Instant Takeaways from Green Bay Packers Division Clinching Win
By Paul Bretl
On the road, the Green Bay Packers came away with the win over Baltimore to improve to 11-3, while clinching the NFC North and maintaining control of the one-seed.
As always, here are the instant takeaways from the Green Bay Packers performance.
– The Ravens entered the game allowing only 3.9 yards per rush—the third-fewest in the NFL. But without Calais Campbell, Green Bay was able to generate some good push up the middle.
– A lot of soft coverage early on by this Green Bay Packers defense. The Ravens have some speed at receiver, so perhaps that was a concern, but adjustments should have been made much quicker.
– The game plan to stop this Ravens offense seemed simple, basically keeping Huntley in the pocket and covering — or doubling up — Mark Andrews. But Green Bay did neither and didn’t seem to adjust. It was far from their best performance.
– That was a rough day for Darnell Savage. He really struggled against Mark Andrews, there was a missed tackle or two, and a penalty. Although to Savage’a credit, what a play on the two-point conversion to tip the pass.
– Holding the edge was going to be key against the mobile Tyler Huntley to keep him from ripping off some huge runs. But the Green Bay edge rushers did not do a good job of that. We also really saw how much this defense missed Kenny Clark. There was very little push up the middle.
– Also, speaking of Huntley, that was an impressive performance by the backup. A lot of quick passes were dialed up and successful.
– This Ravens defense has really struggled against the pass this season and have suffered numerous injuries in the secondary. As a result, we saw Aaron Rodgers and this offense have a lot of success through the air.
– According to Sharp Football, the Ravens rank 31st in defensive explosive pass play rate. Rodgers and Co. struggled to connect on those big plays through the first nine games but have found more success recently, including against Baltimore, where Rodgers was able to connect with Marquez Valdes-Scantling on a few occasions. It was a really nice performance by MVS, who had several big completions.
– The errors weren’t as egregious as last week, but it was still really bad. Fortunately, against the NFL’s top special teams unit, the errors weren’t terribly costly—just incredibly frustrating.
– Green Bay also tried different returners in an effort to find some sort of reliability. Chandon Sullivan was returning punts, with Amari Rodgers, Malik Taylor, Aaron Jones, and Patrick Taylor all having kick return chances.
– Earlier in the week, Matt LaFleur said “all hands on deck” when referring to the special teams unit. This meant seeing some starters taking special teams snaps, including Rasul Douglas, who made a tackle, and Aaron Jones returning a kick.
– As they’ve done all season, despite numerous injuries, the Green Bay Packers OL held their own once again.
– Another slow start for the offense. For the ninth game this season, the Packers trailed after the first quarter. You have to wonder how much the lack of practice time over the last 6-7 weeks has factored into this.
– As I wrote earlier in the week, I thought we’d see more blitzing from Baltimore in an effort to help out their secondary. But that wasn’t the case at all.
– The Ravens entered Sunday’s game ranking first in average time of possession, with Green Bay ranking second. Although Baltimore controlled the clock early on, it ended up pretty even.
– Green Bay really didn’t have that many third downs today; they found a lot of success on first and second downs and just weren’t put into those situations. But when they did have third downs, they were efficient.
– We aren’t out of the woods yet, but Mason Crosby hasn’t missed an extra point of field goal attempt over the last two games.
– With Baltimore playing from behind for much of the second half, they weren’t able to lean on the run as heavily, but they were still very successful, picking up over 5.0 yards per carry as a team.