Flying High Again: Why Green Bay Packers beat Philadelphia
By Kenn Korb
Draining the clock
Something that hasn’t really had a chance to come up as an issue (due to the team falling behind so often this season) is this team’s inability to chew time off the clock. It shouldn’t be a surprise; even at their best, this team has relied heavily on their passing game (with good reason, of course), but in the most recent elite iterations of this offense they have at least had a running game capable of efficiently taking time off the clock.
With the flux caused by injuries and poor play in the backfield though, that aspect of this offense has remained broken for basically all season; without it, the hopes of effectively draining the clock seemed to be a pipedream even if the Packers could manage to get in a situation which called for it.
Well, it appears they’ve discovered an effective workaround in the meantime.
Green Bay didn’t really clog up the time of possession in the game as a whole (35:23-24:37 advantage is good, but not out of the ordinary for a winning squad), but the drives they did take ate away at the clock effectively.
The Packers had four different drives in this game which ground out at least 5:09 of clock time; combine those four drive times together, and that makes up 27:46 of their total 35:23 possession time. Importantly, on those drives they not only wore away time from the clock, but they capitalized with points:
- 10 plays, 75 yards for a TD [5:09 used]; 7-0 lead
- 12 plays, 43 yards for a punt [7:48 used]; 14-7 lead
- 13 plays, 75 yards for a TD [6:28 used]; 24-13 lead
- 17 plays, 78 yards for a FG [8:21 used]; 27-13 lead
Those drive gave them 17 of their 27 points while shortening the game through an assortment of short, quick completions. With all this time being drained, this game actually only saw 15 drives between the teams (8 for the Packers, 7 for the Eagles) — two of which were kneel-downs (both by Green Bay).
With the lack of drives available in the game, each one mattered more than usual. Green Bay made their time-consuming drives into points and held a lead with them, forcing Philadelphia into the untenable situation of having to make every drive count and having few chances to make up for mistakes.
That didn’t work out too well for the Eagles. Two of those seven drives became punts, while another ended in a pick; this left them needing to have turned to other five into more than 27 points to come away with a chance at victory. That means at worst they would have needed either 4 TDs or 3 TDs and a FG among those drives to win or tie.
Leading into their final drive, they only had 1 TD and 2 FGs, however. With less than two minutes for that drive and down multiple scores, their fate was essentially sealed. Even with a touchdown on their final drive (one which would have to be fast), they would still need to rely on grabbing an expected onside kick (a play with about a 10% chance of working) just to have one final shot.
Regardless of how bad Green Bay’s defense has become, that was highly unlikely.
Speaking of that defense…