The NFL’s highest rate of explosive play is allowed by the Packers defense.
November 12, 2023, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Jaylen Warren (#30) of the Pittsburgh Steelers sprints with the ball against the Green Bay Packers in the second quarter at Acrisure Stadium.
By far the greatest defense-giveup rate in the NFL heading into Week 11, the Green Bay Packers are conceding big plays to opponents.
Ten yards or more of a rush is what Arjun Menon of PFF defines as an explosive running play. Currently ranked fourth in the NFL, the Packers have given up 30 of these rushes this season. A pass of more over 20 yards is considered an explosive passing play. Because they are allowing the eighth-fewest explosive pass plays, the Packers’ defense is performing better in that area.
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But overall, the Green Bay defense has allowed the eighth-most explosive plays in football with 55 total, allowing 6.1 explosive plays (pass or run) per game.
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defense’s game plan is to hold on to the big play and have the opposition put together lengthy drives in order to score points. This is based on the idea that scoring points regularly is difficult when it takes ten or more play drives each time. The likelihood is that the drive will stall out more frequently than not because the defense will either make a play or the offense will make a mistake.
From the standpoint of the passing game, I guess the defense is succeeding in that. This defense hasn’t been overwhelmed too often this season. But since they offer so much cushion, it makes throw and catch opportunities below easier, and the Packers’ tackle woes can still result in big plays.
One excellent illustration of this is the Minnesota game. The Vikings were forced into third-and-eight or longer on 12 occasions by the Packers’ excellent early down defense, yet they still gave up seven first downs in those circumstances.
Menon’s statistics, however, show that the run game is the true problem, and Green Bay’s problems as a whole were summed up in the most recent Pittsburgh game. Players aren’t always placed in the optimal situations to succeed; one example of this is when light boxes are used against run-heavy people. That being said, the guys are also not playing well on a regular basis; missed tackles and blown gap assignments are commonplace.
“It was a combination of missed tackles,” said Matt LaFleur on Monday. “Missed assignments. There were a couple times where we were playing single-high defense, where it’s solo gap football, and we had two guys in one gap.
“There were a couple times where they got us in two safety looks, and when you do that, you’re going to be a little short in terms of your front, and they took what should be five, six, seven-yard gains and made them into explosion plays. There’s a lot of things we could have done at a much higher level.”
To play this bend-but-don’t-break style of defense it requires complementary football, something that has eluded the Packers this season. If a defense is going to allow longer drives, they then need the offense to at least string together a few first downs. Otherwise, they are right back on the field and wear down quickly, and things can spiral out of control.
Due to the Packers’ own inability on offense to sustain drives consistently and the defense not being able to get off of the field, opponents are averaging nearly 65 plays per game against Green Bay- the 10th most in football.
As previously stated, a crucial component of this defensive strategy is relying on errors to halt the opponent’s drives, whether they are defense- or self-inflicted. The Packers’ defense doesn’t force many of those errors, which is a problem. Their opponent conversion rate over the last three games has placed them in the bottom three, indicating a negative trend in their third down defense. On the other hand, they have the second-fewest takeaways in football. Green Bay, which ranks 22nd in total pressures this season, hasn’t done a very good job of pressing the quarterback.
At the end of the day, one of the all-encompassing issues that this Green Bay defense has is that there isn’t that one thing or one element that they can hang their hat on. What is it that this defense does really well? At its core, this defensive system is supposed to prevent big plays, and I guess they are accomplishing that in the passing game. However, the number of explosives runs given up are negating that aspect.
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