The Green Bay Packers lost a major part of their defense last week, when star linebacker Edgerrin Cooper tore his Achilles. Not only is he a hyper-athletic off-ball linebacker, but Cooper also flashed a lot of efficacy as a situational pass-rusher off the edge.
Being down both Micah Parsons and Cooper on the front seven is bad enough. You would've thought Green Bay's laundry list of offensive line woes would've been plenty of misfortune from the football gods to last a while.
With Cooper now gone and the linebacker room worse off for it, though, the Packers will need to lean on other areas of depth to make up for his singular presence.
All eyes on Green Bay's defensive backfield to rise to the occasion in Cooper's absence
Cooper's injury, to put it lightly, is one that the Packers simply can't bandaid over with depth in the linebacker room. The linebacker was enjoying what looked to be a breakout season, and well on his way to establishing himself as one of the premier linebackers in all of football.
With Cooper now gone for the entire year, the team will obviously still have to find ways to fill the void of him being out, but will need to look elsewhere to find some meaningful change. That's where the Packers' secondary comes in.
Cooper is out, leaving a huge hole in the linebacker room that will only be replaced with depth level players as of now. Elsewhere on the team, the Packers continue to wait for Micah Parsons to return, leaving the team's pass rush group without one of its best players.
As the team continues to try to find ways to work around that, the secondary must be leaned on more. Currently, the team's secondary has been surprisingly solid so far.
Rookie Brandon Cisse continues to develop but has had his fair share of teachable moments in the league, and Keisean Nixon has continued his up-and-down play. However, safeties Xavier McKinney and Evan Williams, along with slot defender Javon Bullard, have solidified this Packers' secondary into something worth monitoring.
When looking at the data, it backs up the importance of the secondary as well. According to PFF, McKinney has continued to struggle a bit, ranking 64th in the league amongst safeties, but his backfield mates in Bullard and Williams have soared. Bullard is ranked 14th out of all safeties in the league in overall grade, while Williams is currently the fourth best safety in the NFL according to the analytics company's metrics.
Keisean Nixon, a bane to many in the Packers' fan base, is ranked 37th in the league amongst 102 cornerbacks. While these numbers might not sound too lofty, they are significantly better than the other defensive numbers from other position groups.
The Packers' linebacker room currently ranks out pretty poorly, with Zaire Franklin 71st out of 74 linebackers. Likewise, the edge room's highest ranked member, Lukas Van Ness, sits at 43rd on PFF's chart of edge rushers.
While numbers like these aren't the end-all-be-all, they do paint a pretty clear picture. Until Parsons is back, and until the Packers can figure out how they'll look to try and replicate Cooper's production on the field, it'll be up to the secondary to make things happen. That starts with a tough task against a Chicago Bears team that has some legitimate high-level players on it, but also presents the potentially perfect chance to showcase just what they can do.
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