Offensive Line can be the Catalyst for Green Bay Packers Offense

Understandably so, many are wondering how this Green Bay Packers offense is going to manage without All-Pro wide receiver Davante Adams. This was an offense that ranked 10th in points per game in 2021 and also in yards per game–so how exactly can they improve on that without Adams and so many questions at wide receiver?

Well, to state the obvious, there is no replacing Adams, and this Green Bay Packers wide receiver room as a whole is worse without him—which isn’t exactly ground-breaking info.

So when it comes to mitigating his absence as much as possible, it’s going to take a group effort to do so, and the play of the offensive line can perhaps be the biggest catalyst behind the Green Bay Packers’ potential offensive success.

In 2020, the Packers led the NFL in scoring, and it’s not a coincidence that by several metrics, including ESPN’s win rate measurements and PFF’s grading system, that the Green Bay offensive line unit was the best in football–or very close to it, depending on what metric you are looking at.

However, as just mentioned above, in terms of yards accumulated each week and points scored, this offense a season ago wasn’t as effective. And even without knowing those numbers, over the course of the season, it was fairly easy to see that this group just wasn’t quite jelling like they did the previous year.

As always, there is more than one reason behind why, but one of the biggest contributors was that the offensive line just wasn’t as good.

Now, of course, with all of the injuries and movement that they dealt with, this group held up well, all things considered. But by several of those metrics, this unit took a step backward in 2021–which should have been expected as Green Bay utilized seven different offensive line configurations during the season.

More often, tight ends were forced to stay in and help the offensive tackles block–specifically the young Yosh Nijman. This is one contributor as to why Robert Tonyan started the season off a bit more slowly from a production standpoint.

Aaron Rodgers went from ranking 20th in average time to throw in 2020 to getting the ball out of his hands at the fourth fastest rate in the NFL in 2021–in part, that was by design, but also out of necessity. However, even with that being the case, Rodgers was still pressured 44 more times last season.

The run game was negatively affected as well. Green Bay would average 4.8 yards per carry in 2022 but only 4.2 yards this past year. There were also fewer big plays as the Packers went from 53 rushes of 10 or more yards down to just 36 per Sharp Football.

This would also hurt the Packers and Rodgers off play-action, as Rodgers would rank 6th in 2020 with 1,506 passing yards off play-action; however, he ranked 20th with 1,153 yards in 2021, according to PFF ($$).

Last season, Matt LaFleur had to dial-up a specific game plan for the offensive line each week in order for them to be as successful as possible. But the year before, that really wasn’t the case.

Hopefully — and I know things are still uncertain — David Bakhtiari will be back and healthy, as will Elgton Jenkins. On top of that, Jon Runyan, Royce Newman, and Josh Myers were all first-year starters in 2021, and the experience gained should lead to improvements as well.

Oftentimes, the biggest jump a player makes comes between their first and second year of playing time–not to mention that rookies Zach Tom and Sean Rhyan could both compete for snaps this summer.

Or, in short, as long as they are healthy, this group should be better in 2022.

"“I like where the line is at,” said Rodgers during minicamp via Packers Wire. “They are very well coached. Now our offensive line coach from last year is the offensive coordinator,” Rodgers said during minicamp. “Every time you look at the line during training camp you’re thinking, ‘Who is going to be the No. 5, who is going to be the No. 10?’ And then you get into the season and you have guys playing who you may not have expected to play well and they are out there balling. I don’t really worry about that group over the years. They’ve been coached so well. And they’ve played pretty damn well over the years too.”"

As I said at the beginning of all of this, there is no replacing Adams. But a healthy and improved offensive line can be the catalyst behind what can still be an effective Green Bay Packers offense.

All stats courtesy of Pro Football Focus