Preview: Green Bay
Opponent: Green Bay Packers
Where: Levi’s Stadium (Santa Clara, CA)
When: Saturday, 1/20 @ 5:15 PT
Weather: 60’s with a chance of showers + wind
In the 90’s action thriller/gay rom-com Point Break, police chief Ben Harp (Dr. Cox from Scrubs) refers to the fresh-faced and cocky Keanu Reeves as “young, dumb, and full of cum.” Like many action heroes of this time, Reeves’ character was brash, bold, and too young and stupid to know the seriousness and repercussions of his actions. This impulsive youthfulness came with some growing pains (like Gary Busey’s death, whoops), but ultimately led to the (sort of) apprehension of the bad guys. You can probably guess the analogy here.
The fifth-youngest playoff team since the merger—and the youngest since 1974—these Packers are having fun, keeping loose, and staying dangerous. They just pasted the Cowboys in Dallas—giving the Boys their first home loss since September of 2022—and are peaking on both sides of the ball at the right time. They’re so young and so unheralded that—unlike Packers teams of old—there are no expectations that they must worry to live up to. They’re just here to surf, rob banks, and develop a half-baked romantic relationship with Lori Petty that no one remembers or cares about.
Perhaps, the young underdogs will come through in the clutch. Or perhaps they’ll be left lying on the ground, screaming and firing their gun in the air because they’re just not quite ready to seal the deal.
Health Check
Packers: As of Tuesday afternoon, the Packers’ injury report has plenty of limited and DNP designations, but since they don’t actually practice until Wednesday it’s a pretty fuzzy picture. WR Christian Watson—who played limited snaps in the wild-card round while coming back from a hamstring injury—should be expected to play, but he may still be on a snap count. DE/OLB Preston Smith and G Elgton Jenkins were both listed as DNP, but should be considered likely to play given they played all of last weekend’s game. RB AJ Dillon missed the last two weeks and is a genuine question mark for this weekend. The biggest concern is CB Jaire Alexander, who toughed through an ankle injury against the Cowboys but left the game after re-aggravating it in the second half. He was listed as a limited participant, so at this point in the week that probably means he’s playing.
Niners: The bye week has been kind to us. Except for Trent Williams (who was given a rest day), the only DNPs we registered on Tuesday were Clelin Ferrell, Logan Ryan, and Dre Greenlaw, and the last two at least should practice on Wednesday and be considered heavily likely to play on Saturday. George Odum was limited, which could give our safeties a much-needed boost of depth, and Arik Armstead—who has been sidelined with a lisfranc injury since week 13—returned to practice last week. He’s still a limited participant, but he also seems highly likely to suit up this weekend.
PACKERS OFFENSE
Matt LaFleur has impressed me this year.
Despite starting his head coaching career with a 47-19 regular season record, it was always hard to tell how much of that early success was due to the culture and offense LaFleur installed versus the schemes that Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams were already comfortable with. The 2-3 playoff record—with each of those losses disappointing and underwhelming in their own special way—didn’t help matters.
But now that they’re free from the spectre of Aaron Rodgers, LaFleur has been able to install and pilot the offense that he likely wanted to run from the jump. The result has been a unit that may not put up as many massive individual stat lines as the MVP Rodgers years but is much more cohesive and tailor-made to opposing defenses.
Healthier than they’ve been all season, this is a top-10 unit with a deep roster of versatile weapons, an emerging young star at quarterback, and a playcaller who knows how to play to his roster’s strengths and attack defensive weaknesses.
Same same but different. The Redskins’ and Falcons’ QB coach under Shanahan before hopping over to be the Rams’ OC for a year, Matt LaFleur’s offense has the same bones as the one we operate—with a heavy emphasis on motion, play action, and keeping defenses guessing by making the running and passing game concepts look as similar as possible. They’re all about minimizing tells so that teams can’t key on what they’re doing, which makes it easier to call games sequentially.
