Taking next step on defense for Packers starts with pass rush

Paul Bretl | 1/16/2025

GREEN BAY, Wis.– It was an impressive first season for the Packers’ defense under first-year defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, but taking that next step in 2025 starts with the pass rush.

“We’ve got to put in the work,” said Matt LaFleur on Tuesday.

Throughout the season, the Packers inconsistency when it came to pressuring the quarterback with just a four-man rush was a regular hurdle that the defense had to overcome. But particularly against the NFC’s best, Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Detroit, all of whom have stout offensive lines, that inability to get home was magnified.

In the most recent matchups against these teams, Jalen Hurts was pressured on 33% of his dropbacks, according to PFF’s metrics. Sam Darnold, meanwhile, was pressured on only 31% of his dropbacks, and Jared Goff 28% of his.

For some context around those figures, Justin Herbert was pressured on 33.8% of his dropbacks for the entire NFL season and that ranked 25th out of 42 quarterbacks. A pressure rate of 31% ranked 32nd and a 28% pressure rate ranked 38th.

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Darnold and Goff in particular, would pick a part the Green Bay defense with that time in the pocket. Darnold was 26-of-30 passing for 315 yards with three scores. Goff would 26-for-30 as well, for 215 passing yards when kept clean with one touchdown and one interception.

“I would say in those known passing situations, get back on track, third and medium plus, guys got to be able to win one on ones and there’s certain things you can do structurally to help create some one-on-one opportunities for our guys,” LaFleur said. Typically, if you put a linebacker on the ball and you space it out so that each lineman is covered, you’re going to get a 5-0, and you’ll have five one-on-ones, but somebody’s gotta win.”

On the flip side, we saw the havoc that can come for an offense when the four-man front is able to get home regularly. Again, going back to that Eagles’ game, the Philadelphia front was putting steady pressure on Love throughout the game. That then allowed an extra defender to be in coverage and for the Eagles to sit in their two-high shell protecting against the downfield throw.

You put all of that together, and moving the ball through the air becomes a massive challenge for really any offense.

As eluded to, this was a season-long issue for the Packers–not something that only happened against the better teams, although it was magnified in these games. Their overall pressure numbers rank around the middle of the pack this season, while Green Bay would finish top-10 in sacks.

However, helping to inflate those figures was defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley and either the blitzes or simulated pressures, to throw some eye-candy at the offensive line, that he sent to drum up some favorable matchups and disruption. When it came to the defensive front winning its one-on-one matchups, the Packers ranked 26th in ESPN’s pass-rush win rate metric.

With Hafley needing to intervene to help generate more pressures on the quarterback, the trickle-down effect of that is that the entire defensive game plan on a week-to-week basis had to shift somewhat drastically, as LaFleur described, from what the original vision was for this unit.

What we saw this season was Hafley’s willingness to adjust based on how the defense was performing–an incredibly valuable ability and something he talked about since Day 1 when arriving in Green Bay. However, because of that, what we didn’t necessarily see was the true Hafley defense.

“I envisioned rushing four and playing three deep/four under a heck of a lot more and we ended up doing a lot of simulated blitzes and different pressures and playing a bunch of cover-2,” said LaFleur.

“But I think, again, you always evolve throughout the course of the season, through the offseason, but that was the foundation, I would say, of the defense. But I thought our guys did a great job of adjusting. I thought we were playing some pretty good football at the end.”

Pressuring the quarterback is the name of the game. When the defensive front is getting home, every single defender benefits from it. Pressures disrupt the timing and rhythm of the play, get the quarterback off his spot, and can speed things up, resulting in poor mechanics, bad decisions, and mistakes.

But when a quarterback has steady time in the pocket, that puts a massive burden on the the secondary as they now have to defend opposing receivers for three or four seconds at a time. That’s going to be a tall task for just about any unit, especially against the game’s high-powered offenses, which you’re bound to run into during the playoffs.

I’ve said it all season long, and I’ll say it once more, the ceiling for what this Packers’ defense can be is going to be determined by the play of their four-man front. In order for the defense to take a step forward in 2025–after what was an impressive first year under Hafley–a more consistent pass rush will be needed.

“I thought there was an incredible about of growth,” LaFleur said of the defense. “To be honest with you, in terms of maybe a vision of what we wanted to do and where we went to were kind of two different things. But I think that’s good coaching, right? You make the necessary adjustments and you put your guys in position and then ultimately those guys gotta go out there and execute. I thought Hafley did an outstanding job, and it’s not just Haf, it’s our entire defensive staff did a really good job with that.”

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