The Green Bay Packers faced an extraordinarily high amount of pressure in their 39-22 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday. While head coach Matt LaFleur might not think it's an issue, he might have some misplaced trust in what the future holds for the offense.
In Week 1, it's safe to say the Packers weren't prepared for what Brian Flores had in store for the offensive line.
When all was said and done, the Vikings blitzed the Packers on 78.3 percent of Jordan Love's dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats (via ESPN's Benjamin Solak). An unreal number in any situation.
On Monday, LaFleur was asked if he thinks teams will begin deploying the same strategy against the Packers going forward.
"That would be a wholesale commitment to go to that style of defense, which you don't see a whole bunch of that in the league," said LaFleur with a laugh, before touching on the positives of the Packers' play on Sunday despite the pressure.
"I think we ended the game with, like, 10 explosives [plays] for 300 something yards. So it's feast or famine. Unfortunately, we had some great moments where we feasted on it, certainly, but at the end of the game when we needed to get some plays, they did what they do and they got two or three takeaways."
Packers' belief in offense is well-founded, but not exactly how you should be strategizing to win games
LaFleur is right, to a degree. For three quarters, the Packers' offense looked pretty great. They generated big plays and marched down the field many times. Green Bay's future opponents likely won't blitz them 80 percent of the time, either, or won't be able to do so as effectively as the Vikings.
That said, just leaning on the fact that the team was successful at times isn't the best takeaway.
While it's true that the Packers had success, relying on Jordan Love and the offense to play well under that kind of pressure is almost impossible. Not only did we see what a full four quarters of pressure eventually did to the offensive line, but it also required Love to be perfect on every play. Getting hit that often is simply untenable in the NFL, and the Packers can't win by simply hoping to succeed against that much blitzing.
On top of that, while the Packers had a ton of big plays, they scored only 22 points. They scored just 10 points on four red-zone trips. If you're going to "feast or famine" your way to victory, you'd better do a lot more feasting, and the Packers have proven they are not up to that task yet.
LaFleur's comments do provide some truth. No team will blitz them as much as the Vikings did (until they see the Vikings again later in the year, that is). However, the Packers can't become too dependent on explosive plays.
While they have the personnel to do so, it's not really a smart or proven way to be a contender, especially given how poorly the Packers have been in the red zone over the last two years.
Their play in the first three quarters was promising, but if the Packers truly want to do more feasting, they'll have to fix a couple of things first.
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