Before this year, the offense was a mish-mash of LaFleur’s concepts and the more static, matchup-hunting that Rodgers had become accustomed to with Davante Adams. While the bevy of back shoulder fades and quick hitters that arose from the Rodgers/Adams mind-meld often felt unstoppable, we kind of showed in our last playoff matchup against them how their rules could be reverse-engineered to force them into disadvantageous looks. This year, the offense relies significantly less on those kinds of audibles and hot routes and more on LaFleur’s thoughtful and well-designed week-to-week game plans.
LaFleur has been vocal this year about needing to stay committed to the run, and—with Aaron Jones back healthy—he’s done that better than ever as of late. As crazy as it seems, the Dallas game marked the first time in Aaron Jones’ career that he’s had 110+ rushing yards in four straight games. Staying ahead of the sticks and up on the scoreboard was clearly a massive part of the Packers’ game plan against Dallas, as 10 of the Packers’ first 12 plays were runs or utilized run action. I would expect more of the same against us.
The run game is their best way to rack up consistent short-yardage gains, and when that’s operating smoothly it opens up time and space for Jordan Love and their passing attack to target the second-level throws that this offense feasts on.
Love at second sight. Jordan Love blasted out of the gates in his first season as a starter before cooling off tremendously in the middle of the season, but over his last nine games—seven of them Packers victories—he’s played as well as any quarterback in the league. During that time, he’s completed 70.7% of his passes for 269 yards/game while throwing for 21 touchdowns and only one pick. Those numbers aren’t a mirage.
Despite dealing with numerous injuries to skill players during this closing stretch, Love has grown tremendously throughout the season, as best evidenced by his rematch performances against the Lions and Vikings—two division foes he struggled mightily against earlier in the season. Give credit to LaFleur for adjusting game plans to put Love in advantageous situations, but the Packers seem to have found (yet another) top-tier quarterback. Turns out drafting a dude for his physical tools and letting him set behind an established veteran can still—despite media outcry—be quite an effective method of developing a young quarterback.
You’ve probably seen Love’s “fadeaway” passes on highlights or social media. Given the fact that those passes are basically all to dudes who are wide-ass open and/or are massively underthrown, I wouldn’t get too caught up in all that. People throw from different angles. That’s nothing new. But if anything, those passes off his back foot are a reminder of Love’s athleticism, the size he has that allows him to toss those balls over rushing linemen, and—most importantly—his current comfort level in this offense. This team probably throws more late-opening crossers and deep outs than any in the league, and that’s a testament to Love’s ability to buy time in the pocket and make those throws under duress—whether that’s off his back foot or not.
Guys or Dudes. The Packers likely have the most diverse crop of young receivers in the country, even if none of them has cemented himself as a true alpha. Christian Watson is the dude who most looks the part—and someone who has had the most splash games over the past two years—but he’s been hurt a bunch this year. Jayden Reed is their Deebo light—a fly sweep and gadget guy who they scheme up different ways to get the ball in space. While Romeo Doubs—who just torched the Cowboys for six grabs for 151 yards—is perhaps their most consistent and well-rounded of the bunch (and their leader in receiving touchdowns). At tight end, they employ two promising rookies in Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft. This is a team that likes extra tight end sets, so both get plenty of run. Amazingly enough, all of these options are first- or second-year players.
Even if their only true alpha is running back Aaron Jones, the interchangeability of their wideouts and the creativity of LaFleur’s offense allows this offense to get the best of their young receivers while letting them continue to develop into the players they’ll eventually become. While it sounds counterintuitive in a time when we prioritize star talent more than anything in sports, it’s the depth of the receiving corps that is its best asset. Every good team has some weapons, and every good defense tries to take those weapons away. Few teams have a fourth- or fifth-option as good as the Packers, which is why—in any given game—any one of those options could be a featured player.
Potential Defensive Keys
Stop the Run. Hopefully, Armstead is back for this one because stopping the run (and the pass looks off of the run) is the single most important factor in slowing down this Packers offense. It’s also where we’ve shown some weakness this season. While our raw rushing defense stats are strong, part of that is due to how quickly we’ve jumped on teams on the scoreboard. When it comes to YPC and EPA/rush, our numbers are much less pristine. Now, does that change immediately with one of the single-best run-stoppers in football back in the fold? Yes. To some extent. But we’ll need to be ready to stop the run early and often in this game.
