Tom Silverstein
Against Dallas, the Packers’ goal should be to keep Aaron Rodgers’ passing attempts in the 20s or 30s.
GREEN BAY – For an NFL quarterback, passing attempts are a lot like age.
Your chances for success are a lot better in your 20s and 30s than they are in your 40s and 50s.
Take Aaron Rodgers, for example. In his 162 regular-season starts with the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers is 2-6 in the eight games in which he has thrown 50 or more passes, including a 34-27 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 26.
If you’re first-year coach Matt LaFleur, you want the ball in the hands of your quarterback as many times as it takes to win, but when he’s 35 years old, has broken both his collarbones and suffered numerous lower leg injuries, that number isn’t what it used to be.
Heading into another important NFC game Sunday against Dallas at AT&T Stadium, LaFleur’s goal should be to keep Rodgers’ passing attempts in the 20s or 30s. There’s too much evidence that you can’t win consistently throwing more than that.
This season, teams that have thrown the ball 50 or more times in a game are 0-7-1. Teams that have thrown it 40 or more times are 6-25-2.
Since 2018, teams that threw the
ball in regular-season games 50 or more times are 6-26. Teams that threw it 40 or more times are 35-100-4.
Last season, New England's ageless wonder, Tom Brady, never threw more than 45 times in a regular-season game en route to a Super Bowl title and reached the 40 threshold just four times, going 2-2 in those games. The other Super Bowl team, the Los Angeles Rams, were 1-3 in games in which they threw it 40 or more times, including one (a loss) in which they topped the 50 mark.
It is undoubtedly not LaFleur's intention to have Rodgers throw the ball 50 times in any game, but sometimes it's necessary, such as those times when you trail by a lot in the second half and don't have time to mix in a bunch of running plays.
The most disconcerting part of the approach by LaFleur and Rodgers in the Eagles game was that the Packers were in the lead for 22 minutes, 46 seconds of that game. The score was tied 27-27 with 3:16 left in third quarter.
In Rodgers' mind, the Eagles were giving the Packers easy completions with the way they were playing defense, lining up both safeties deep and playing the same coverage down after down. Why not take what they were giving you, he figured.
“You can actually really get into a rhythm as your expectation of the coverage matches up with the pre- and post-snap reads and you have a good idea where you're going with the football,” Rodgers said. “You can start to get rolling confidence-wise.
“And I felt we did that the other night when we were being aggressive with pass after pass after pass and getting similar coverages and moving the ball down the field.”
The caveat, which Rodgers acknowledged, was that you then may need to pass the ball to get into the end zone. Four times, LaFleur and Rodgers tried exactly that from the 1-yard line with 9:08 to go and failed.
When they got to the 3-yard line with 28 seconds left and a chance to tie, Rodgers threw an interception. In total, Rodgers threw the ball 13 out of the 15 times the Packers were inside the Eagles 15-yard line.
“I think what they were trying to do was not give up the big play,” LaFleur said of the Eagles. “That's what typically you see from teams that are going to play soft-zone defenses. They're not trying to give up scores.
“Obviously, we've got to do a much better job in the red zone and giving our guys better opportunities to go score points. You look at most of the good redzone teams in this league, they're effective in the run game down there.”
The Packers aren't effective running the ball anywhere and that explains part of the reason LaFleur let Rodgers throw 53 times. Those passes represented 72.2% of the plays called, leaving just 13 runs for lead back Aaron Jones (for 21 yards and a touchdown).
The play-action pass is supposed to be a critical part of the offense and if the Packers can't run the ball – or maybe worse yet, won't – they're running a modified version of the Mike McCarthy offense minus the big passing plays.
Rodgers is supposed to tip the field the Packers' direction and while he kept them in the game with some terrific “offschedule” plays (a fancy way of saying scrambles), he failed in the clutch. Maybe if receiver Davante Adams hadn't been knocked out of the game with a toe injury, the outcome would have been different, but Rodgers still came up empty twice on possessions inside the 5-yard line.
Guard Billy Turner said he doesn't view it as a negative that the Packers threw 53 passes, especially given whose arm was doing it. He said there are games you just aren't running well and it calls for an excessive amount of passes.
But getting into the end zone is the objective and the Packers haven't done that enough.
“At the end of the day, you can't go out there and just throw 50 times 16 games a year, just like you can't go out there and run the football successfully 16 games a year,” he said. “It's hard to do. And that's why you try to have a balanced attack and you've got to be able to week in and week out, lean on different areas of your offense.”
The opponent this week thrives on balance. They have one of the best running backs in the league in Ezekiel Elliott and use him a lot. He has 29 career games in which he has carried at least 20 times and in those games the Cowboys are 23-6.
Elliott, who has more 100-yard rushing performances (21) than any other back since 2016, was in a similar situation last week as Jones. He couldn't find anywhere to run.
Elliott carried 18 times for 35 yards and a touchdown in a 12-10 loss to the New Orleans Saints. The Cowboys still managed to hand the ball off 35.8% of the time, but coach Jason Garrett left the Superdome with no illusions about the way the Cowboys need to win games.
“I think it's important to be patient and persistent with the running game, there's no question about that,” Garrett said. “If you look at how we run the ball through the years, sometimes early on in the ballgame, it's tough sledding to be consistently successful running the football.
“If you keep banging away and banging away and banging away, typically the bigger runs come as the game goes on. I think it's important to continue to do that.”
It's questionable whether Rodgers has the patience to do that. He has the option to ignore called runs and throw the ball on many plays LaFleur calls in and there have been more than a few times in which Rodgers threw the ball when sticking with the run appeared to be the better option.
Despite being in the lead an average of 44 minutes and 2 seconds per game, the Packers rank 17th in rushing attempts (24.5 per game). They are not allowing Jones to get to those bigger runs that typically come later in the game and as a result he is averaging just 3.3 yards per carry.
Except for a quarter against the Minnesota Vikings and a half dozen plays or so against the Eagles, they don't seem to be fooling anybody with their scheme. Unless the Packers figure out how to stress opposing defenses with a balanced attack, teams may follow the Eagles' lead and make Rodgers beat them with 40 or 50 pass attempts.
“You want for the defense to have to cover everybody and not just have to defend the pass or just defend the run,” offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said. “You want to be able to have play action, drop back, (use) the run game, outside zone, inside zone. You want to do a lot of different things so that they have to defend a lot.”
Maybe it will be easier to be balanced with Adams out with turf toe, but it's going to take a commitment on LaFleur and Rodgers' part to do it. If the Eagles game is any indication, they don't have the patience for it.