Flying High Again: Why Green Bay Packers beat Philadelphia
By Kenn Korb
A rested defense plays better
Green Bay’s defense started out the year as the strongest part of the team, keeping games tenable while the offense struggled to produce drives and points in the early stages of the year. Starting with their game against Dallas though, the wheels were falling off spectacularly.
Outside of the game against an awful Chicago team, the team had been a trainwreck on that end of the field since the Cowboys game, giving up 30+ points in every non-Bears game in the now-broken 1-5 skid — including 40+ the past two weeks. They’ve been indefensibly bad in coverage (when Pierre Garcon is burning past guys, that is flat-out awful) and even the once-touted run defense had fallen back to pre-2016 ugliness for stretches.
In this game though, they looked much better (though there were still a few bad hiccups early); that directly comes from the lack of time on the field.
On one hand, I mean that in the simplest way possible: they have been an eminently exploitable sieve, and keeping them as uninvolved as possible prevents their chances to screw up. That’s basic common sense, though in something like football it is impossible to just prevent one half of the equation from ever coming into play.
On the other hand, there is the more functional way of doing that (which the Packers did): keep them off the field as much as possible, but not purely to prevent bad play; instead, it is to keep them at peak levels of stamina.
Dallas has done this all season with their own suspect unit. Their offense controls the clock and grinds out long drives (per Football Outsiders, they lead the league in time of possession per drive); though the defense itself still ranks among the lower tiers (#27 in Weighted Defensive DVOA), they are actually among the best in defending the run (#6 Run Defense DVOA) — an area where pure effort can make a more tangible impact.
They also have been able to make key plays and stops despite having few star-quality impact players on their defensive roster; part of that surely is excellent coaching, but another part is having their guys coming out full of energy each time they hit the field. Guys who are less worn out by fatigue simply play better, and they’ve captured that with the help of an offense which can keep them off the field and put their defense in situations where they can play at their peak levels.
This week, Green Bay captured some of that magic for themselves; the results speak volumes.
With only 24:37 of game time spent on the field in the game across a mere seven drives, we got to see a unit full of guys playing at the height of their stamina. In that time, we saw them perform at a degree that was missing for most of this long season.
A pass rush that had been dead on arrival for long stretches of games got consistent pressure on Carson Wentz, mustering four sacks and eight quarterback hits. A secondary which couldn’t cover a snail all of a sudden could stay with receivers much more often, knocking down 5 passes while allowing only three plays of 20+ yards — a massive improvement.
A team that has struggled all year at garnering turnovers picked up an interception — key not only for the timing in the game (starting the 2nd half with Green Bay having only a 14-10 lead) but in taking away a drive from the Eagles in a game which had very few for them.
This defense is nowhere close to its early-season quasi-elite form, but as with the Cowboys’ own unit, if these guys are kept off the field and are allotted the opportunity to save their stamina from draining, they can still be an effective part of a winning team.