As great as Jordan Love has looked as of late, this offense is built around balance and chunk plays off of play action. Against the Cowboys, they knew that if they could run the ball and run pass actions off of the threat of that run, they could stymy Dallas’ pass rushers. With only a single pressure on 21 passing attempts, their plan worked out better than they ever could have imagined. Given the talent and aggressive reputation of our defensive line, they’ll likely want to employ a similar game plan against us, with the run game, play action, and screens featuring heavily into their attack.
Love was 7-of-9 for 165 yards and a score off of play action against Dallas. The Packers want to get their young wideouts threatening deep then breaking into those second-level windows that open up when the run game is humming. If they can’t get those consistent short-to-medium gains on the ground then they’re not creating those passing windows behind the linebackers and they’ll have to get those short gains through drop-back passing. While Love is certainly capable in that regard, it is not the Packers’ strength, nor what they want to do. Love is at his best in deep drops where he has the time to see windows open down the field, where his athleticism can extend a play, and where his arm talent can put the ball wherever it needs to be. When we shorten down their routes and speed up that process, we have the best chance of preventing him from getting into a rhythm in the passing game.
Bracket the Boot. Based on Love’s physical profile and how the Packers like to attack defenses, it should come as no surprise to learn that they love bootleg concepts. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen what was effectively one throwback bootleg concept work so consistently as it did against Dallas, but the Packers have been springing open receivers down the field off of their bootleg looks all year.
While I’d be shocked to see the Niners have coverage lapses on the scale of what we just saw in Dallas, I do expect the Packers to give us heavy doses of bootlegs in an attempt to get Jordan Love on the move with depth. That way they can slow up our pass rush, buy time for those second level throws, and give easy outlets in the flats to their tight ends, backs, and fly motion guys crossing Love’s face.
We’ve seen teams spam bootlegs before—even when their run game wasn’t productive—as a means of preventing our defensive line from teeing off. So it’s important that we both have a plan to stop the run and the many looks that the Packers can deploy off of run action—regardless of their success on the ground.
Sound safeties. The Packers do a good job of targeting and attacking defensive tendencies and favorable matchups. Against the Cowboys, it seemed like they wanted to avoid their outside corners and target the slots. That led to route trees like this one, from Romeo Doubs.
Here, you can see the multiple throwback bootlegs they completed to Doubs as well as the emphasis on the sort of deep in-breaking routes that avoid outside corners who are playing deep thirds/quarters while out-leveraging them when in man based on where their coverage help is likely to be.
Since we have the best coverage linebackers in the NFL, I expect the Packers will avoid testing Warner and Greenlaw and instead lean more on trying to create one-on-one matchups with our safeties on double moves and deep crossers down the field. If they test us outside it will likely be towards Ambry Thomas, hoping to beat him off a double move or draw a flag if he initiates contact at the top of the route. Thomas has played very well for us since moving into the starting lineup, but he can get grabby on those late-breaking routes and scramble drill situations.
Having solutions and support for our backend players will be key here, but the easiest way to stop them from completing these long-developing routes is, well…
Speed up the process. It’s never a bad time for our defensive line to get in the opposing quarterback’s face, but given the time needed for the Packers’ preferred routes to get open, this would be a particularly good game for our vaunted d-line to pressure Love into getting rid of the ball earlier and less on target than he’d like.
3 < 7. Entering the Cowboys game, the Packers had only been stopped short of a touchdown once all season after getting to a first-and-goal situation—a stat that was the best mark in multiple decades. Despite that, their red zone touchdown percentage as a whole is only 17th-best in the league. So something’s going on between the 20- and 11-yard lines.
I haven’t watched enough of them to know what the problem is, but I assume it has something to do with the condensed field allowing safeties to sit on the goal line and drive on those second-level throws that they like so much. Whatever it is, it’ll be important for us to bow up once they start sniffing the red zone and force field goal attempts rather than touchdowns.
