By any standard, Aaron Rodgers is enjoying one of the most remarkable seasons in his slam-dunk, first-ballot, future Hall of Fame career. Through the first 14 games of the season, Rodgers, at age 37, leads the league in touchdown passes (40), touchdown percentage (8.4), low interception percentage (0.8), quarterback rating (118.0), QBR (83.5), Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (8.66), and only Patrick Mahomes ranks higher in DYAR and DVOA.
In a season that began with Rodgers and many Packers fans expressing dismay at the franchise’s selection of Utah State quarterback Jordan Love with the 26th overall pick, and no real reinforcements for a questionable receiver corps outside of Davante Adams, Rodgers has thrived in head coach Matt LaFleur’s offense, which features motion and play-action concepts designed to befuddle every defense it faces.
However, two defenses Rodgers has faced this season tripped him up something fierce. Both come from the NFC South, and while neither has been consistent through the season, both the Buccaneers’ defense, run by Todd Bowles, and the Panthers’ defense, run by Phil Snow, forced Rodgers to perform far below his seasonal standing. Against Tampa Bay in a a 38-10 Week 6 loss, Rodgers completed 16 of 35 passes for 160 yards, no touchdowns, and two interceptions. Rodgers’ 35.4 quarterback rating was the third-worst of his career, and his Adjusted Yards Per Attempt was the worst he’d ever experienced in any game where he had at least 10 passing attempts.
After that game, however, Pissed-Off Aaron Rodgers was unleashed, and the rest of the NFL had to feel the burn. From Week 7 against the Texans through Week 14 against the Lions, Rodgers was entirely en fuego, completing 198 of 274 passes for 2,311 yards, 26 touchdowns, and two interceptions. It appeared that no other defense could do to Rodgers what the Bucs’ defense did.
Then, Rodgers came up against a Panthers defense that was fresh off a 32-27 loss to the Broncos in which Drew Lock was allowed to throw four touchdown passes, and this looked for all the world like an early Christmas present for a quarterback of Rodgers’ caliber.
Spoiler: It wasn’t.
The Packers beat the Panthers 24-16 to move to 11-3 and maintain their status as the NFC’s one-seed, but Rodgers was anything but spectacular, completing 20 of 29 passes for 160 yards and one touchdown. It was the only other game this season in which Rodgers’ yards per attempt fell below 5.0 — beyond the Buccaneers and Panthers games, his lowest YPA came against the Vikings, and that was 7.10. Rodgers’ 91.6 quarterback rating marked the only other game this season in which it fell below 100, and his five sacks marked the only other time he’d experienced more than the four the Bucs put up on him — erase those two games, and Rodgers has been sacked nine other times this season.
“This is one of those disappointing wins the way that we played in the second half. So I have a sour taste in my mouth how we played in the second half,” Rodgers told NFL Network following the Panthers game. “We’ve got to get back to the drawing board. That kind of football is not going to beat a lot of teams. We won the game, we’re 11-3. It’s been a successful season so far, but we’ve got plans about making a run and the way we played on offense we’re not going to beat anybody in the playoffs.”
Rodgers wasn’t done getting forensic about it.
“I think we just haven’t put together a four-quarter game,” he said in his postgame press conference. “We’ve had some really good stretches, I think, just not four quarters of football way too many times. Tonight we had a couple good quarters and a couple stinkers. That’s just not consistent winning football, so we’ve got to figure out offensively what happened there in the second half and get ready for a good football team coming in.”
That good football team would be the Tennessee Titans, who might be looking to see what the common denominators were between the Buccaneers’ defensive performance and the whupping the Panthers put on Rodgers.
The good news for the Titans is that the common denominators are easy to spot. The bad news is that the Titans might not have the personnel to twist Rodgers into similar schisms.
What are those common denominators? Multiple front concepts to confuse and delay protection rules, and aggressive coverage aligned with those front concepts. Both the Bucs and Panthers put on master classes of these two elements against the Packers.
Green Bay’s offensive line has been better than average this season — only tackle Billy Turner and guard Lucas Patrick have allowed more than one sack this season, and left tackle David Bakhtiari, center Corey Linsley, and multi-position stud Elgton Jenkins are each among the best in the league. But this line has not been stable enough against defensive lines that throw off gap responsibilities and protection rules. This was very evident on Rodgers’ interception to cornerback Jamel Dean — which Dean returned 32 yards for a touchdown.
