The Packers finally have a defense worthy of their offense

The Packers dominated everywhere but the scoreboard thanks to three turnovers. They won because a good defense has finally arrived.

Oct 21, 2024

Good morning!

On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers came back to beat the Houston Texans 24-22 in a thriller thanks to one of their best defensive performances of recent vintage and the team’s newest player. It is now the team’s signature win of the young 2024 season.

Today's edition of The Leap dives into this defensive evolution, tries to make sense of Jordan Love riding a thin line between aggressive and reckless, and more.

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What changed about the Packers defense that led to Sunday’s dominant performance?

Peter Bukowski: First, here is some perspective on what we witnessed Sunday. There have only been four other quarterbacks this century to finish with 55 net passing yards or fewer against the Packers: Joe Harrington in 2004, Kyle Orton in ‘05, Tarvaris Jackson in ‘06, Justin Fields in 2022, and now C.J. Stroud. Other than Stroud, that’s the who’s who of the who’s not in the NFC North from the early aughts.

This was a historic performance to hold down a quarterback with the accolades and reputation of Stroud the way the Packers did. The Texans finished with 3.4 yards per play, went 4-of-13 on third down, and didn’t convert a third-and-long until their final drive. In fact, that was the first pass to convert a third down all day.

It was nearly the game-winning pass, but the defense kept the Packers in it while the offense and special teams made key mistakes.

On seemingly every third down, Jeff Hafley had an exotic blitz look for Stroud in the holster. He got free runners on the first two third downs of the game, and got stops because of them. The first limited the damage from Jordan Love’s first interception to merely a field goal. If it were for 16 points off Packers turnovers, this would have been a cruise-control win for them.

Xavier McKinney’s sack embodies the day Hafley had on third down. He shows all-out pressure -- seven men at the line of scrimmage -- only to rush four. Still, because the offensive line doesn’t know who is coming, they don’t properly account for McKinney off the edge. Meanwhile, Rashan Gary loops into the middle where both linebackers had been mugging the A gap.

It’s the second time this season Hafley has freed up his slot defender as a free rusher for a sack. The other came on Keisean Nixon’s sack-fumble of Sam Darnold during Green Bay’s furious comeback attempt against the Minnesota Vikings.

Teams that lose the turnover battle minus-three lose over 90% of the time. The fact Jordan Love and the Packers offense even had a chance to win the game on the final drive results directly from the Packers holding down the Texans offense for nearly the entire game.

Love played sharp football … except for two terrible interceptions. How do we square those two things?

PB: This is who Love is and he’s not going to apologize for it.

No, literally. He didn’t apologize for it after the game when asked about his aggressive mistakes.

“You can’t try to not be aggressive and take checkdowns all day,” Love said, adding, “You have to be aggressive and go win those games. I’m going to play the way I play, learn from the mistakes, and grow from them.”

On Love’s first interception, converted safety Jalen Pitre came off his assignment to make a terrific play on the ball. Love probably needs to get that ball outside to Romeo Doubs who had a terrific day, leading the Packers in receiving and constantly getting open against one-on-one coverage with Houston’s best cornerback, Derek Stingley Jr.

But Love’s second was just an air mail against pressure. Those happen. They are the mistakes you can live with. On the play, Christian Watson is open and has a chance to create a big play if his quarterback gives him the opportunity with a ball down in the strike zone. We’ve seen Love drive the ball in situations against pressure like that.

But some of the decision-making has been below the standard this year. The Will Levis-like pick-six aside, there was the near-pick-six against the Philadelphia Eagles as well. Those acts of desperation, of poor decision-making, are out of character for him based on what we saw last year when he was one of the best quarterbacks in the league avoiding negative plays.

He remains nearly impossible to sack, leading the NFL in pressure-to-sack rate by a mile. However, his turnover-worthy play rate as measured by Pro Football Focus has jumped up, and it’s not just a small sample size. The double-doink interception against the Vikings was just unlucky. Those plays happen. When Pitre comes off his coverage or the middle linebacker falls off the seam to make a play underneath, those can be chalked up to great plays by defenders and those will happen too.

But Love could have made life easier for himself in this game with a cleaner read and a different decision.

We can’t ignore two absolute dime touchdown passes either, or the passer rating over 95 even with the two picks. There’s no hand-waving a casual, sauntering game-winning drive where Love and Co. moved the ball with ease, that they had to slow down in Houston territory to avoid giving the ball back with too much time left on the clock.

On balance, Love played well against an elite defense, even a banged-up one. He’s going to be the reason the Packers win or he’s going to lose doing everything he can to try. It’s a trait shared by another former quarterback in Green Bay, though head coach Matt LaFleur doesn’t want to hear any Brett Favre comparisons.

It’s hard not to, but we’ll hold off here at Leap HQ for at least another week.

Put the Brandon McManus kick into some perspective

PB: Two things struck me about this. One, during the telecast, the “line to gain” graphic blared red at the 40-yard line. It struck me the first time I saw it, like, “Wait, that can’t be right.” But then I thought about it and remembered McManus has attempted multiple field goals over 60 yards in his NFL career. He has a monster leg.

The second is the pressure of that moment was immediately underrated because it led to such elation. I’m not going to do the tacky thing and count “Being sued for inappropriate sexual behavior” as adversity to overcome. No, thank you. But what the civil lawsuit did was keep McManus out of spring ball and out of training camp. He didn’t kick in the preseason.

He didn’t attempt a field goal in the game even until the 43-yard game-winner. From a purely football perspective, that is remarkable. It’s like a hitter in baseball being added to the 40-man roster, coming in cold, and hitting a pinch-hit, walk-off home run after not playing all spring.

Again, it’s not that he overcame these allegations (they were settled out of court according to McManus and his attorney), but rather that he overcame not kicking in any meaningful circumstance for months. And let’s be honest, he knew the score when he came to Green Bay. They were desperate. They’re a potential Super Bowl team that needed a capable kicker. That’s a lot of pressure on its own.

Add in McManus didn’t even kick every day of practice last week! So, forget game reps or preseason reps, hell even joint practice reps -- McManus didn’t even get a full week of normal practice reps before Sunday.

Yet he calmly drilled the biggest field goal by a Packers kicker since Mason Crosby was in town. And because Demeco Ryans tried to ice him, he did it twice.

Parting shot

PB: Midway through the third quarter, Josh Jacobs -- already the record holder for most catches with a touchdown -- broke his ignominious streak with the go-ahead score.

“It was long overdue,” Jacobs said of his first career receiving touchdown.

“We talked about it all week. At practice, they were like, ‘Man, this is the week we’re going to get you.’ We had like three or four plays in the red zone for me. So, I appreciate my coaches and my teammates wanted me to get that, calling it in that situation.”

The cool thing about this play is the Packers ran the check motion all game. Using Jacobs as a coverage tell, they’d send him on a shuffle motion to see if the linebacker or safety would move with him, looking to decipher if the Texans are playing man or zone. It’s as obvious as obvious gets in terms of using motion to get a read.

For most of the game, that’s all it was … until the Packers needed it in the low red zone. They sent Jacobs in motion to get that tell, but then ran a one-man swing screen to his side and with the angle, only had to cut back inside to get into the end zone nearly untouched. It’s a rope-a-dope maneuver off a clever way to get information from the defense: a double whammy.

It was not LaFleur's finest day. He tried to make fetch happen with a ton of trick-em-up runs that didn’t work instead of relying on downhill calls that were working. But this was a beauty.