PACKERS DEFENSE
After firing then-embattled DC Mike Pettine in 2021, LaFleur went back to the Rams well with currently-embattled DC Joe Barry—who spent four years working under Wade Phillips, Brandon Staley, and Raheem Morris.
Barry’s had his moments—including holding us to 13 points two years ago in Lambeau—but has been under heavy scrutiny for much of this season as the pilot of a defensive unit that has underperformed for most of the year. That said, the Packers finished the regular season holding the Vikings and Bears to averages of 9.5 points and 201 offensive yards before their starters kept the Cowboys to 16 points through three-and-a-half quarters. So is this a unit that has finally found its way, or have their past few opponents simply been unable to target their weaknesses?
Not the mayor of Titletown. As recently as Christmas, Joe Barry was maybe the most hated man in Wisconsin. To the point where Packers blogs were doing shit like posting long form articles listing the many career games random players had put up against Joe Barry-led defenses. The past few games have quieted the chatter a tiny bit, but he’s still very much on the hot seat, and a bad performance against us could lead to another shuffling of DCs in the off-season.
While I do think the Packers are playing their best defense at the exact right time, this is still a unit with major issues. Yes, they did all they needed to and more against the Cowboys but they also allowed 500+ offensive yards (even if some of that was with their backups in the game). And they’re less than a month removed from allowing 34 points and a season-high 454 yards of offense against the Bucs and 30 points and nearly 400 yards of offense to the Carolina Panthers. For anyone who has watched a second of Panthers football this year, those numbers are unfathomable.
ROI woes. Other than Jordan Love in 2020, the Packers have used every single first-round pick since 2018 on the defensive side of the ball, so there’s no excuse for the cupboard to feel so dry.
This is not a defense that is devoid of talent. Their front seven has players, with Kenny Clark still a disruptive force on the interior and Preston Smith and Rashan Gary making for an impressive-looking pair of book-end rushers. The front—and its ability to rush the passer—is unquestionably the strength of this defense. But there are major personnel question marks at every other level.
After Raheem Mostert gouged them to death in the 2019 playoffs, the Packers invested heavily in the linebacker position, drafting Quay Walker out of Georgia in the first round of 2022 and locking up De’Vondre Campbell on a five-year deal after his breakout 2021 season. But Quay hasn’t lived up to his draft stock and Campbell’s health and play have slowly deteriorated since signing his big deal.
In the secondary, 2021 first-rounder Darnell Savage has played well this season—his pick-six against the Cowboys basically iced that game before halftime—but that’s basically where the feel-good stories end. Jaire Alexander played in the wild card game—corralling Dak’s first interception—and when he can play it’s a huge boost for this secondary, but he’s been in and out of the lineup all season. 2019 first-round corner Eric Stokes has played two games this season—a recurring theme for a young player who hasn’t been able to kick the injury bug. Given the Packers traded veteran Rasul Douglas at the deadline—a trade that feels all the more mind-boggling now that he’s playing at a high level for the #2 seed Bills—they’ve been left with starting journeyman Corey Ballentine and 7th round rookie Carrington Valentine outside for much of the season. That’s a good blueprint to allow Baker Mayfield to drop 350 yards passing and a perfect passer rating on you.
Ballentine and Valentine have had their moments in the past month or so, but it’s hard to tell how much of that is youthful improvement versus a pass rush that is starting to get home more often. Either way, the health of Jaire Alexander’s ankle is a major variable as we head into the weekend.
First thing’s first. So what’s gone right as of late?
The biggest change during the Packers’ late-season surge is that they’ve shown a pulse as a run defense, which has allowed them to lean into the strength of their pass rush, and—in turn—create more negative plays and takeaways. This is a team that allowed four 200+ rushing performances through week 14, including to bottom-dwelling units like the Tommy DeVito Giants and the Matt Canada-led Steelers. Even in the year of the lort 2024, if you can get road-graded on the ground it’s hard to do much of anything defensively, so the Packers adjusted heavily to stop the run in hopes that it would create a trickle-down effect of defensive success.
