Special teams were a season-long dilemma for the Green Bay Packers. The third phase eventually cost the team when it mattered most in their season-ending playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
Currently, most people are calling for the firing of special teams coordinator Maurice Drayton. As an in-house hire after the firing of Shawn Mennenga, Drayton struggled to solve any of the issues left behind by his predecessor. In fact, it got worse.
According to Rick Gosselin’s special team rankings, the Packers finished dead last in 2021. The previous year, they were 29th.
However, Matt LaFleur has yet to make any changes. For the time being, Drayton is still the special teams’ coordinator while the team reflects on what exactly went wrong over the last five months.
“We’ve got to look at everything,” LaFleur said during his season-ending press conference. “We’ve got to look at everything and, if we feel like we can improve in certain areas, then we’ll make tough decisions. But we’re not remotely close to getting into that at this point in time.”
One area that Green Bay could improve upon when it comes to special teams’ operation is implementing more starters. The 49ers had no drawbacks about using prominent players in certain spots if it was for the betterment of the team.
“San Francisco had a lot of their starters on special teams,” LaFleur said. “That’s going to be something that I want to do some studies around the league and see how many teams operate that way.”
That proved to be the difference in the game. San Francisco’s special teams’ unit was not exactly a weapon- ranked 25th on Gosselin’s list- but it would good enough to give them the winning edge in a crucial game.
The Packers will try to learn from this mistake that was undoubtedly avoidable. Let’s look at three players who could have played a much larger role on special teams to avoid the disaster of this past season.
