Paving the way to the title game
Offensive line overpowers top-ranked Rams defense
GREEN BAY - It was just a simple high-five.
The Green Bay Packers were closing in on a NFC divisional playoff victory over the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday at Lambeau Field and right tackle Rick Wagner and tight end Marcedes Lewis had just caved in the left side of the Rams' No. 1-ranked defense.
It had allowed quarterback Aaron Rodgers to run a bootleg fake to his right and complete a 12-yard pass to tight end Robert Tonyan on second and 9 at the Rams 45-yard line. Given the Packers had a 14-point lead, a new set of downs with a mere 31⁄2 minutes left in the game was the final insult.
Seeing the result of the play, Wagner and Lewis high-fived in an exhausted kind of way and returned to the huddle to finish off a 32-18 victory that will send the Packers right back here for the NFC Championship game next Sunday.
It was in celebration of a job well done along the entire front line.
“Every week we start out with the same approach and that is you have to keep a defense off-balance,” coach Matt LaFleur said of his offensive front, which controlled the line of scrimmage all game and gained the most yards (484) of any Rams opponent this season. “The way you do that is you have to have the ability to run the football.
“Although it might not always pretty, our guys do a hell of a job. Just a great group of men. They're professionals. They care about each other and they care about this football team. Just a very, very special group.”
In some ways, the Packers are turning the old adage that defense wins championships into offensive line play wins championship.
The way this offense piles up yards both on the ground and through the air, keeps its quarterback's jersey clean game after game and weekly sends a message that it doesn't matter who lines up where, the standard can never change.
The current offensive line isn't what LaFleur expected it to be coming into the playoffs, but even with the loss of right guard Lane Taylor in Week 1 and left tackle David Bakhtiari before the Tennessee game and even a COVID-19 positive test from veteran Jared Veldheer two days after he was signed to the roster, very little changes.
Somehow, not only did the line figure out how to neutralize Donald (no sacks, one tackle assist) – who to be fair wasn't near 100% because of a rib injury – but it shut down outside rusher Leonard Floyd, who had 101⁄2 sacks in the regular season and was coming off a two-sack game against Seattle in the Rams' wild-card victory.
Floyd finished with three tackles and no sacks, tackles for loss or quarterback hits.
The trio of Elgton Jenkins, Corey Linsley and Lucas Patrick did yeoman's work in the run game, but without right guard/right tackle/left tackle Billy Turner protecting Rodgers' blindside, the Packers might have been in a world of hurt.
Instead, Rodgers was not sacked and was knocked to the ground just once.
“Honestly, I know Elgton and Lucas get a lot of credit for what they did (against Donald),” Linsley said. “But I can't say enough about Billy Turner, what he's brought switching out to left tackle.
"Dave is paid extremely well for a reason. It's an extremely difficult position to play.
And then there is Wagner, who is playing on two bad knees but somehow continues to log quality snaps. General manager Brian Gutekunst signed Veldheer in part so he would have protection if Wagner's legs gave out, but the way he played against the Rams, there was no worry about that.
Coming into this game, the most any team had gained against the Rams was 390 yards put up by San Francisco in Week 6. The most rushing yards they had given up was 136.
It's true that Donald, the likely defensive player of the year, was not able to dominate the way he had before injuring his ribs last week, but even if he were healthy it's hard to believe he could have stemmed the tide of a power run game that banged away at the No. 3 run defense for 60 minutes.
LaFleur was able to run it 36 times for 188 yards and two touchdowns against the Rams, who had held seven of their last 10 regular-season opponents under 100 yards rushing. The backs combined to average 5.8 yards per carry, but if you take away Aaron Jones' 60-yard run, it was 4.0, which was more than it seemed given the way the Packers had to grind out drives.
“Their defense does a great job of throwing looks at you,” Linsley said.
Most often, the Rams have five players up at the line of scrimmage and they don't need to blitz a lot because Donald, Floyd and the rest of the group can get pressure on their own. But rather than throw into the zone coverages coordinator Brandon Staley likes to run, LaFleur and Rodgers took the dare to run the ball and went with it.
He ran it five times on a 12-play, 63yard drive that ended up in a field goal on the offense's first possession. He ran it nine times on a 14-play, 84-yard drive that resulted in receiver Davante Adams' 1-yard touchdown and a 10-3 Packers lead.
At halftime, the Packers had run it 18 times for 74 yards and Rodgers had completed 14 of 20 passes for 169 yards and a touchdown.
What made it all pay off in the end was that Rodgers did not feel the need to check to a run alert on the first play of the third quarter. Despite an unscouted look the Rams gave the offensive line coming out of the half, Rodgers stuck with the run and Aaron Jones busted it up the middle for 60 yards.
It was a punch right in the gut of the Rams, who thought they were starting to figure things out. Four plays later, Jones scored on a 1-yard run and the Packers were ahead, 25-10.
Jones finished the game with 14 carries for 99 yards. Jamaal Williams chipped in 12 carries for 65 yards. And rookie AJ Dillon added six carries for 27 yards, exiting with a thigh injury after nearly losing a fumble.
LaFleur kept running similar plays all game long until the Rams got lulled into thinking Rodgers was going to keep doing what he was doing. But then he faked a handoff in a two-tight end running formation and hit receiver Allen Lazard for a 58-yard touchdown to seal up the game.
The way the Packers manhandled the NFL's No. 1 defense has to give them a better feeling that they can handle anything their opponent next week – the winner of New Orleans-Tampa Bay – throws at them.
Even the debacle that was the earlyseason loss to the Buccaneers isn't enough to make the Packers think they can't move the ball on anyone put in front of them.
“This gives us a lot of confidence,” center Corey Linsley said. “Aaron (Donald) was playing through an injury but their whole defense has a lot of good guys. They're the No. 1 scoring defense for a reason. As a whole, that gives this team a lot of confidence moving forward.”