“A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone, and yet its powers can vanquish kingdoms.” — Og Mandino
A lot went into Aaron Rodgers’ 58-yard touchdown pass to Allen Lazard with 7:00 left in the Packers’ 32-18 divisional round win over the Rams. The catch that put the Packers in their second straight NFC Championship game was based on Green Bay’s strong run game, and it was also based on going back to a receiver who had whiffed a catch out of a very similar concept earlier in the game.
With 8:54 left in the third quarter, the Packers lined up in “12” personnel — two tight ends, two receivers, and a running back — and the Rams reacted to what they thought might be a run by rolling safety John Johnson down from a two-deep look. This left receiver Allen Lazard one-on-one with cornerback Darious Williams at the top of the screen. At the snap, Lazard zapped Williams with a quick outside release, had the opening, and… just couldn’t bring it in.
Rodgers’ distress was palpable.
“The communication in those instances is not really verbal,” Lazard told NFL.com’s Mike Silver about Rodgers’ reaction. “It’s kind of just more of a look. We both are on the same page, obviously. I want to catch the ball, and he wants me to catch the ball. I don’t think there necessarily needs to be anything as far as ‘Catch the ball’ or ‘Do your job’ or anything, because he knows that I care… and people make mistakes, so you’ve just gotta keep moving forward.”
Well, the Packers did. They already knew that the Rams were going to cheat to the run when the Packers lined up in “12” personnel. Which made sense. Per Sharp Football Stats, Green Bay ran the ball on 57% of their plays in “12 personnel in the regular season — 122 attempts, 5.6 yards per carry, and four touchdowns.
So, when the Packers lined up for the Lazard re-boot in “12” personnel again, the big tell was to see how the Rams would react. It didn’t take long for Rodgers to realize he had it, and the now-famous bleep-eating grin happened. If you line up the end zone camera with the video below, Rodgers starts smirking right around the time Rams safeties John Johnson III and Jordan Fuller start to reveal their intentions to cheat up out of a Cover-4 look.
If you played in the #NFL you’ve personally been scarred by this Aaron Rodgers smirk. pic.twitter.com/lfqMhIWCpb
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) January 17, 2021
“I thought the communication all night was great, especially between [head coach] Matty [LaFleur] and I,” Rodgers said after the game. “We talked about repeating that call because it didn’t really look like what we were trying to run, because the guy [Williams] jumped so hard, [and] Allen kind of went around him. So we talked about going back to it. We’d been running duo, or the inside zone there, effectively most of the night and it was just hard action off of that, so when the play was called I was thinking touchdown for sure. I came up off the fake, I really tried to sell it, but I came up off the fake and saw Allen digging, so I knew kind of both guys had jumped it. Like I said, I did throw it a little more inside than I wanted to and he made a really nice catch, kept his feet, and put that thing away. That was pretty special.”
LaFleur was also looking for a specific defensive reaction.
“We were kind of running the same play over and over out of that formation and we just felt like we were going to have a chance at the play-action pass off of it. We didn’t get the coverage we were really looking for the first time that we attempted the pass. They ended up rolling to a single-high look when we were really trying to call that play for more of a quarters coverage where the safety triggers, and you go in there like you’re going to block that safety, and you run right by them. What a great ball, great catch by Allen. Big-time play in a big moment.”
Lazard also knew what was coming, and he wasn’t going to blow it this time.
“We knew that we were gonna get ‘quarters’ coverage there, and the safeties were probably gonna trigger hard,” Lazard said. “So I took the same path as I normally do for any type of inside run to head at the safety, and when I felt him bite on the run I was able to stick it north and put my head down and run. And Aaron just threw a great ball — over [the defender’s] head, inside — and I was able to finish off the play.”
What does this mean for the Buccaneers’ defense in the NFC Championship game? In Week 6, Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Todd Bowles tied pressure to coverage in ways Rodgers had never seen, leading to one of the worst games of Rodgers’ career.
How Buccaneers DC Todd Bowles created the NFL’s best defense
In that game, per Sports Info Solutions, the Packers tried passing plays out of “12” personnel with play-action on two attempts, completing one pass for 13 yards. Could the Packers dial up more of these concepts in an attempt to reverse the tells Bowles already has on Rodgers and his offense? If you see Rodgers smiling pre-snap, assume the answer is affirmative.