Ripping off big chunks of yards wasn’t a problem for the 2024 Packers.
There were plenty of problems with the Packers’ offense in 2024, but producing explosive plays wasn’t one of them.
I’ve been tracking the Packers’ performance in producing explosive plays for some time now, and I’m happy to report the 2024 version of the squad produced them at a rate comparable to some of the very best offenses in recent Packers history.
Let’s back up for a second, though, and define our terms. What’s an explosive play? For our purposes, I’m counting explosive plays as any run of 12 yards or more or any completion of 16 yards or more. Why those seemingly arbitrary numbers? For one, they’re about as good as any — I’ve seen people define explosive plays as gains of as little as 10 yards or as many as 20 yards. But for another, those are the numbers used by former Packers statistical analyst Mike Eayrs, who studied data trends for the Packers from 2001-14. A number of NFL teams still use those figures as benchmarks, so they seem as good as any to me.
According to my tracking data, the Packers produced 134 explosive plays in 2024, the most of the LaFleur era and the second-most in a season dating back to 1994, the earliest year for which I have numbers.
Some of the data has been skewed a little by the introduction of the 17-game schedule in 2021, but the Packers’ performance on a per play basis still stacks up well with some of the other great offenses in recent history. The 2024 Packers produced their 134 explosive plays on 1027 offensive plays, one every 7.66 plays on average. That’s behind the 2011 and 2014 Packers on a per play basis, but not by much. Here’s the full top five by rate:
- 2011 – 143 explosive plays in 988 offensive plays (explosive play every 6.91 plays)
- 2014 – 133 explosive plays in 1001 offensive plays (7.53 plays)
- 2024 – 134 explosive plays in 1027 offensive plays (7.66 plays)
- 2013 – 128 explosive plays in 1074 offensive plays (8.39 plays)
- 2016 – 118 explosive plays in 1029 offensive plays (8.72 plays)
The Packers weren’t quite as proficient in producing bigger explosive plays, though. Raising the bar for an explosive play to a flat 20 yards bumps their volume and rate stats down a little, but not much. They produced just 71 plays of 20 or more yards in 2024 (one every 14.46 plays), which is the fifth-best total by both overall total and by rate since 2008. The 2011 offense takes the cake there, with 79 plays of 20 or more yards that season, producing one every 12.5 plays.
You can parse the data differently to make the Packers look a bit better or worse, but the overall impression I get from these numbers seems to jive with the eye test on the field. The Packers produced yards in chunks just fine, but had problems with the finer points of their offense — things like executing in the red zone or positioning themselves to be aggressive on fourth down.
I’m not sure if those issues are a player problem or a coaching problem, but one thing seems to be certain: the Packers have never really had problems producing chunk plays under Matt LaFleur, and this season they did it better than just about any team in recent Packers history.