The first thing you should notice about this play is how the Buccaneers made the Packers wait to decipher which defensive linemen were standing up, and which had their hands on the ground. Bowles did a brilliant job from snap to snap switching this up, which made it very hard for Rodgers and his linemen to agree on protections. Rodgers was sacked five times and suffered 13 quarterback hits in this game, but it wasn’t just the pressure that was the problem — Rodgers was also confounded by dropping defenders and blitzing defenders from difficult angles. This caused Rodgers to doubt his short and intermediate reads as you will rarely see him do.
“We were able to get after Aaron,” head coach Bruce Arians said. “Once we got the running game shut down it was just a matter of getting after him, and Todd did a great job with multiple looks and coverages.”
On the interception in question, Dean said after the game that when receiver Davante Adams motioned from bunch right to stack left, he understood where Rodgers was likely to throw the ball — to his favorite receiver.
“When I saw the formation and then how everything started to develop, I’m like, ‘I have to make this play because I know what’s coming.’” Dean concluded. “Then, once I saw him throw it, I was like yeah, it’s mine.”
The Buccaneers had five defenders at the line of scrimmage pre-snap with what appeared to be Cover-0 behind — aggressive blitz coverage with no safety help to the deep third. It was a blitz, but not the one Rodgers expected. Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. and linebacker Lavonte David dropped into coverage from the line, and cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting blitzed from the defensive left side. Meanwhile, safeties Mike Edwards and Jordan Whitehead dropped from that alleged pre-snap Cover-0 look to two deep out of Bowles’ big nickel package, and Dean was more than ready to jump Adams’ route.
“I think we needed a kick in the ass a little bit,” Rodgers said after the loss. “There’s a little bit of wake-up to stop feeling ourselves so much and get back to the things that got us to this position. I think this would be, unfortunately but fortunately, something we can really grow from.”
Like the Buccaneers, the Panthers showed three-lineman base looks and dropped into coverage with different converging defenders, and it had the same effect. Snow, Carolina’s first-year defensive coordinator, was quite aware of the need to dial up what Rodgers called a “strange” defense.
“It’s a lot of principles you see at the college level — the 3-3-5 stuff, very strange alignments,” Rodgers said, per Joe Person of The Athletic. “They played very soft in the secondary with a lot of two-high and even some, I don’t even know what you call it, but it’s like five guys are high. The pressure package, I felt like we picked up pretty good. It was more of the four-man rush when we didn’t have guys open that gave us problems.”
Rodgers’ sacks started when the Packers were already up, 21-3, and that started a series of five straight drives in which Green Bay punted, including two three-and-outs, after opening the game with three straight touchdown drives. Not unlike the ways in which the Buccaneers opened up a can on Rodgers when they were already down, 10-0. The third Panthers sack, which came with 9:58 left in the third quarter, was an excellent example of how the Panthers were able to blow Green Bay’s protection rules with front movement.
Pre-snap, the Panthers have what could be an nine-man box, with a four-man front and defensive back Myles Hartsfield (No. 38), linebacker Shaq Thompson (No. 54), cornerback Juston Burris (No. 31), safety Jeremy Chinn (No. 21), and safety Tre Boston (No. 33) near the line to confuse everything. Cornerback Rasul Douglas is the only obvious defender outside the paint, which should give Rodgers an indicator that at least one safety is going to spin out. Pre-snap, Burris is already doing just that, flying back to cover the deep third.
At the snap, Boston and Hartsfield drop into curl/flat responsibility, Thompson and Chinn move to hook/curl, and Douglas and Burris roll deep. Rodgers doesn’t have time to diagnose it, because the protection is an absolute mess, and the Panthers go into Shark Week mode.
If you can get pressure with your base down linemen and confuse an offensive line with who’s rushing and who’s covering, every week is Shark Week. The Titans, who face off against what will definitely be another Pissed-Off Aaron Rodgers on Sunday night, have the NFL’s worst pressure rate at 16.9%, and the league’s fewest sacks with 14. They also have a secondary that has been less than optimal all season, especially in man coverage, and that’s entirely intertwined with the inability to create consistent pressure. But if the Titans are able to follow the advanced architecture created by Todd Bowles and Phil Snow, it would certainly help. This is also a memo for any team preparing to face the Packers in the postseason:
Advanced pressure spinning into advanced coverage. It’s the best blueprint for modern defense, and it’s the best way to stop this particular quarterback.
