Digging into some early numbers on the Packers thrilling preseason win over the Cardinals
Cam Newton had to reach the bottom ranks of football before he could succeed at the top
“Did you all see that awesome preseason game,” is not something I am in the habit of saying, yet here we are. It was an instant (preseason) classic: a 42-38 barn-burner that saw the Green Bay Packers score twice in the final 3-and-a-half minutes to take home a win.
We’re going to try something this week with the hope of doing it during the regular season as well. SumerSports - a site I’ve been a fan of since they started - recently released SumerPass. Part of SumerPass is live game-tracking, with some really cool stats available immediately. So we’re going to comb through some of the data and post some tidbits here. This will likely change as we move throughout the season, but, for now, we’re just going to try it on and see how it fits.
Offense
We’ll start with the big picture. Packers ran this game out of two personnel groupings: 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR) was used on 76.4% of their snaps while 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR) was used on 23.6% of their snaps.
They leaned heavily into the pass this game, passing on 69.1% of their snaps. That would mark a 12.93% increase over the rest of the league. And, lest you think the 4th quarter comeback was propping up those numbers, they passed on 69.6% of their 1st half plays. That means that their 68.8% 2nd half pass rate was actually lower. Which is a bit surprising, given who was calling plays in the 2nd half.
Either way, they were letting Kyle McCord air it out, and he performed well. For the game, he went 22/35 for 226 yards and an EPA per play of +0.05. He had an average time to throw of 2.39 seconds (0.3 less than the average time) and a 10.4 ADOT (Average Depth of Target). That ADOT was 2.6 yards above the NFL average.
He was really cooking out of 11 personnel with a +0.11 EPA per Play. It was a much lower sample size, but his EPA Per Play out of 12 personnel was worse by a decent amount (-0.2). He did some nice work against Cover 1 (4/5 for 38 yards, +0.78 EPA per Play) and struggled against Cover 4 (8/14, 39 yards, 1 sack, -0.52 EPA per Play). His pressure-to-sack rate of 27.27% was 9.87% worse than the NFL average.
J. Michael Sturdivant did a great job with his opportunities. His Target Share of 20.6% was 0.8% higher than the NFL average. He caught 6 of his 7 targets for 112 yards, good for +1.63 EPA per Reception. His ADOT of 14.14 yards was 3.3 yards higher than the NFL average, but he showed a much better route tree than we had been seeing from him. He wasn’t just productive on deep routes. He had 1 target on a Go route (the 29 yarder up the right side that I’m sure we’ll cover in a film room article) and 2 targets on post routes, but his other 4 targets were close to the line (2 targets on hitches, 2 targets on quick out routes). He primarily operated as an outside receiver, with 5 targets when aligned outside and 2 targets from the slot.
Sturdivant did well against both Man (+1.25) and Zone (+1.71) coverages.
Their run game was primarily zone-based, with 11.8% being Inside Zone, 58.8% Outside Zone, 23.5% Man and 5.9% that are simply listed as “Other”. They’ve never truly gone away from their zone running roots, but there are a lot of signs pointing to going back to that at a higher rate this year, so this is something we’ll be monitoring as we get into the season.
Defense
On defense, the Packers operated primarily out of Nickel (84.8%), with the rest coming out of Base (15.2%). No Dime or anything like that. Nickel and Base.
On the whole, they ran much more Zone (68.8%) than Man (25%). I’m curious to see how these stats play out across the year, because Man and Zone are such simplistic buckets. In the Match Quarters system we’re going to be seeing from Gannon this year, we’ll see a lot of Match coverages. Meaning, it’s a malleable system that will present differently depending on how the routes are distributed. Or, more simply, it’s a zone coverage that can often look like man. If we’re talking simply in Man/Zone buckets, these types of calls muddy the water. Might be something we scrap as we move forward with this. We’ll see.
For the game, the Packers had a pressure rate of 37.5%, 0.28% below the NFL average. Their Blitz Rate of 14.58% was 12.02% below the NFL average. Vanilla defense, man.
The splash player on defense was Nyjalik Kelly, coming in with 8 impact plays: 5 solo tackles, 1 assisted tackle and 3 tackles for loss. I’m really looking forward to watching him. I saw some nice improvement in his game between Week 1 and Week 2, so I’m curious to see if he kept on that upward trajectory this week.
Anthony Campbell keeps showing up and making plays. The normal caveats of preseason and all that, but he notched a 17.9% pressure rate in this game, 9.78% higher than the NFL average. He’s been making noise throughout training camp and practices and he’s been making noise in every preseason game. He still is largely just a rotational guy at this point, but he’s huge (6’7”, 300 lbs), shows some real quickness in his feet and heaviness in his hands. I’ve enjoyed watching him.
Lastly, let’s talk about Dani Dennis-Sutton. It was our first chance to watch him on the field, and he didn’t disappoint. He posted 2 solo tackles and 1 tackle for loss. He was also a menace as a pass rusher, posting a 17.4% pressure rate. He also posted a 23.1% pressure rate on stunts (9.39% higher than the NFL average). That’s something I’ll be looking for both in the preseason film and during the regular season. Is that a weird preseason blip, or is that a superpower of his? Given his size, strength and linear speed, it could be that he’s near unstoppable on stunts.
Special Teams
No stats needed. Trey Smack is a gamer.
This was a fun little trip into the data. Feels a bit scattered, but that’s probably just because that’s who I am as a person. We’ll lock it in for the regular season. I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes us every week. It’s already given me a couple areas to focus one once the film is made available, so I’m taking that as a win.
