Looking at the Packers passing game in their Week 17 loss to the Vikings
I had certainly hoped that Sunday’s Packers-Vikings game would play out a little better than the last one, but, alas, it was not meant to be. A big deficit was followed by a furious comeback that wasn’t quite enough.
As we do every week in this space, let’s check in on the passing game.
Let’s go to the chart.
Pretty even. A nice layer in the intermediate, with a handful of throws of 20+ yards. If I was drawing up how I thought this chart would look against this defense, this is about what I’d expect. I’d probably throw a couple more deep shots on there, as Love has shown a tendency to chuck the ball deep when he starts seeing the blitz.
In this game, Love’s ADOT (Average Depth of Target) against the blitz was 9.0 yards, down a half yard from his season average of 9.5 ADOT when blitzed (per PFF). This was the controlled approach against the blitz that you need against this Vikings defense. When blitzed, his average time to throw was 2.8 seconds. When not blitzed, his average time to throw was 2.48 seconds. Against a defense that features a lot of deception — both before and after the snap — being able to hang in against the blitz and read everything out is of the utmost importance. In this game, Love did a nice job of that.
And it’s a good thing he did because the Vikings were blitzing him a lot. On the day, the Vikings blitzed on 26 of Love’s dropbacks, a whopping 74.3%. On those dropbacks, Love was 13/21 (61.9%) for 114 yards (5.4 YPA) and 1 TD. He is credited with 1 hit as thrown and 1 throwaway, bringing his adjusted completion percentage when blitzed up to 68.4%. You can make an argument that the deep shot to Romeo Doubs up the left sideline was a drop (a difficult catch, but it’s a ball that hits Doubs in the hands), which would bring his adjusted completion percentage up to 72.2% when blitzed.
As the numbers would suggest, the dropbacks he wasn’t blitzed on were few and far between. The Vikings didn’t bring a blitz on 9 dropbacks (25.7%), though they did show a potential blitz on those. On the dropbacks he wasn’t blitzed, Love was 6/9 (66.7%) for 71 yards (7.9 YPA), with an ADOT of 11.3. The one dropped pass PFF credited to the receivers — the 4th down play to Jayden Reed — was on a play the Vikings didn’t blitz, bringing Love’s adjusted completion percentage to 77.8%.
Before we move off of this section, I wanted to talk for a second about Love’s targets behind the LOS (Line Of Scrimmage). Last week, I talked about how Love had been aggressively targeting behind the LOS against the Seahawks and the Saints. In that article I said, “I don’t think this is a vision of things to come…but it’s something to keep an eye on.” This week, Love had only a single target behind the LOS. So absolutely not a vision of things to come.
It didn’t always look great live, but, upon a rewatch and a look at the numbers, I’d say he looked better than I originally thought. He could have been better, but he also needed some more help from his supporting cast and it was a rough day on that front. The Vikings were extremely physical with the Packers receivers — both at the line and down the field — and the Packers had a tough time beating it. A lot of routes were either delayed or rerouted in a way that completely blew up the spacing. I wanted to take a look at one of those examples today before we get out of here.
It’s 3rd & 5 at the Packers’ 35 with 1:32 remaining in the 2nd quarter and the Packers down 10-3. They’re looking to pick up the 1st down but also push the ball downfield a bit, so they dial up a concept they’ve used quite a few times this year. It’s something I call High Cross, and they add in a Bo Melton [80] wheel route off motion. This is a concept that works best against a single-high look, but with the depth the Vikings are playing their safeties at, this is a viable option as well. (The Vikings also rotate their safeties a lot post-snap, so seeing two-high doesn’t mean you’re getting two-high.)
At the snap, Melton wheels up the sideline while Jayden Reed [11] and Romeo Doubs [87] push upfield. Reed is running a deep over/post, while Doubs runs a deep in-cutter underneath. Love is looking right down the middle of the field, reading the coverage and seeing the drops of the safeties. The idea is to read the position of the deep defender, then throw to the receiver that the defender is leaning away from.
One of the main problems here is that this needs clean spacing for it to work, and the spacing is anything but clean. Both Reed and Doubs take inside releases, which isn’t a problem by itself, but they’re routed so far inside that they’re only a few yards away from each other at the break point. It makes for a muddy read, it doesn’t allow either receiver the space to run away from the coverage at the break and it doesn’t force either safety to commit to a vertical route to their side.
With the read being muddy, Love’s clock ticking and Rasheed Walker being walked into his lap, Love takes a shot to Melton up the left sideline. There’s no room for the pass and it’s overthrown anyway.
If the spacing is better, you have a good chance of influencing that deep safety to come up on the route from Doubs, which at least gives you a chance on the one-on-one to Melton.
As it stands, neither of the two main receivers were able to get clean releases, the spacing was killed and they weren’t able to get late separation.
You can see how the spacing with those receivers is supposed to look in this clip from the Saints game.
I’ll be back in the next couple of days with some fun things the Packers did this past week, but, for today, I wanted to focus on a play that showcased some of the issues the Packers were having in the passing game.
Albums listened to: Slowdive – Just For A Day; Drop Nineteens – Delaware; Hotline TNT – Cartwheel; Mondaze – Late Bloom