As the Packers hunted for big plays, Tucker Kraft became the ultimate release valve

He's the best after-catch tight end in the league and he wasn't even supposed to be the starter coming into the year. How Tucker Kraft has become invaluable to the Packers offense.

Matt LaFleur and Jordan Love want to big-game hunt. No wonder a South Dakota boy who is just as comfortable in blaze orange as Green and Gold can help. When the Green Bay Packers want to dial up a shot play, Tucker Kraft isn’t the name at the top of the priority list. But it’s amazing how often he gets the ball anyway. Love gets to work touchdown-to-checkdown and when he hits Kraft on those dumpoffs, it nearly always results in a useful play for the Packers.

As part of the evolution of this offense, the Packers moved away from under-center play-action where the tight end has to lock down defensive ends one-on-one in pass protection and into designs where the tight end can block momentarily, then release. LaFleur confirmed this change came by design.

“Throughout the course of my career (play-action) is off a legit run action, where we’ve kind of gotten away from that where, with those actions, you’ve got a tight end trying to lock down a defensive end,” LaFleur said in mid-November.

“I think a lot of these (edge rushers) nowadays, they’re very tough to block. We’ve kind of gotten a little bit away from that and make sure formationally that we’re presenting the same look as we’re running the football and may be doing more chipping with the tight ends.”

Take this play from Sunday night. It is under-center play-action but instead of asking Kraft to block the Seahawks defensive end in true pass protection, the second-year tight end’s job is to get enough of the pass rusher to soften him up for Zach Tom, then become a checkdown option for Love.

If Love has a split second longer, he has a chance to hit Romeo Doubs coming open on the in-breaker and the safety who got fooled by the play-action hauling ass to get back to his responsibility. That’s the big play element in the design, but it all takes too long and the Seahwaks get pressure off the edge.

Dump it off to Kraft and he makes the rest happen, in this case an eight-yard gain to set up a 2nd-and-2.