They can’t keep up with Jones
Running back carries Packers past Cowboys
ARLINGTON, Texas - Up until Sunday, the impression Matt LaFleur’s offense left on most people was that winning the kind of game the Green Bay Packers needed to win on the road would be left to quarterback Aaron Rodgers and those tall skinny guys who catch passes.
But heading into a key NFC battle of 3-1s at AT&T Stadium, LaFleur said the heck with that and told his offensive linemen to get ready to rumble.
“Coach talked about it all week, ‘It’s going to be a physical game, so we’re going to have to out-physical them,’” left tackle David Bakhtiari said. “That was the No. 1 thing going into it. I felt like we matched and exceeded that.”
Who would have thought LaFleur, whose offense thrives on the “wide zone” rushing attack where speed and agility is more important than brute strength, would take the ball and jam it down the throat of the Dallas Cowboys in a 34-24 victory on their homefield?
The game plan started and ended with running back Aaron Jones, whose promising start to his NFL career had stalled in his first four games in LaFleur’s offense. Reverting to the inside zone game that Jones had thrived on in the Mike McCarthy offense, LaFleur told his linemen to take defenders head on and let Jones do his thing.
With Davante Adams (toe) out, Jones led the team in rushing (19 carries for 107 yards and a club-record-tying four touchdowns) and receiving (seven catches for 75 yards), providing all but one of the points the Packers needed to win this game.
LaFleur flipped the emphasis from Aaron Rodgers and Adams to Jones, believing he running back was every bit as capable of carrying the team. Rodgers played a solid game, but it was Jones and the offensive line who carried the day offensively.
“The big guys upfront were getting them moving and I was just seeing creases,” Jones said. “When you can do that, it’s just fun. You’re running and weaving through traffic. Each week I’ve been feeling more and more comfortable in the offense, so I feel like I’ve been getting better and better as the weeks go on.”
The statistics didn’t show a lot of improvement until Sunday.
Jones was averaging 3.3 yards per carry, more than 2 yards less than his career average and the rushing attack ranked 26th overall. The longest run Jones had all season was 15 yards and in three of the four games he had fewer than 40 yards rushing total.
LaFleur had to decide whether to stick with his wide zone attack or go with one that was better equipped for success against the speedy Cowboys defense. To his credit, he called inside zone runs repeatedly in the early going and made the Cowboys pay for their aggressiveness.
“It was doing kind of what we thought would work,” right tackle Bryan Bulaga said. “They’re a good front. They move a lot. They try to create issues in the run game with movement. We knew if we were able to put a hat on a hat and cut guys out of their gaps, with their movement, we could have a pretty nice day.”
Bulaga and Bakhtiari both said that the LaFleur run scheme differs some from McCarthy’s and that it has taken both the linemen and Jones some time to adjust. Jones seemed to be affected the most and wasn’t finding the big cutback lanes he had exploited in his first two seasons.
But on Sunday, everything seemed to fall into place.
“We were all on the same page,” Jones said. “Coach came up with the game plan and we focused in on it. Coming off the Philly loss, we didn’t want to take another loss. We know what kind of team we are, and we wanted to come out here and make a statement.”
LaFleur’s plan was to get Jones going early and see if he could play off of some early ground success. After a penalty
filled first series, Jones was the catalyst in two straight drives he finished with rushing touchdowns.
When he blasted through the middle for an 18-yard touchdown at the end of the first drive, he put the Cowboys on notice that they better stop him.
LaFleur mixed in some clever swing passes, crossing routes and direct snaps to Jones to keep the Cowboys off balance. In the second and third series, Jones ran a combined three times for 36 yards and caught one pass for 11 yards.
Sprinkled among those were some play-action passes and rhythm throws Rodgers completed to Marquez ValdesScantling (18 yards), Jimmy Graham (23 yards), Robert Tonyan (25 yards) and Geronimo Allison (6 yards).
“That was the biggest issue on defense, they were able to run the ball,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. “They ran the ball inside on us when we got down to the red zone a couple of times. It was very uncharacteristic of our defense.
“That’s the thing we do as well as anything. The gap discipline and just physically getting off the blocks and making plays across the board wasn’t consistent enough.”
LaFleur deserved a lot of credit for recognizing the potential of running it inside. Some coaches are so stubborn, they aren’t going to veer from their system even if the situation calls for something different.
There is plenty of tape of Jones dominating teams with his inside zone runs
Packers coach Matt LaFleur mixed things up by deciding to call inside zone runs repeatedly Sunday.
and LaFleur recognized it as the way to beat the Cowboys.
“We always try to put together the best plan as possible,” LaFleur said. “Aaron tonight, he definitely came up big. He broke a lot of tackles out there and he finished runs. We knew going into this game we had to be physical.
“We just had much more success with the inside zone today. Just coming off the football. It was really good running.”
Another solid decision LaFleur made was elevating running back Tra Carson from the practice squad to the 53-man roster and making him active ahead of rookie Dexter Williams. Carson has bounced around the NFL for awhile and LaFleur knew he was a good inside zone runner and wouldn’t make any mental mistakes.
Carson chipped in just 14 yards on six carries, but he caught four passes for 18 yards and helped give Jones a break.
The game turned into a nail-biter in the second half when Dallas’ defense tightened up, the Packers committed some crucial penalties, the pass protection started to break down and Rodgers completed 3 of 4 passes for just 19 yards in the fourth quarter.
After Dallas cut the lead to 34-24 with 7 minutes, 46 seconds left, LaFleur put the ball in Jones’ hands rather than Rodgers’ and told him to finish off the Cowboys. Jones nearly did, breaking off two 11-yard runs on the first three plays.
Even though Jones made a bad mistake on the fourth play of the drive, losing 10 yards when he tried to reverse field and turn a short loss into a gain, the early runs helped eat up some valuable minutes. Dallas didn’t get the ball back until there was 3:33 left and they failed to score again.
When it was over, there was a feeling like the running game is back.
“I definitely felt he was starting to feel a little more comfortable this game in this system,” Bakhtiari said of Jones. “He’s understanding where to press on certain runs to be effective and I think you saw the end result.”