer rating.
“It’s definitely been a little stagnant,” Love said of the passing game after the Chicago game. “It just feels like we’re just missing right now. Missing on some of these opps that obviously before we were hitting on. Like I’ve said before, it’s not like we’re far off. It’s not like everything we’re running is just not working. Stuffs there. We’ve just got to go out there and make plays. We’ve got to be great, like I said, with accuracy, ball placement, everything, so I think it’s a lot of stuff well clean up.”
As always, and as Matt LaFleur will be quick to point out, there are numerous factors in play when it comes to the inconsistency of the passing game. It doesn’t all fall on Jordan Love’s shoulders.
Most notably has been the play of the receiver position. Against Minnesota, for example, LaFleur noted how the Vikings’ usage of heavy man coverage looks was not something that the Green Bay offense was expecting. When that happens, it can throw off the timing of the route and the need for the receivers to win those one-on-one matchups becomes heightened and if that doesn’t happen, then Love has nowhere to go with the football.
In addition to needing the receivers to win their matchups on time and more often, when the ball does get to them, plays haven’t been made. During that same three game stretch, Love ranks 10th our of 41 quarterbacks in drop rate.
“I would just say like for me personnally I gotta be better overall,” said Jayden Reed at his locker on Sunday. “I haven’t been playing good ball lately. If we want progress in the playoffs that not how we gotta play. We gotta play better than we did today. Just pounding in on the details, protecting the ball that’s protecting the team, first and foremost, that’s on me. I gotta be better. If I want to be a leader and good player in this league, I gotta be able to do that.”
LaFleur would also mention the play of the offensive line after Sunday’s loss to the Bears. While overall, Love’s pressure numbers rank around the middle of the pack in recent weeks, LaFleur noted that there were opportunities in the passing game but Love didn’t have time to get through his progressions.
It really is no one player or any one thing causing these issues, but when there is an off-target throw here and there, a pressure on Love here and there, a drop or failure to win consistently enough here and there, when put together, you get a disjointed passing game that is out of sync.
“It’s everything,” said Love about getting the passing game back on track. “It’s everything you do while you’re in this facility, when you go home. The way we talk about concepts and how we install it, how we go run it in the walkthroughs, and make sure everybody’s on the same page with the timing — just exactly how you’re running routes, things like that, and then it takes over on the practice field when we’re getting those full-speed live reps at it. That comes down to just being at our best, being on the same page and that’s everything we do while we’re here in the building.”
Adding to the challenge that the Packers will face on Sunday in Philadelphia is that they will be without Christian Watson, who is out for the season. That not only takes away the important downfield element from this Packers’ offense, but with Watson’s combination of size and speed, his mere presence on the field helps cerate opportunities for others in the passing game to exploit.
With Watson on the field in 2024, the Packers rank first as an offense in yards per route run and first in explosive plays per route. However, without him, Green Bay ranks 13th and 19th in those respective categories. There is no replacing Watson’s specific skill set, but the Packers will have to find other ways to create that downfield element.
“That’s a huge loss,” said Love about Watson. “One of those ones that it sucks. You hurt for Christian, especially at this time of the year, but like you said, definitely other guys are gonna have to step up. We’ve got a deep receiver room, guys have kind of done that all year.
“We’ve battled through different injuries, guys missing games, things like that. Just another situation that guys will step up and make plays, and we’re confident in that group.”
Getting back on track this week for the Packers, in part, consists of going back to the basics and focusing on the details and pouring into the process in order to get the desired results that have been lacking.
Success for the passing game, as has been the case for much of the season, will begin with the Packers’ ability to move the ball on the ground with Josh Jacobs. Staying ahead of the sticks opens up the entire playbook for an offense, which can keep a defense off-balanced, and set up play-action opportunities.
On the flip side, struggling in the run game will put the offense behind the sticks and in those dreaded long down-and-distance situations, where both from a pass rush perspective, with the defensive front able to pin its ears back, and coverage-wise, the defense has the advantage, and now much more of the workload falls on what has been an inconsistent Packers’ passing game.
“They’re humming right now,” said LaFleur of the Eagles’ defense. “It’s a very talented defense. You can tell that they’ve got everybody on the same page. It’s much more difficult to get some of those explosive gains, so I would tell ya that it’s gonna be very important for us, for our offense, to be efficient, stay ahead of the sticks. They got superstars on every level of the defense, so we’re gonna have to make sure we’re doing a good job of taking what’s there and churning out and fighting for every inch on the field on Sunday.”
However, as we’ve seen in recent weeks, the run game can’t be the Packers’ only method for moving the ball. The margin for error in those instances is way too small over the course of four quarters. If the defense gives up early points, the ability to lean into the run game is negated, and any sort of first down failure on the ground all of a sudden shifts the burden of moving the ball to the passing game in those aforementioned disadvantageous situations.
If the Packers are going to get back on track offensively the run game will have to play an obvious and important role in accomplishing that, but to win against the Eagles, Green Bay will likely need a passing game to pair with it, and against this Philadelphia defense, that won’t come easy.
“They’ve got a lot of guys that bring energy,” said Reed of the secondary. “They find a way to find the ball and they always surround the ball. That’s a pretty competitive group down there in Philly.”