Green Bay Packers: Instant Takeaways from Divisional Round Win

After a long two weeks of waiting, the Green Bay Packers came away with the win over the Los Angeles Rams and advance to the NFC Championship game. This will be Aaron Rodgers’ first NFC Championship game at Lambeau Field.

As always, I have my instant takeaways from Green Bay’s performance. Let’s dive in!

• Run. Run. Run. The Rams’ base defense goes pretty light in the box, and the Packers took advantage of that by running right at them.
• This was also the first game that we really saw the three-headed monster out of the backfield. It was a nice mixture of Jones, Williams, and Dillon, with all three finding success.
• At halftime, Sean McVay said that Aaron Donald wasn’t on a snap count, but it sure seemed like it.
• The Green Bay Packers’ offensive line was so, so good again. I already mentioned how successful the run game was, but Rodgers had plenty of time to pass as well.
• And shoutout to Elgton Jenkins, who had Donald lined up on him for much of the game.
• As easy as things were for the Packer offense at times, there were several misses today as well.
• The same can be said for Rodgers. We saw MVP level play but also saw a few head-scratching throws. However, here is one of those MVP plays:

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1350573561790951424

• Special teams–yikes. Again.
• An excellent game from Kenny Clark and Rashan Gary had some nice pass rush snaps as well.
• I know the narrative is to not pay running backs, but goodness, letting go of Aaron Jones isn’t going to be easy if that’s the case. Run game, passing game, as a blocker, he does everything so well.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1350581957730603008

• Mike Pettine, what in the heck was that soft coverage before the half? The Rams should not have been able to score so easily. And overall, the defense seemed to lose some of that aggressiveness that they had played with in recent weeks.
• Now, I’ll also add that once again, the final defensive numbers were pretty good. They held the Rams to 18 points, just 4.9 yards per play, and to two of nine on third or fourth downs. Green Bay also had four sacks. It’s not pretty, but they get the job done.
• It was an efficient day for Jared Goff with a lot of easy completions, especially over the middle of the field.
• The Green Bay Packers’ offense controlled the time of possession.
• It wasn’t the typical Davante Adams game, but he still had nine receptions, and Rodgers did a good job of spreading the ball around, completing passes to six different players.
• This performance pretty much summed up this 2020 Packers team. The offense was dominant, the defense did enough but was inconsistent, and the special teams unit struggled mightily.
• The Rams gave up the fewest explosive pass plays in the NFL this season but have struggled against play-action. After running the ball successfully all game, play-action leads to big play to Lazard.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1350597619962134529

• Why didn’t we see more Snacks Harrison out there?
• Stopping Cam Akers was going to be key, and while he averaged five yards per carry, other than a few plays, he didn’t take the game over by any means like he did a week ago in Seattle.
• All week we heard about the Rams’ No. 1 defense, but the Packers’ offense put up nearly 500 yards and 32 points on them.
• Third downs were huge in this game. Green Bay was incredibly efficient, while Los Angeles was not.
• It wasn’t always pretty, but the defense came up with some HUGE sacks when needed.
• The Green Bay Packers will host either Tampa Bay or New Orleans next weekend at Lambeau Field.