Rodgers OK with staying in pocket
LaFleur’s offense has quick strikes to receivers
In the new Green Bay Packers' offense, the formations are tighter and the ball's getting snapped a little quicker than the past few years.
Those might be the most obvious differences in Matt LaFleur's offense versus Mike McCarthy's.
A more subtle change, though, is that Aaron Rodgers is playing more from the pocket than he did the last few seasons. At least, that's how it's been as LaFleur has installed his entire offense through almost three weeks of training camp.
Rodgers, to be sure, has been making plays outside the pocket. It's a quality that helps make him special and a weapon that will continue to produce the kind of plays that win games.
But the bulk of LaFleur's offense is based on the scheme getting receivers open quickly, and getting the ball out faster than Rodgers had the last few years. And that's been evident in practice watching Rodgers and his backups, DeShone Kizer and Tim Boyle.
“There was definitely more getting out of the pocket last year,” said Boyle, who was a rookie in 2018. “This year we're more in the pocket.”
None of us knows how this coaching change is going to go, whether LaFleur is a good offensive coach and play caller, and how his collaboration with Rodgers
will work out. Any change after the Packers' 2018 disaster was bound to feel fresh.
But this actually has the makings of a promising development for the Packers.
During a 15-minute conversation last week, Rodgers disagreed that McCarthy's offense the last couple years relied too much on him making plays off schedule. But several scouts around the league brought it up regularly — “That was the entire passing game,” one said — and it's hard not to agree.
In recent years, the Packers practiced the off-schedule play all the time, and to be fair, they were good at it. On the sidelines of the practice field, McCarthy had a timer and flashing lights that went off 2.5 seconds after the snap to help ingrain in the clock in the quarterback's head when he should leave the pocket. The Packers ended up practicing the scramble drill a lot, and over time the off-schedule plays kept taking on a bigger and bigger part of the offensive plan.
While Rodgers is outstanding on the move, that's a tough way to make a living down after down, game after game. There's a lot to be said for playing in rhythm and making easy plays, too. The last few years the Packers lacked the rhythm of the best offenses in the Rodgers era.
Rodgers agreed he's playing more from the pocket, and that it was part of LaFleur's offensive design. He also says he's fully on board.
“I like throwing the ball on time, I like having guys open when I'm in the pocket,” he said. “That would be the desired way to play. The off-schedule stuff has always been about moving in the pocket away from (pressure) with nobody open. If we can scheme guys open and I can find them, that's exactly how I'd like to play.”
When the real games start, we'll find out just how habitual breaking the pocket has become for Rodgers, and how hard it is to break that habit. McCarthy very much emphasized analytics that showed big plays win games, and there's no doubting that Rodgers' offschedule produced some big plays. But there also might be a paradox there, where the harder you chase the big play, the more elusive it becomes. There's likely an organic element to big plays, too.
Rodgers says he likes the new scheme, which is the offense Kyle Shanahan is running in San Francisco and Sean McVay with the Los Angeles Rams, but tweaked for their personnel. The tight formations with receivers aligned in clusters are one way to run rub routes and combinations to get guys open quickly. There's some type of motion on just about every play to make it a little tougher for defenses to read their matchups.
McCarthy, by contrast, counted more on receivers to win their matchups.
“I just think it's more we're trying to scheme one or two guys open every play,” Rodgers said. “There's less maybe picking a side and hoping a guy wins, and more a concept that we really think is going to win, and something coming back to if that doesn't win.”
Another difference is tempo. McCarthy's up-tempo offense was no-huddle, which made it harder for defenses to substitute play to play. But that didn't mean getting plays off fast, because Rodgers often used most of the play clock to check to the best play and force the defense to come out its disguises.
LaFleur's version of up-tempo is breaking the huddle, rushing to the line and snapping the ball on a quick count, so the defense doesn't have much time to line up. LaFleur hasn't even practiced a no-huddle except for the two-minute drill in camp so far.
There's also the question of how much latitude Rodgers will get at the line of scrimmage, which has been an issue since LaFleur was hired. The Shanahan-McVay-LaFleur scheme doesn't have much true audibling –there are two or three plays built into every call, and the quarterback chooses one of them. There's not a lot of “call any play” at the line.
But Rodgers' 11 years as an NFL starter makes him like an offensive coordinator on the field, and LaFleur has said he's open to adjusting for his quarterback. We'll have to see how that work in progress goes.
“There's already a lot of (calls at the line) built in that I have to be on,” Rodgers said. “There's just other subtleties that I've added to the mix over the years, and when it makes sense they're in, and if they don't make sense they're not in.”
Something else that stood out last season was Rodgers' alarming number of throwaways. According to Pro Football Focus, his 59 were by far the most by any quarterback since it started tracking that stat in 2006. Philip Rivers is next highest with 46 in 2016. Rodgers' career-high before then was 32 in 2015, and he had 16 in seven games in 2017.
Rodgers attributed the excessive throwaways to the MCL tear and tibial plateau fracture he sustained in the opener against Chicago last season. He aggravated the injury at Detroit in Week 5. He stopped wearing a bulky knee brace beginning Nov. 4 at New England, and as the season went on his running gait looked normal.
“There are always going to be throwaways,” Rodgers said, “but last year I couldn't extend anything, especially the first few weeks, and then after I reinjured it in Detroit (throwing it away) was the smart play. It was more mental to try and take the brace off, but (the knee) definitely bothered me from the first week to the last week.”
What everyone who follows the Packers will be watching most closely, though, is how the LaFleur-Rodgers dynamic works as the season goes on. There's no definitive answer on it now during this honeymoon period, and there probably won't be one by season's end.
What we know is that the chemistry between Rodgers and McCarthy imploded last season, and that was as big a reason as any that the 2018 Packers bombed out.
LaFleur and Rodgers hit their first potential public pothole last week when the quarterback expressed disdain for practicing for two days against another team.
Teams don't show much of their schemes in those settings, so he didn't get to work against the more sophisticated looks Mike Pettine would have given him in normal camp practices.
LaFleur gave off an unruffled vibe when he addressed it publicly. He joked he no longer was talking to Rodgers, then said he understood where his quarterback was coming from but that two days of practice against Houston benefited just about everyone else, so he will do it in future camps.
No doubt their relationship will be a theme for the next couple years, at least, and for good reason. As last season showed, it matters, a lot.
There aren't any conclusions to draw this early on. But an offense that emphasizes quick-rhythm reads and pocket play is a decent place to start.