Facing what had been a sack-prone New York Giants offensive line, the Green Bay Packers were unable to convert any pressures into sacks against quarterback Tommy DeVito, resulting in several big scrambles.
Green Bay’s defense finished the game logging zero sacks and only two quarterback hits. In several instances, the Packers pass rushers were too far upfield, creating giant running lanes for DeVito. Between the scramble opportunities and a few read-options that Green Bay had no answers for, DeVito totaled 71 rushing yards on 7.1 yards per attempt.
“He’s a hell of a competitor,” said Matt LaFleur of DeVito at the end of the game. “Certainly, we were running by him left and right. We ended up with zero sacks, I believe, and they had 69 coming into this game. Give credit to them. They obviously out-coached us, out-played us. But I felt like, we a lot of times we had fly byes right by the quarterback and we didn’t, for whatever reason, just missed the quarterback.”
This inability to convert pressures into sacks allowed the New York offense to extend drives, with DeVito picking up chunk plays with his legs and helped keep the Giants offense ahead of the chains and out of those predictable passing situations.
Statistically speaking, the Giants entered the game with one of the worst offensive lines in football from a pass-protection standpoint. The 69 sacks given up by the Giants were the most in football by 11. As a unit, New York’s offensive line ranked 27th in ESPN’s pass-block win rate metric, and a league-high 53 percent of the previous pressures generated on DeVito turned into sacks, according to PFF.
The formula for success for this Packers defense in this game seemed fairly straightforward: limit Saquon Barkley’s impact on the ground, put the Giants in obvious passing downs, and get after DeVito, who has struggled mightily when facing pressure this season, completing only 45 percent of his throws at 4.0 yards per attempt.
For most of the game, Green Bay actually accomplished the first part, holding Barley to under 2.5 yards per rush up until those final two drives. However, what they didn’t do was convert those pressure opportunities into sacks or make DeVito all that uncomfortable, and he made the Packers defense pay.
“We obviously gave up too many chunk plays,” said LaFleur postgame. “Lost our leverage twice (on that final drive) and gave up, like I said, explosive plays. Explosive plays lead to points. You cannot do that in that critical situation. We were way off on one of the throws, they got an easy hitch and got like 10 yards. It was just bad ball.”
In a game where little went right for the Packers as a team, not coming away with any sacks and failing to take advantage of what had been a weak point for the opponent played a crucial role in a disappointing loss.