To key opposing running games, the Packers have leaned more into five-man fronts on early downs to clog lanes, create one-on-ones with their best players along the line of scrimmage, and generate more disruption and penetration in the run game. This has protected the Packers’ struggling linebackers from second-level blockers, given them fewer gaps to cover, and let them run and hit rather than read and stack-and-shed. To make things even simpler for those LBs (particularly Quay Walker), the Packers also started just sending them more on blitzes to muck up the works. Using blitzes to point a struggling or hesitant linebacker in the direction they have to go (rather than trusting them to read and react) is far from a long-term solution, but it can work in a pinch—especially when the linebacker is a plus athlete with minus instincts.
These five-man fronts, timely blitzes, and the friendlier downs and distances that arise from slowing down opposing rushing attacks have allowed the Packers to lean into their greatest personnel strength: their pass rush. Over their four-game winning streak, the Packers are averaging nearly four sacks a game, and—at times—the front looks more like the defense that was promised than the one that they’ve been fielding for much of the year. With their defensive line mucking up backfields and forcing quarterbacks into more hurried throws, the secondary doesn’t have to guard their men as long and the results have led to a few of the Packers’ best defensive performances to date.
Potential Offensive Keys
Take the Packers to P-Town. The Packers’ rushing defense may have bowed up as of late—holding four of their last five opponents under 100 yards rushing—but a run defense can’t be fixed overnight and it takes more than a commitment to heavier personnel to succeed against more sophisticated run games.
A five-man front can cover each gap, but it also allows for chunk yardage on the ground when runners can penetrate the first level or outflank the edges—both specialties in our scheme. While our offense is more balanced than it has ever been under Shanahan, we still hang our hat on a physical and diverse run game. That shouldn’t change in this matchup. I’m not saying we should run blindly into five-man fronts every first down, but we can and should have success on the ground in this matchup, and once that run threat is established there should be plenty of room to throw the ball via play action. The Packers’ linebackers have really struggled in coverage this season—especially off of play fakes, and that plays right into what we do best.
Sketchy math. The Packers often commit to their five-man fronts on early downs and distances and to combat 12 and 21 personnel (i.e. “rushing downs”), but—given what we specialize in offensively—I’m interested to see how much they can and will run a personnel group that intentionally takes away a linebacker or defensive back for a bigger bodied player.
As the only team who can break a huddle with 21 personnel and have our running back on an option route while our fullback runs a wheel, we can easily pop into empty sets against five-man fronts and force man coverage across the board or make one of their edge players drop into a short zone where they have to corral Deebo or Kittle in space. If you’re the Packers, how often are you comfortable with either of those situations?
The other inherent drawback of deploying these looks is that they take away a middle-of-the-field coverage option. The Packers have struggled to guard the middle of the field all year and they’ve routinely been gouged by play action, two major strengths of our offense. While committing to the run game is important, early down five-man fronts could open up opportunities for the kind of explosive first-down passing that quickly puts a defense on its heels.
Clearing the picture. With increased pressure up front, the Packers have been able to muddy passing lanes and generate more turnovers in the past few weeks. But those complex looks are a lot easier against someone like the Cowboys than they should be against us.
While the move to a more traditional West Coast offense unlocked some of Dak’s best play this season, it also—somewhat ironically—tanked the Cowboys in a similar way that Rodgers’ commitment to static formations and matchup-hunting sunk the Packers in the 2021 playoffs. Knowing the massive personnel mismatch, Dak was clearly honed in on getting the ball to CeeDee early, but—instead of relying on pre-snap motion and scheming guys open—the Cowboys felt they could feed their elite wideout by just moving him around and hunting matchups.
Obviously, that didn’t really work. While in theory, it made sense to have their best threat a potential target on every snap, the Cowboys struggled to get into a rhythm early without some schemed-up layups and the lack of window dressing and pre-snap movement let the Packers play aggressively downhill while deploying some trap coverages like on Dak’s pick-six near the end of the first half.
