Looking at how the passing game performed in the Packers’ Wild Card loss to the Eagles
It’s never fun to see a season end – unless you’re the one team hoisting the Lombardi when the dust has settled – and that was certainly the case here. This season started with a not-insignificant amount of hype and was strung together by some truly fun moments and games throughout.
And yet, through it all, there was something nagging in the back of my brain: “This isn’t the year.” It was a fun team, but, as the season went on, it became obvious they weren’t quite where they needed to be yet, and those issues certainly showed up in this game. The pass rush couldn’t get consistent pressure (Jalen Hurts had an average time to throw of 3.24 seconds, the longest time of the weekend per NFL Pro) and the passing game was inconsistent. It was inconsistent before injuries took out Jayden Reed and Romeo Doubs, and it was certainly inconsistent afterwards.
Let’s do what we always do here and check out the passing game:
I feel like I say this a lot, but, on the whole, I thought Love looked better than his numbers showed. His 60.6% completion percentage isn’t great – as the -3.8% CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expected) shows – but he posted an adjusted completion percentage of 71.0%, as PFF charted his receivers with 2 drops and Love with 1 batted ball and 1 hit-as-thrown. Of course, the adjusted completion percentage doesn’t account for a receiver slipping on an out-cut that would have been a TD…
…or failing to get 2 feet down on 4th down.
Packers receivers had a drop rate of 9.1% in this game, up slightly from the season average of 8.3%.
Still, far from a perfect game from Love. He missed some passes, including a throw that he sailed high over the middle on his first attempt of the game.
And, of course, there were the three interceptions. The first one was a slightly underthrown pass on a vertical shot. The Eagles start with a two-high safety alignment, then spin to a single-high look post-snap. That gives Love a one-on-one on the outside: Dontayvion Wicks vs. Darius Slay. Wicks isn’t able to gain separation down the field and is a bit pinned to the sideline, so Love tries to make a perfect pass over the inside shoulder instead of fading this to the outside shoulder. Slay doesn’t even really see it until it’s almost to him, and the ball falls right in his lap.
The second INT is the worst one. They’ve got a shot dialed up for Bo Melton on a big post/over route, with Malik Heath running an in-cutter from the other side to try to draw up coverage. The Eagles stay in their deep look, bracketing Melton and taking away the deep shot, so Love works back down to Heath and just never sees Zack Baun.
According to Matt LaFleur, this route was run at the wrong depth. The in-cutter from Heath is supposed to be at 20 yards, but it was run at 15, which kills the spacing in the middle and gives Baun a chance to make this play.
I’ve seen the argument made that Tucker Kraft needs to run his route a little harder to hold Baun in space, but I don’t think that’s truly his job there. Kraft is chipping-and-releasing as a checkdown. If you’re trying to pin down a linebacker, you don’t use someone off a chip-and-release; you use a deliberate route. Even if Kraft is supposed to remove a linebacker on his secondary movement, that route would be drifting away from the middle of the field.
The third interception barely counts. The idea is roughly the same as the one we just looked at: Melton is running a deep route while Heath runs a route that is trying to pull the defender up. It doesn’t work, but it’s late in the game so Love chucks the ball to Melton anyway. It doesn’t truly have a prayer, and that prayer is completely wiped away when Melton is tackled in the end zone while trying to come back for the ball.
Love was in lock-step with his season-long ADOT (Average Depth Of Target): in the regular season, Love had an ADOT of 9.2. In this game, he had an ADOT of 9.2. The only other game he hit that number on the nose was the Week 7 game against Houston. That doesn’t really mean anything but I thought it was interesting.
From what I saw, it looked like the Packers switched up their point of attack in the passing game coming out of halftime. In the first half, their attacked revolved around trying to attack the intermediate middle of the field, while attacking outside the numbers in their short game. The short game was working pretty well, but they had trouble finding room inside.
Coming out of the half, they reversed that. Their quick game shifted to more in-cutting routes to the middle of the field (think slant routes, where the first half was quick out routes), while their intermediate attack was more to the boundary. They softened up the edges a bit in the first half, then went a bit more vertical to the boundary. It was something that worked for them. In the first half, they averaged 3.9 yards per attempt in the passing game (17 attempts). That number jumped to 7.3 YPA in the second half (19 attempts).
It seemed to be a deliberate plan and it wasn’t a bad one: there were just too many injuries and too many issues with execution.
Before we get out of here, I want to take a look at Love’s first completion of the day. It’s a concept all Packers fans should be intimately familiar with by now, but it was run in a creative way. I’m talking, of course, about Dragon, aka Slant/Flat.
One of the issues you can have with Dragon is getting the flat defender to clear the throwing lane when the QB hits his back foot. You’re trying to get the inside defender pulled to the boundary by the flat route, hit the back foot and fire on the slant. We’ve seen defenders linger in that area, forcing Love to either move to his next read or hesitate, which throws off the rhythm.
On this play, the Packers start in a Quads look, with 3 receivers and the running back set to the right, while Romeo Doubs [87] is alone on the left side of the formation. Before the snap, Jayden Reed [11] motions under the formation, then starts orbit motion behind Jordan Love. We’ve seen this look a lot. It usually leads to a set up for a screen on the right, with Reed releasing under the blockers to that side. On the other side, Doubs would be running an iso route; usually a slant or a quick-out.
When Reed motions, he is immediately followed by Cooper DeJean [33], so it looks like the Eagles are in Man coverage, which is perfect for this concept.
At the snap, Reed reverses his orbit motion and releases into the left flat. That release gets DeJean moving to the flat, which clears the throwing lane.
Love hits his back foot and fires.
It’s nothing special, but it was the first successful play for the Packers on the day. For a passing game that had trouble finding its footing at times, getting them settled in with a quick-game staple isn’t the worst thing in the world. To get to it like this – off a look the Packers have shown a lot this season & forcing a reaction from the defense – was a lot of fun.
I don’t know how others will look back at this season, but I think I’m going to look back on it fondly. It didn’t end where I hoped it would, but there were a lot of fun moments. I really enjoyed covering this team and seeing how the offense changed throughout the year. I certainly had some issues down the stretch, but I’m excited to see how they take these lessons and work them into the 2025 offense.
I look forward to wherever this offseason will take me. I’m sure we’ll be looking under the hood of this offense and seeing what worked, what didn’t and how some of those pain points could potentially be remedied next season. I’m hyped about all these projects kicking around my brain, so I hope they’re decent.
Albums listened to: Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything to Nothing; Tom Waits – Closing Time; Angie McMahon – Light, Dark, Light Again; My Bloody Valentine – Loveless