Green Bay Packers: 13 Quick Observations from Wild OT Win

Red Zone Failures

A big reason behind the Green Bay Packers’ 2020 success on offense was that they were really good in the red zone, scoring a touchdown on 80 percent of their red zone trips, which was tops in the NFL.

But against the Bengals, Green Bay found the end zone on only two of their four red zone trips. Ultimately, this allowed Cincy to hang around.

Some Head-Scratching Play-Calling

From the get-go, the Green Bay Packers’ offense looked a bit disjointed and struggled to find a good rhythm. They would overcome that for stretches at a time, but they were still off.

After some of Green Bay’s biggest plays of the game, which included the 59-yard pass to Davante Adams, the 57-yard run by Aaron Jones, and the interception by De’Vondre Campbell, for whatever reason, we saw LaFleur become very conservative–he would even admit to this after the game.

Just like with any player, not every game from a play-calling perspective is going to be perfect either. And it’s not as if it was all bad; as I mentioned, Green Bay found success with 466 total yards, and there were certainly some well drawn-up plays. But as the headline suggests, there were plenty of head-scratchers as well. It also didn’t help that the run game struggled to get going for the most part.

Green Bay Packers run game stifled

We will utilize that segue to now discuss the run game. On the opening drive, there were some good-sized running lanes for Jones to run through. He also had the 57-yard run referenced above, but if you go back and look at it, he initially had to make a defender miss in the backfield, and if we take that run away, Jones and Dillon averaged only 3.6 yards per rush.

This is a Bengals defense that was top-10 entering the game in terms of yards per carry allowed, and they also have DJ Reader and BJ Hill, both of whom rank in the top-10 of PFF’s run defense grades for interior defensive linemen. Add in more movement along the offensive line, and it was tough sledding, to say the least.

As a result, that is likely why we only saw 22 carries for Jones and Dillon after the duo averaged nearly 30 over the last three games. I also believe that this is a reason why the offense appeared out of whack at times as well.

Davante Adams

I mean, what else is there to say? Nothing that I can say here will do Adams’ performance justice, but I have to bring him up. Adams finished with 206 receiving yards on 11 receptions, along with a touchdown. He’s the best in the business for a reason.