Turner fills big shoes with ease
GREEN BAY – Last week an assistant coach who works for a rival in the NFC West offered this about playing the Los Angeles Rams:
If likely NFL defensive player of the year Aaron Donald is in your backfield on seven or eight plays in the first half, you're in big trouble.
Well, in the divisional round of the playoffs Saturday night, not only did Donald barely get a sniff of the Green Bay Packers' backfield, none of his teammates did either.
That was a big reason the Packers handled the league's No. 1 defense, 32-18 at Lambeau Field. The Packers' offensive line, even minus All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari, dominated Donald and the Rams' well-respected defensive line.
The Packers' star very well might have been Billy Turner, who played so well in place of Bakhtiari that there was barely a discernible drop-off. There surely are some matchups where the Packers would feel Bakhtiari's absence, but Saturday against the Rams was not one of them.
Center Corey Linsley and left guard Elgton Jenkins were key as well. They elevated the play of everyone around them.
Coming into this game the Rams were giving up an average of only 92.1 rushing yards a game, 3.8 yards a rush and 198 yards passing. By the halftime signpost the aforementioned coach talked about, the Packers had rushed for 74 yards and their running backs (Aaron Jones, Jamaal Williams and AJ Dillion)
were averaging 4.2 yards per carry. They’d put up 169 passing yards, and Aaron Rodgers was halfway through a game in which he was never sacked.
One sign of the Packers’ control of the line of scrimmage was that until Rodgers’ three kneel downs in victory formation at the end of the game, the Packers had only one run of zero or negative yardage. One. Their line never let the Rams move back the line of scrimmage and almost always got at least a little push.
The Packers’ first offensive play gave an indication of what was to come. It was a nondescript play, a 2-yard run by Jones on an inside zone. But Jenkins, the ascending second-year pro, shot off the line and knocked Donald to the ground as the NFL’s best defensive player tried to shoot through the gap off Jenkins’ left shoulder.
On the Packers’ next run, two snaps later, Jenkins blocked Donald one-onone, and Dillon ran through the hole between Jenkins and Linsley for a 9-yard gain. That was an early sign the Packers would be able to run the ball just fine.
Donald wasn’t his usual self playing with a rib-cartilage injury that limited him to 40 snaps (53 percent), but the Packers still had to block him up, and Jenkins did.
The ultimate play of the Packers’ domination of the line of scrimmage was Jones’ 60-yard run through the heart of the Rams’ defense on the first play of the third quarter. , Jenkins and right guard Lucas Patrick blocked defensive tackles Morgan Fox and Sebastian Joseph-Day one-on-one, which allowed Linsley to shoot out and wall off safety John Johnson III in the middle of the field. Jones had a huge hole right up Linsley’s back and ran a full 25 yards before he was even touched.
Turner, in the meantime, has continued to improve in his two seasons with the Packers after signing a deal as a free agent that averages $7 million a year. Of course, it’s his pass blocking that will get the notice in this game — Rodgers had time to throw all day and was hit only once — but Turner’s run blocking deserves notice, too.
The play that jumped out most was Jones’ 1-yard touchdown run a few plays after his 60-yard run. Turner isn’t a road
Green Bay offensive tackle Billy Turner helped make life easy for Aaron Rodgers against the Los Angeles Rams.
grader, but on second-and-goal, he rooted 305-pound Michael Brockers and pushed him a yard into the end zone. Jones ran right behind him for the easy touchdown.
The Packers are in a virtuous cycle right now where their run game is helping their pass game, and vice versa. Allen Lazard’s 58-yard touchdown catch that put the game away in the fourth quarter was the culmination of that Saturday. Safeties Johnson and Jordan Fuller got caught barreling up field on the play fake to Jones, which left Lazard running free behind the last line of defense for the deep shot.
And while a lot goes into putting up 32 points against the NFL’s top-rated defense, the Packers’ offensive line was the foundation of that virtuous cycle Saturday.
Cornering the market
Saturday saw two of the NFL’s premier cornerbacks on opposite sides of the field, and the Packers’ Jaire Alexander showed better than the Rams’ Jalen Ramsey in this game.
To be fair, Ramsey had the tougher assignment.
He had to go against the NFL’s likely MVP (Rodgers) and matched up plenty with All-Pro receiver Davante Adams. And it’s not likely the Packers picked on Ramsey. But they did throw at him a few times, whereas, in the ultimate show of respect for a cover man, the Rams essentially didn’t even bother challenging Alexander.
The Rams went at Alexander once early, on the game’s third play, a thirdand-6. On that play, Robert Woods, who had 90 receptions this season, actually beat Alexander on a slant, but Preston Smith tipped the pass at the line of scrimmage and caused the incompletion.
The Rams didn’t go at Alexander again until the fourth quarter, when they tried to throw Woods a screen. Defending that play has become one of Alexander’s signatures because of his aggressiveness in closing and physical tackling. On he closed so fast from off coverage that right tackle Rob Havenstein had no chance of getting out to block him. Alexander dropped Woods for a 3-yard loss.
Ramsey, on the other hand, had a few passes come his way. He matched with Adams enough, but the Packers also lined up Adams in the slot regularly, and Ramsey didn’t follow when he did. Among Adams’ nine receptions was a one-yard touchdown in the second quarter in which he went in motion left, and Ramsey followed him, then reversed that motion and at full speed beat Ramsey to the boundary for the score. Later in the second quarter Adams beat Ramsey on a slant for a 12-yard gain.
Rodgers even went at Ramsey in the second quarter with another receiver, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who caught a 6-yard hitch in front of the All-Pro cornerback.
Alexander finished this season with 13 passes defensed, down from 23 last year. But there’s a good reason for that. Teams just aren’t throwing at him this season.
Extra points
Preston Smith has played better in the season’s stretch run and made two big plays Saturday, twice using his height (6-feet-5) and length to block third-down passes at the line of scrimmage. The first was on the game’s first series when his tipped pass prevented the first-down completion to the open Woods. The other was on the Rams’ final third down of the game, when he knocked down a third-and-13 pass to Van Jefferson that clinched the game.
One of the reasons undrafted rookie Krys Barnes has upgraded the Packers’ inside linebacker position is his sound pass coverage. One play that was easy to miss was in the third quarter after the Packers had scored to go up 2510. On second down, Jared Goff was flushed from the pocket and wanted to check the ball down to running back Cam Akers in the flat in hopes of setting up a short third down. But Barnes had Akers blanketed so Goff threw the ball away, and on third down Kenny Clark and Rashan Gary sacked Goff to end the possession.