It’s not as bad at Green Bay as it seems.

It’s not as bad at Green Bay as it seems.

Okay, on the field it’s pretty bad.  

Offensively, they are young. The youngest in the NFL. They’re also a mess.  

They haven’t scored a first-half touchdown in 5 straight games and have scored a combined 9 points in those first halves. Jordan Love, the first-round pick who sat behind Aaron Rodgers for three years, is 27th in the NFL in success rate and 18th in EPA per dropback.  

Their star, expensive, left tackle David Bakhtiari is done early for what feels like the 100th year in a row after having had the sorts of chronic knee issues that you haven’t seen since John Coleman’s career ended early.  

Its leading receiver, rookie Jayden Reed, has only 314 yards. 

Defensively, even though they’re highly pedigreed, aren’t much better.  

 Their collection of first-round picks on that side of the ball is mesmerizing: Jaire Alexander, Kenny Clark, Quay Walker, Rashan Gary, Devonte Wyatt, Eric Stokes, and Darnell Savage were all drafted in the first round. All of them play consistently. 

 The numbers, and the eye test, however, show them to be mediocre. They’re 17th in defensive EPA per play, 12th in opponent yards per play, and 17th in red zone defensive efficiency. Beyond that, despite the draft pedigree, they really struggle defensively to make splash plays and give the offense shortfields, sitting 29th in takeaways.  

They’re like David O. Russell’s Amsterdam on defense. Star-studded. Mediocre. 

In terms of the head coach, it’s hard to know how good he is.  

Warren Sharp: The Packers Have a Coaching ProblemMatt LeFleur – A mystery

They’ve been extremely sloppy this season, sitting 5th in the league in total flags and 11th in yards lost due to penalties, despite having already had their bye and playing one fewer game than most of the other teams near the top of the list. Against Minnesota they were particularly horrific in this area, committing 11 penalties for 99 yards. It’s getting worse. 

Matt LaFleur’s offensive genius status has also taken a hit this year as he hasn’t been able to find easy buttons for Jordan Love to push. It’s starting to become worth wondering whether Aaron Rodgers was the easy button, instead of an inbuilt structural advantage that LaFluer thought up.  

 They can’t properly space the field, can’t get anything explosive going, and also can’t matriculate the ball down the field. They can’t do much of anything.  

I say it’s hard to know about the coaching because LaFleur was so excellent early in his head coaching career and Green Bay did so many interesting things. Is this a LaFleur issue or is it a young team that doesn’t know its head from its arse?  

I think it’s likely that it’s the latter. And that’s why it isn’t as bad as it seems, despite the 400 words of stats that say it’s pretty bad for Green Bay.  

It’s bad because it was meant to be bad, especially on offense. 

After having traded Aaron Rodgers with his $40 million dead cap charge, Green Bay is third in the NFL in dead cap space behind the Rams and the Buccaneers, both of whom have mortgaged their futures for Super Bowls in the recent past.  

Because of this, Green Bay is skimping on their offense. They have allocated less than $40 million cap dollars to the 19 offensive players on their current active roster, essentially 17% of the 2023 cap. That is less than they’re spending on Aaron Rodgers to rehab his Achilles in New York, and 7% less than Arizona who are second-bottom in the league.  

Their biggest cap number on offense is running back Aaron Jones who makes less than $8.2m against the cap. 

The fact that they are trotting out Jordan Love in three-receiver sets with Romeo Doubs, Jayden Reed, and Christian Watson is not a bug. Obviously, they would prefer for Love to have shown a little more this season, but, simply, they haven’t helped him out.   The real issues, and the issues they perhaps did not foresee but should have, have come on defense. They’re 12th in the league against cap spending but third in cash spending on defense after having restructured or extended virtually all of their top defensive players.  

Defensively, it was meant to be good and it isn’t. This has long been the case for the Packers who have had hyper-talented defenses for a number of years but have struggled to turn that into good defensive performances.  

Defensive coordinator Joe Barry came under significant fire last season, and the season before that, for making talented defenses look bad. He was brought in to install the two-high, Fangio-style defensive shell philosophy that has taken the league by storm and has been largely responsible for NFL offenses sitting at 20-25-year lows in points per game, red zone efficiency, EPA per play, explosive play rate or really any offensive metric that’s worth looking at. 

In theory, he’s succeeded, consistently showing light boxes and two-high shells. But his version of that two-high look is just a dupe of the real thing. It looks the part, then starts breaking at the seams, even despite the weight of talent. They’re mediocre because of the talent and despite the coaching. Not the other way around.  

The offense was almost meant to be as bad as it is, but the best-case scenario is there: all the young players develop together and Love is able to grow as the talent around him grows. It will also all get less dire as inflated deals get off the books and the big dead money charges get wiped. This is the first year for Green Bay to clean the slate on offense.  

 Defense is a slightly different story. While this isn’t an old defense, it’s not getting any younger or any cheaper with Rashan Gary signing his big extension. Green Bay’s hope, reasonably, has to be that with better coaching defensively and natural improvement offensively, this team has the bones to become a fairly well-rounded squad in the next 2-3 years. 

 So, it’s bad for Green Bay, but not as bad as it appears.