While the Green Bay Packers offense struggled mightily against the Las Vegas Raiders, the defense held up its end of the bargain on Monday night.
In total, the Raiders scored just 17 points–14 of which fell on the defense, with one of the Jordan Love turnovers allowing Las Vegas to start deep in Green Bay territory. In the run game, the Packers held Josh Jacobs to just 3.5 yards per rush. The defense came up with three third-down sacks, forced a takeaway, and held Davante Adams to only four receptions for 45 yards.
Buy Packers Tickets“I thought our defense competed hard and did enough for us to win the game,” said Matt LaFleur afterward. “Offensively, we’ve got to find a way to score points. I think anytime you hold somebody to 17 points, I think that’s enough to win football games in this league.”
As an offense, the Raiders averaged just 4.4 yards per play. For some context, over the course of the season, that figure would rank 30th in the NFL. Las Vegas was also just 5-for-13 on third downs.
Following the Detroit game, where Green Bay was run all over by the Lions, LaFleur discussed how, philosophically, the Packers’ approach on defense had to change. Specifically mentioning that they couldn’t be so rigid with sticking to their patented shell coverage look, even in situations that don’t call for it.
At least for this week, Joe Barry got the message. Overall, we saw a much less passive approach from the Packers’ defense, who, throughout the game, was playing with an additional defender near the line of scrimmage and allowing the cornerbacks to challenge the Raiders’ receivers. This certainly helped Green Bay limit the Las Vegas run game, but it also muddied things up over the middle, where Jimmy Garoppolo likes to throw the ball, especially on quick tosses near the line of scrimmage.
Against Adams, we saw the Packers deploy a similar strategy that they used in Week 17 of last season against Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson, where whichever side of the field he was on, a safety was the cornerback’s shadow, lined up over the top, or close to it, essentially double-teaming Adams in several instances.
“In those situations, we got put on the 10 and got a stop,” said Kenny Clark. “Came up with some sacks in some critical situations that we got the ball back. Forced two missed field goals. There’s a lot of stuff to build from. We going to keep on working. Only thing we can do is get back to work and keep moving forward.”
With that said, it wasn’t as if this was a perfect performance either. The Raiders were able to convert some critical third downs on their scoring drives. Jimmy Garoppolo, in total, was pressured on just 25 percent of his dropbacks, while slants and screens, in particular, gave this defense fits. Las Vegas was also 2-for-3 in the red zone.
Although, overall, we saw a less passive version of this defense, the Raiders did exploit a few opportunities when the safeties were deep, or the cornerbacks were providing cushion, not to mention that Preston Smith ended up covering Adams on play.
“There’s always plays where you can be better,” added Clark. There’s always plays where that can tilt the game. Like I said earlier, we’ve got to be more consistent. Proud of how we played and how we fought. We gave up 17, so good job there, but at the end of the day, we’ve still got to find that consistency. Some of those plays shouldn’t have been as big as they were. We got to just fix them.”
It certainly hasn’t always been pretty for this Green Bay defense, whether talking about their most recent performance or the season in general, but as Andy Herman of the Pack-A-Day podcast pointed out, in Week 1, the defense surrendered just 14 meaningful points with six coming in garbage time. In Week 3, the defense allowed just 10 points to New Orleans, and as already mentioned, they were responsible for only 14 points this week.
In today’s NFL, that should be three wins for the Packers. Coming off of a disappointing performance against the Lions, the defense made adjustments and outperformed a subpar offensive opponent. The Green Bay offense, however, did not and ultimately is to blame for this loss.
“I think at this point it’s pretty obvious that the defense has to not give up any touchdowns,” said Jaire Alexander after the game. “I think that’s the part of being self-critical of our defense because the offense is pretty young and they’re still figuring out their mojo.”
