A Quick Turnaround: Why Green Bay Packers beat Chicago Bears
By Kenn Korb
Excellent Protection
Green Bay has had one of the best offensive lines in the league all year (and for most of the past three seasons really). While that has come in both aspects of blocking, the main area they have earned their contracts is in their work on passing plays.
Going into this game against the Bears, even with the struggles of their quarterback, the offensive line was still far and away the best pass blocking unit in the entire league by PFF’s ratings; while they didn’t have a perfect game in this one (notably allowing multiple players to get to Rodgers on the fumble-TD despite a three-man rush) the overall performance was mostly in-line with their usual stellar protection efforts.
Most of the few problems which did occur can be chalked up to Green Bay having to insert the infamous Don Barclay for 16 snaps (T.J. Lang missed some time with an injury). He was responsible for the initial pressure on the aforementioned fumble-TD and generally continues to be the bane of Packers fans everywhere when he sees the field.
When he wasn’t out there though, the unit had just about zero issue holding off the Bears’ efforts to get to Rodgers all night. According to PFF, on the 59 dropbacks by Rodgers, 42 of them resulted in no pressure being applied by the defense — and that includes Barclay’s snaps.
With their performance in this contest, we saw the overall PFF grades jump up for all but one of them (David Bakhtiari), almost exclusively due to their pass blocking work.
Now, only Lane Taylor is under an 80 overall in their 0-100 grading system (and just under, at 79.6) on the season, and each of them is currently rated over an 83.0 in terms of their pass blocking grade. In terms of this game in particular, three of PFF’s top-graded offensive players for Green Bay on the night were members of this unit (Taylor, Lang, and Bryan Bulaga).
If these guys can keep up their incredible blocking efforts, you have to think Rodgers and his receivers will find a way to get into a consistent rhythm against opponents. Hopefully for them, the second half of this contest can be the catalyst for finding that success.