The Green Bay Packers are 4-2 following three straight strong wins. After a rough start to the season, the team has looked better as of late, but they're still suffering from one major issue that must get fixed sooner rather than later.
It's been no secret that the Packers have a certain style of play. Traditionally, under head coach Matt LaFleur, that involves a heavy and healthy dose of running the football. Usually, this rushing helps set more manageable downs, make for easier play-action plays, and generally makes the later downs and distances a bit easier thanks to gaining some ground earlier.
However, throughout the team's first six games, establishing a running game has essentially been impossible. Without starting running back Josh Jacobs, the team has relied on a hodgepodge of backups, including MarShawn Lloyd, Kaleb Johnson, Chris Brooks, and Pierre Strong Jr.
Packers' continue to waste opportunities on first down
Green Bay's non-Jacobs backfield quartet has combined to form what can only be described as the NFL's most mediocre running back room, and certainly one of the most mediocre that the club has had in a long time. Excluding Week 6, the Packers rank 32nd (or last) in the league in rushing yards gained, rushing yards per game, and 31st in average rushing yards per carry and team rushing touchdowns.
If you're seeing this, you might think the most common solution is to simply not run the ball as much, and certainly not do so to start drives. Unfortunately, you would be wrong if you were the Green Bay Packers.
On Sunday, the Packers once again employed a strategy that seemed totally counterintuitive to the roster they currently field. On the team's nine drives (not including the final drive that saw the team kneel the ball to end the game), the offense started six of them with a run.
On those six carries, the Packers' running backs ran for a total of four yards, meaning they averaged less than a single yard every time they started a possession with a run. In total, Green Bay had 25 first downs throughout the game on Sunday (including the starting first down of any given drive) across their nine competitive drives. The team ran the ball on 15 of those 25 first downs.
That means that 60 percent of the time, the Packers were running the ball on first down, in a game where they tallied a total of 57 rushing yards as a whole.
Packers must quickly solve inconsistent running game
Obviously, it's impossible to simply and wholly abandon the run. It would be silly to have no running game whatsoever, but what the Packers have been doing is equally silly, if not more so. For a team that clearly lacks a good running back, opening 66 percent of your drives with a run isn't only wasting a play, but it makes any given drive much harder. 60 percent of your first downs being runs is just ridiculous, but it becomes even more so when you get closer to the goal line.
At several points in Sunday's game, the Packers' offense had the ball inside the Cowboys' 15-yard line and chose to run the ball on first down. In a short-yardage situation where you essentially only have three downs before settling for a field goal, why waste one of your three precious plays, especially when the passing offense is playing so well?
While the Packers' philosophy doesn't look to be changing anytime soon, there's a bright light of sorts, at least. Josh Jacobs, who has been on the Commissioner's List for six weeks, will be removed from it, allowing him to practice and play against the Detroit Lions in Week 7. The bell cow arrives just as LaFleur said the team must fix its "inconsistent" ground game, acknowledging that it has set up some pretty bad second-and-long situations after the Cowboys game.
While Jacobs' inclusion on the team will at least give the Packers a competent running back, their style should still be changing. Calling run plays simply to "keep the defense honest" or establish a run is a bit of an old-school way of thinking, and one we've seen go out of style across the NFL. If the team had an exceptional talent at the position, it would be one thing, but instead, they are purposely taking the ball *away* from their exceptional talent to instead commit to plays that simply have no chance of working.
The team has made it to 4-2 regardless, so it doesn't seem like things will change a ton. However, we can at least hope the numbers begin to tilt more toward an even balance than they are now.
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