The Green Bay Packers made a statement before their Wild Card game against the Dallas Cowboys even kicked off. They won the coin toss. Instead of deferring — the same call that got Jaire Alexander suspended when he crashed the captains’ meeting at the middle of the field in Week 16 — they took the ball.
The message was clear. The Packers, a 7.5-point road underdog, were going to come out and try to smack the Cowboys in the mouth.
They succeeded. Green Bay dominated early on both sides of the ball en route to a 27-0 lead and an eventual 48-32 win in Dallas. Jordan Love was nearly perfect in his playoff debut, throwing for three touchdowns and 272 yards in a night where he was one incompletion away from a perfect 158.3 passer rating. The Packer defense rose up when it mattered, reducing Dak Prescott’s 402-yard, three-touchdown afternoon into a Blake Bortles-ian act of futility.
Let’s talk about how Matt LaFleur’s team took control of this game and didn’t let up until garbage time.
How Jordan Love shredded the league's fourth-ranked defense
Head coach Matt LaFleur knew immediately the weakness he wanted to exploit. Dallas had strength at the corners with All-Pro DaRon Bland and a still-good Stephon Gilmore. But a steady diet of play-action passes could draw the team’s safety help close to the line of scrimmage, creating a vacuum behind them.
A handful of power runs from Aaron Jones helped sell the game plan. This created a situation where the Packers could get stuffed for no gain and it remained a successful play.
That vacuum is where Jordan Love thrived. Love attacked the middle of the field time and time again, drawing safeties in with play-action, escaping pressure to give his wideouts time to get downfield, then lofting perfectly placed passes into the Cowboys’ blind spot for big gains.
.@RomeoDoubs with a 46-yard gain!#GBvsDAL | #GoPackGo
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/aDaD8ttubT
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) January 14, 2024
OK, fine, that’s a little bit further toward the right sideline. How about this 20-yard touchdown to rookie Dontayvion Wicks?
.@RomeoDoubs with a 46-yard gain!#GBvsDAL | #GoPackGo
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/aDaD8ttubT
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) January 14, 2024
This wasn’t just a part of LaFleur’s game plan. It was also a function of the trust he has in his first-year starter to read defenses and make clutch adjustments before the snap. Love repeatedly got to the line of scrimmage with time left on the play clock, then used his cadence to get the Cowboys to reveal their coverage. From there, he used his audible powers to filter the ball to the spots where Dallas’ defenders simply weren’t.
That led to plays where Love could lob a soft-pitch softball toss downfield and, after lingering in the air for roughly three seconds, it could still result in a 39-yard touchdown.
Jordan Love found a wide open Luke Musgrave off of a play action bootleg for a 38-yard TD. Musgrave had 17.2 yards of separation, the 6th-most on a TD pass in the NGS era (since 2016).
🔹 Love on Play Action (Wild Card): 7/9, 165 yards, TD#GBvsDAL | #DallasCowboys pic.twitter.com/1hKbcvog3z
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) January 15, 2024
This was an act of total discombobulation by Love and LaFleur. Green Bay continually got the Cowboys moving in one direction, then threw it in another.
Sometimes Love launched darts into tight windows. Most of the time, however, he floated passes downfield that cultivated existential dread in the hearts of fans across Texas as the camera panned out to whatever open receiver was ready to clock his team’s next big gain. This wasn’t just a good performance in Love’s first postseason start. His 1.13 expected points added (EPA) per play are an NFL playoff record.
Jordan Love on throws 20+ yards downfield vs. the Cowboys:
5-6, 152 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, 158.3 passer rating pic.twitter.com/WQW1YV9oP1
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) January 15, 2024
That didn’t happen against a bunch of scrubs! It came against a team whose defensive coordinator is the leading candidate to be the next head coach of the Seattle Seahawks.
Even so, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect an elite defense to look mortal against Green Bay. Dallas rose to fourth in defensive efficiency thanks to dominant performances against bad quarterbacks — enough to supercede their troubling games against good ones.
