Coming out of the bye week for Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers offense, one point of emphasis will be getting the ball into the pass catchers’ hands in space rather than always trying to find the big play downfield.
For the majority of the first five games, Love has been quite willing to push the ball downfield. According to PFF, he currently ranks ninth in pass attempts of 20-plus yards while playing one fewer game than most quarterbacks. The issue, however, is the offense’s ineffectiveness, whether due to Love’s accuracy or receivers not being positioned correctly, on those throws.
Love ranks 31st out of the 34 eligible quarterbacks in downfield completion rate. He has completed just six of his 24 attempts, with two interceptions and no touchdowns. PFF has logged only five of those 24 throws as being on target as well.
In addition to the deep ball, through five games Love ranked ninth in pass attempts on intermediate routes of 10 to 19 yards, but in the bottom half of the league in pass attempts in the 0 to 9 yard range. Overall, Love ranks last in completion percentage during that span of games.
“I think for me,” said Love prior to the bye week, “the biggest thing I can do to help those stats is just find those completions. You talk about those deep balls downfield, and there’s a time and place, just knowing when to pull the trigger and when to check the ball down to get those positive plays, just get the sticks moving. Kind of just situational awareness. I think all those things will improve the more reps I get. The more comfortable I get.
“But like I said, it’s all learning situations. I think the completion percentage will keep going up but I’m going to keep pushing myself to keep finding those completions to get those positive plays.”
Love has said that he likes pushing the ball downfield. However, the fact that the Packers are throwing the ball further downfield than they ever have, as LaFleur put it, is also a product of how defenses are defending Green Bay. The Packers have seen a lot of cover-1 and loaded boxes from defenses this season, basically daring them to push the ball downfield.
Oftentimes, on paper, Love’s decision to throw deep makes sense, given the matchups, but it’s also true that this offense has been too ineffective on those types of throws to rely on that element as frequently as they have.
On Wednesday, we heard from LaFleur, Tucker Kraft, Jon Runyan, Love, and others, and for the most part, the messaging from everyone was the same–this Packers’ offense has to be better on early downs. There’s a myriad of reasons why, whether it’s penalties, an inconsistent passing game, or an unreliable run game, but the gist is that routinely the Packers have not been able to move the ball on first or second down consistently.
This then puts the offense in obvious passing situations, which is an incredibly disadvantageous spot to be in for an offense, especially an inexperienced one like the Packers that is battling non-stop inconsistency. On second-and-7 or longer this season, Love is completing just 39.4 percent of his pass attempts. On third-and-7 or longer, he is completing only 46.7 percent of his throws. During any other game situation, Love’s completion percentage jumps to a workable 63.6 percent.
With the speed that the Packers have at the skill positions, getting the ball to their pass catchers in space can still have big play potential with the yards after the catch opportunities. But perhaps even more important than that, picking up even five to seven yards on first or second down can keep the offense ahead of the sticks or even move the chains, open up the playbook to help keep defenses guessing, allow the offense to find a rhythm, and keep the team out of what have become disastrous long down-and-distance scenarios.
“We’ve got a lot of weapons;” said Love on Wednesday, “you want to always spread the ball out. But I think more of it is just consistency and finding those completions. And getting the playmakers the ball in space so they can operate and make guys miss. And not always trying to find that big play and force the ball downfield. But just getting the ball in guys’ hands quickly, I don’t think that’s been the biggest thing.”
Against Las Vegas, we saw a more concerted effort by Love and the offense to take some more shorter area throws. Excluding two throwaways, 20 of Love’s 28 true pass attempts, according to PFF, were within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage–the second-highest rate he’s had this season.
However, as we saw, that doesn’t necessarily equate directly to offensive success either. Right now, defenses don’t really fear the Packers run game or downfield passing attack. This leads to opponents playing closer to the line of scrimmage, as already mentioned, muddying things up over the middle of the field and with less space to operate in, moving the ball on shorter, quicker throws becomes more challenging.
It’s also not as if the Packers can rely solely on dinking-and-dunking their way down the field either—or at least the current version of the offense can’t. On the defensive side of the ball, for example, the Joe Barry defense is predicated on limiting the big play and forcing offenses to put together 13-plus play scoring drives. In part, the thought process is that it isn’t easy to sustain drives of that length, which eventually is going to lead to the offense stalling out, whether that be due to the defense making a play or there being a self-inflicted mistake.
For the reasons already discussed, there is little evidence right now that the Green Bay offense could function in this capacity consistently, given the litany of issues they are experiencing.
With all that said, I do think there is an opportunity for the Packers’ offense to simplify things, to a degree, leveraging the quick game and getting their playmakers the ball in space more so than what they have been through five games. To put it simply, with the deep ball not yielding results, they have to try something else and there are plenty of positives that can come from this approach, most notably staying out of second and third and long situations.
However, an emphasis on shorter throws also isn’t going to be a cure-all for this unit either—it’s one element that can help the offense get on the right track, but as has been the theme of many of the recent LaFleur press conferences, there isn’t just one aspect that has to improve. At the end of the day, the attention to detail and execution from all 11 players has to be better and as the play caller, LaFleur has to put the players in better positions to succeed as well. Hopefully, finding a way to maximize these underneath opportunities becomes a step in a positive direction.
”Just a lot of inconsistent play,” said LaFleur about what he saw during his bye week evaluation of the team. “There’s certain things that, as a play-caller, you are disappointed with yourself in terms of putting guys in certain situations. It’s just been very choppy. We haven’t been able to get into a consistent rhythm. The early-down execution has put us into some get-back-on-track situations and that’s where we’ve really struggled in terms of we’ve had a ton of third-and-longs, which it’s hard to have success in this league if you’re living in third-and-10-plus.
”I think the overall consistency because it takes all 11. We say it all the time but just going back and looking at the tape, there’s a guy off here and a guy off there, and it could be one person and it throws you off rhythm. We’ve really tried to stress the importance of staying dialed in play in and play out and really with that, I know we always talk about that one-play mind-set, but it is true when you look at the tape. If not all 11 are dialed in on their responsibilities, you’re probably not going to have success in this league.“