CeeDee Lamb destroyed the Packers last year, but does Joe Barry have a better answer now?

Joe Barry, with a little help from Matt LaFleur, found some wrinkles the last two weeks to get the defense playing better, but they'll need to play their best game of the season to beat the Cowboys.

Death by a thousand cuts. Perhaps more aptly, death by a thousand dump-offs. That’s what Joe Barry wants to do. Put a roof on explosive offenses, don’t allow them to create vertically, and believe that throughout the game, they’ll make enough mistakes to be inefficient (or at least more inefficient than the Packers offense). Here’s the problem — well aside from the fact that this approach has not prevented Green Bay from giving up explosive plays — the Dallas Cowboys offense operates as ruthlessly efficiently as any in the NFL precisely because they can win consistently underneath. In other words, Barry playing his usual two-shell zone plan is putting your hand in the dog’s mouth and expecting it not to bite.

The good news for Green Bay is they already have a plan for stopping the Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb: they used it last year to shut down Justin Jefferson in Week 17 … well, sort of. They’re going to have to tweak their plan just enough to make things complicated which is troubling considering the defensive coordinator in question has not handled “complicated” well.

Oh, and when these two teams played last year, Lamb ate them alive. Their last plan failed, but we’ve seen them execute a version that can work.

When Matt LaFleur declined to fire Joe Barry after the debacle at home against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, LaFleur insisted it was in part because he’d seen this defense led by Barry, play well before.

“I’ve seen us execute this stuff before,” LaFleur said in response to questions about Barry’s future. “So, it’s unfortunate that it happened at this time of the year in such an important game. But I’ve seen us execute it earlier in the year or in previous games.

And he’s right. The plan against the Vikings last year was masterful, using Jaire Alexander to shadow Justin Jefferson, send help regularly, and play physically at the line of scrimmage to throw off the timing of every play. Remember, that Vikings game came after the Cowboys tilt, a game in which Alexander did not shadow Lamb.

What’s more, some of the approaches the Packers have taken the last few weeks to take down below-average quarterbacks, just won’t work against Prescott. He’s the second-highest graded starting signal caller in the league under pressure by Pro Football Focus grading with the second-lowest turnover-worthy play rate in those situations. Green Bay blitzed Jaren Hall, Nick Mullens, and Justin Fields, but they’re not going to rattle Prescott.

That’s not to say some of their efforts would be in vain. Barry may have found something with the five-man pressures he dialed up the last few weeks. It’s the same wrinkle Raheem Morris went to in the L.A. Rams Super Bowl run and an approach that worked particularly well in the Super Bowl against Joe Burrow, a similarly adept pre and post-snap processor.