The Cowboys' defense is absolutely incredible against bad QBs (just look at the names on the bottom of this!) but is it reasonable to expect them to be a difference-maker in the playoffs? I dunno… pic.twitter.com/dJ7pSd7EvC
— Computer Cowboy (@benbbaldwin) January 8, 2024
Of course, this wasn’t only a Jordan Love thing. Aaron Jones came into the postseason with 370 rushing yards and six touchdowns in his last three games against his home state Cowboys. He added 118 yards and three more trips to the end zone Sunday.
This all meant the Packers were probably going to win even if their defense didn’t rise up when the moment demanded it.
How the Packers defense made an MVP candidate QB look like Zach Wilson
Defensively, the plan was simple. Dallas has an all-world talent in CeeDee Lamb. The Packers’ mission was to beat the crap out of him.
Green Bay didn’t send Jaire Alexander to track him across the field. Sometimes he got the team’s top cornerback. Others it was Keisean Nixon or rookie Carrington Valentine — an All-Pro kick returner pressed into action thanks to Eric Stokes’ absence and a seventh-round rookie, respectively. This should have been a buffet for a hungry receiver.
Instead, the Pack’s zone coverage made sure no one got off easy. Sometimes they pressed Lamb at the line of scrimmage and kept a high safety patrolling over the top. Other times they backed up and ran with him. But one thing held true no matter the situation; if the situation presented itself, they put hands on the All-Pro wideout.
Jaire is a pest, man 😂#Packers pic.twitter.com/1YpwhKeaTR
— Tony Clements (@TonyCMKE) January 14, 2024
It didn’t always work. Nixon drew an illegal contact penalty late in the first half that extended a Cowboys’ scoring drive that should have ended with 0:00 on the clock (Lamb made the catch anyway). But for the most part it did. Lamb was rattled early on and had just two catches for 18 yards on seven targets as Green Bay took a 27-7 lead into the half.
2 targets, 2 drops to start the game for CeeDee Lamb pic.twitter.com/XzViheETSC
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) January 14, 2024
The star WR came alive in the second half as Dallas adjusted its game plan to keep him tucked into short routes that let him shrug off that coverage at the line and make a play before any safety help could clock in. He finished the game with nine receptions on 18 targets. Only two came on throws at least 10 yards downfield, one of which was a 47-yard bomb in a 24-point game with four minutes to play.
This did nothing to boost Dak Prescott’s confidence. The MVP candidate looked like a backup thrust into the spotlight on his home field. Green Bay’s zone coverage left holes to exploit, but the veteran quarterback rarely capitalized. He couldn’t maximize the open spaces players like Michael Gallup and Jake Ferguson found, instead throwing into traffic early with suddenly limited vision downfield.
.@darnellsavage_ TO THE HOUSE! 🏠
Pick-six! 🙌 #GBvsDAL | #GoPackGo
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/w0tPy1a68U
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) January 14, 2024
There’s Prescott’s worst throw to Lamb, a moment where he tries to operate on a quick slant and completely blanks Darnell Savage lingering over the top as Lamb runs into his zone. The result is a pick-six so easy Preston Smith begins waving goodbye to Prescott and his playoff hopes 30 yards from the end zone:
dying at Preston Smith waving goodbye to Dak Prescott as his pass gets picked off for a touchdown pic.twitter.com/rrohBJhIuF
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) January 14, 2024
By the time Prescott came back online it was too late. The only reason Dallas got on the board before halftime was because De’Vondre Campbell dropped what should have been a goal line interception.
Dak what the hell man pic.twitter.com/6XCpEPVpZj
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) January 14, 2024
Statistically, this was a 400-yard, three touchdown game from Prescott. No one will remember it that way. Green Bay’s beleagured defense made it look like Dallas was the team starting a playoff debutante Sunday. And when the Packers’ early lead meant the Cowboys could no longer concentrate on handoffs, it eased the pressure off one of LaFleur’s biggest weaknesses — a front seven that gave up 4.4 yards per carry and ranked 22nd in the league in rush game EPA allowed per play.
This was a best case scenario for Green Bay. Their offense came out firing. The Cowboys’ offense came out uneasy. Prescott failed to find his rhythm until he was already reeling, tearing pages from his playbook and putting the onus on Mike McCarthy to make game-saving adjustments. And once that became the plan, Packers fans knew they had little to worry about.
The trick now is doing it all over again against the San Francisco 49ers — the team that ended their seasons two of the last three years they made the playoffs.
