It wasn’t a pretty performance by the Packers offense in their 20-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams, but unlike for much of the season, Green Bay had a run game to lean on over the course of four quarters.
The final numbers produced by Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon don’t leap off the stat sheet by any means. Jones averaged 3.7 yards per carry on 20 attempts, while Dillon averaged 4.4, and combined there was only one run of 10 or more yards. However, to truly be effective, a run game doesn’t need chunk run after chunk run. But what it did do by stacking up positive plays was take the playmaking burden off of Jordan Love and the passing game.
“It definitely opens things up,” said Matt LaFleur about the run game following the win. “It felt like in the first half, when we were calling passes some bad things were happening.
“Anytime you’re able to do that, that means you’re moving the sticks as well. You’re doing a good job on third down. You’re just able to get into a much better rhythm. I felt that today and it helps everybody. It helps him (Jordan Love), it helps me as a play-caller, and it usually leads to a winning performance.”
Coming into Sunday’s game against the Rams, the Packers were averaging just 3.8 yards per rush, which ranked 21st, and even that figure was bolstered by a number of scrambles by Love. This inability to move the ball on the ground has contributed to the Packers being behind the sticks, and too often in long down-and-distance situations.
At that point, the offense is one-dimensional as they find themselves in predictable passing situations, which allows the defense to do the dictating, with an inexperienced passing game tasked with digging the offense out of these holes. The outcome of these situations – which is not only a product of the run game woes – is a lot of what we saw a week ago against Minnesota, and a further trickle-down effect of all this that LaFleur mentioned following the Vikings’ game is the offense never fully being able to get into its gameplan.
Against the Rams, however, we saw the pendulum swing in the other direction. The run game helped keep the Packers out of predictable passing situations and the offense found some rhythm. Along those lines, it helped set up play-action and, in general, opened up opportunities in the passing game. As a result, Love put together an efficient performance, completing 20-of-26 passes and averaging 8.8 yards per catch. To put it simply, things came much easier for the passing game. On third downs, the Packers converted 50 percent of their attempts. For some context, Philadelphia led the NFL in third down success rate coming into Week 9, converting 50 percent of their attempts.
“It’s awesome,” said Love about the run game. “I think it just helps open up more things downfield. Just being able to lean on that run game and just know that we are going to pound out those yards, just keep pushing the ball downfield and I think it’s demoralizing for the defense being able to run the ball well and that’s what we did.
“Credit to the O-line, the running backs, tight ends, everybody blocking. It was a good feeling to get that running game going today.”
Having Jones back at full capacity certainly helped the Packers run game. As already mentioned, although he averaged just 3.7 yards per rush, Jones had 20 attempts and has the ability to turn most touches into a positive play, which going back to the previous point of emphasis, keeps the offense out of second and third downs of eight-plus yards.
“It was very big,” said Love about getting Jones back at full capacity. “Anytime you have a player like that you want to give him the ball as much as you can. Get him going, get him into a rhythm, and I think that’s what we did early. We were getting him some touches. Getting him going. He balled out. He was able to make some really good runs. Had a couple good catches. But like I said, anytime you can get him going, get him in a rhythm, it’s big time.”
In addition to Jones getting more touches, the offensive line performed better, and “balled out,” as Love put it. They were able to create consistent running lanes for both him and Dillon. There were a few games prior to this one where the blocking up front was so poor that I’m not sure it would have matter how many touches Jones got those weeks.
LaFleur summed things up well after the game saying that improvements were made, but that they are still far from being a finished product. Green Bay’s success in the run game was a key contributor to those improvements, both for the offense as a whole and what we saw from Love. If this unit is going to continue trend in the right direction, this performance on the ground needs to become the norm rather than the outlier.
