Consistency, tackling, and limiting the big play are all areas that defensive coordinator Joe Barry told reporters on Tuesday that the Green Bay Packers defense could improve. However, his biggest emphasis will be on making his unit better situationally.
Situational football includes third downs, red zone defense, and the two-minute drill — all key moments and plays within a football game, and also all areas where the Packers have to clean things up.
“Situational football,” said Barry when asked where the Green Bay defense has to improve. “Usually, NFL football games, they’re close games. There’s very few blowouts in this league, and most of the time, those games come down to four, five, or maybe six or seven plays. And if the result of those handful of plays are different, that’s the difference between winning and losing a football game. A lot of times, those go into situational football. It goes into third down, it goes into the red zone, it goes into two-minute.”
On third downs, the Packers actually got off the field quite well, ranking eighth in third down conversion rate last season. Where that stat may be misleading, however, is that opponents often didn’t even have to get to third down against the Packers. The 11.4 third down attempts per game that Green Bay allowed were the fewest in football.
What this means is that, oftentimes, opponents either moved the chains on first or second down, or the Packers were able to put them in third-and-long situations and then frequently got a stop. So it’s not third down where Green Bay has to improve, but on early downs, and that begins with being better against the run, where they ranked 28th last season, allowing 5.0 yards per carry, along with being a more sound tackling team.
As a red zone defense, the Packers again didn’t rank all that bad, finishing above league average, allowing the 11th fewest red zone touchdown rate in 2022. But again, to take this one step further, they did rank in the bottom third in red zone scoring attempts per game allowed, further illustrating the inconsistencies that came with trying to get their opponents off the field.
Prior to the Packers’ defensive turnaround following their late bye week, they were the worst team in football in the two-minute drill. Following their loss to the Eagles, Green Bay had surrendered 60 points within the final two minutes before halftime. That averages out to five points per game or nearly one full touchdown — talk about a momentum swing. Too often in these situations, the Packers became conservative, didn’t bring pressure, and in an effort to limit the explosive passing play, they left a lot of room underneath and over the middle for offenses to pick up chunk plays and move into scoring position.
In years past, if the defense didn’t get off the field, gave up a two-minute touchdown, or couldn’t get that red zone stop, Aaron Rodgers was often there to erase those blemishes. Realistically, as the Packers transition to Jordan Love this season, Green Bay isn’t going to have that luxury — the margin for error is going to be very small. Expectations are sky-high for a defense that has eight first-round picks on it, and the Packers are, in all likelihood, going to have to rely much more heavily on this unit to get them victories than they have previously.
“I’m very aware of the draft status of all of our players,” Barry said via Packers.com. “But expectations are and should be high all the time. And this year will be no different. There’ s absolutely no doubt about that.”