With our exotic formations and heavy use of motion, we’ll be able to create more hesitation for the defense while getting far more pre-snap keys for Purdy and force the Packers to play simpler coverages that they must declare earlier.
Let the Boys Eat. On the simplest level, I think we just have a bunch of great matchups in the passing game. While we want to be more creative and intentional than the Cowboys were with CeeDee in creating those matchups, we also have a deeper core of weapons than Dallas and the Packers won’t be able to key any one player if they plan to slow us down.
Whether it’s motions to empty sets and overload quads, run action away to create singles on backside receivers, or any other number of tools in our toolkit, we have the means to set up mismatches up and down the field. I fully expect us to do just that.
The linebackers in particular should be in the crosshairs early and often. Their coverage issues have been harped on enough by now, but they’re also one of the league’s worst-graded units in guarding running backs in the passing game…
Which, uh… yeah. Good luck with that.
SPECIAL TEAMS + OTHER SHIT
Weather Watch. The weather report is bound to change multiple times before we get to this weekend, but at the moment there’s a chance for both rain and legitimate wind gusts on Saturday. Given we’re the team with the quarterback who had issues handling a wet ball in Cleveland and NOT the team from Wisconsin, we’d prefer those elements stay away.
Ray-Ray Returns. Ray-Ray McCloud got a bunch of run in week 18 as he returned from injury. That gives us a spark in the return game, and—most importantly—means we don’t have to rely on a rookie wideout wearing #10 to make crunch time returns during the playoffs. No offense to Ronnie Bell, who has played great as a rookie (all things considered), but that should be a relief for all of us.
Fresh fish. It is worth noting that rookie kickers are notoriously sketchy. Nick Folk and Ka’imi Fairbairn—the No.1 and No.2 top kickers in terms of field goal percentage this season—were 20th and 24th, respectively, in field goal percentage during their rookie years. Younghoe Koo, one of the league’s most handsomely paid kickers, was cut by the Chargers after making only 50% of his kicks over the first four games of his rookie season. Even Brandon Aubrey, who set the gold standard for rookie kickers this year (although he’s 28 and played professionally already so not sure if he counts as a rookie), missed two field goals in the season finale and an extra point in the wild-card round. Rookie kickers are sketchy. And this game has two of them.
Our rookie kicker is fresh off missing his first-ever field goal under 40 yards and his first-ever extra point. Not great. But the Packers’ kicking game (and their special teams in general) is even more suspect. Jake Moody has attempted fewer field goals than almost any other full-time kicker and is 20th in field goal % on the year, but Anders Carlson—who the Packers drafted in the sixth round—is 24th in field goal %, barely over .500 when kicking from 40 or more yards, and has missed an astounding six extra points this season (including one in the wild-card round).
Will this settle your nerves at all if this game comes down to a few crunch-time kicks? Probably not. But it’s worth noting.
Your everyday key to special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights instead of outside of them; (2) don’t allow back-breaking momentum-changing plays in coverage.
TLDR
The Packers are a young, hungry, and surging squad, which makes for a dangerous divisional-round opponent regardless of their seeding. This team is 8-3 in their last eleven games and their offense and young quarterback are near the top of the charts in nearly every offensive metric (advanced or otherwise) during that run. But the team and the young quarterback right above them in basically all of those offensive categories? The Niners and Brock Purdy.
While this Packers offense is absolutely legit, I’m not nearly as convinced that their defense has turned the corner. This seems like a unit that has improved, but whose improvements may be greatly exaggerated by the dominance they’ve displayed on the other side of the ball. I don’t think they’re as bad as the raw numbers and advanced analytics may say, but I don’t think this is a team strength. If we can simply play our game while preventing negative plays and turnovers, it’s hard for me to imagine a defense that has major issues stopping play action, defending the middle of the field, and covering running backs in the passing game slowing down our offensive attack.
Yes, the Packers can break explosive plays and score points in bunches, and if this game becomes a shootout then anything could happen. But if I had to bet on which defense will hold serve more times against elite offensive competition, I’m betting on the good guys.
Go Niners 🏈👍