Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur knows his offense must protect the football against the ball-hawking defense of the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night.
The Bills are coming into the contest with a league-high 10 interceptions, and they’ve also batted down seven different passes.
“They’ve been super opportunistic. Gotten a lot of tipped balls,” LaFleur said Thursday. “They’ve got great ball skills, specifically in the backend. They’ve done a really good at the line of scrimmage, if they aren’t hitting the quarterback, seems to be they get their hands up. They do a really nice job. They play primarily a vision-based defense, so there’s a lot of eyes on the quarterback and they do a great job of reading where the quarterback is going to go with the football, and they trigger. You can see it’s a very cohesive unit, they all work in unison with each other, and they do a really good job of playing off each other and rallying to the football and do a great job tackling. It’s quite a challenge. They’ve got playmakers at all three levels.”
The Bills are the only team in football with twice as many interceptions (10) as touchdown passes allowed (5). And six different players have interceptions, although safety Jordan Poyer leads the way with four.
The Packers have just two giveaways in the last three games, and Aaron Rodgers hasn’t thrown an interception since his pick-six before the half during a win over the New England Patriots in Week 4.
Despite 13 takeaways in six games, the Bills have won the turnover battle only twice this season. Buffalo has two or more takeaways in five of six games in 2022. In Week 6, Taron Johnson’s interception sealed the Bills’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.
To have a chance as big underdogs on Sunday night, Rodgers and the Packers will need to avoid the big giveaway against one of the NFL’s best defenses.