Breaking News: Packers Passing Chronicles: Striking and Stalking…. Check In

They say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth and the same is also true of narrow victories in the NFL.

That’s the stuff. As Packers fans, we’ve been on the losing end of too many special teams blunders over the years. It’s nice to be on the winning side.

But we’re not here to talk special teams. No, in this space we talk about the passing game, so let’s get to it.

The red zone interception certainly stands out, but it was a pretty nice day for Jordan Love this week in a fairly limited number of dropbacks. It was a fairly limited offense on the whole, really. Coming into this game, the Packers were averaging 63.4 plays per game. In this game, they ran 42 plays, their lowest number of offensive plays in a game this season.

Of those 42 plays, 22 were called run plays, putting their pass rate at 47.6%. Love’s 72.2% completion percentage was his best of the season, as was his adjusted completion percentage of 87.5% (per PFF).

This was also the highest the Packers have used play action with Love this season (35.0%), beating out his 29.4% mark against the Cardinals in Week 6. When using play action this game, Love was 6/7 for 116 yards.

Love’s 66.7% shotgun rate was his second-lowest mark of the season (he was in shotgun on 66.2% of snaps in that Cardinals game). That’s after his 91.8% shotgun mark in Week 9. Looks like Love is healthy after the bye and they’re looking to not be quite so shotgun-heavy.

Love didn’t miss a single throw in the 2nd half, going 5/5 for 162 yards, with a success rate of 100%. If you’re going to have limited opportunities down the stretch, make the most of them.

Overall, a pretty nice day at the office for Love.

Let’s look at a play. With only 17 pass attempts, I didn’t have a plethora of choices this week. So I just went with one that I made a note of when I saw it live: a 25 yard completion to Christian Watson in the 3rd quarter off a concept I know as Drift Stalk.

“Drift” is the name of the core play action concept in Shanahan’s playbook. That core concept is called “Strike” in LaFleur’s playbook, so it probably makes more sense to refer to it as “Strike Stalk” within this context. (Not that it matters a ton, I guess.)

The core of Strike is a two-man concept off play action: an intermediate in-cutting route and a vertical route from the other side. The idea is to draw the linebackers up on the playfake, then quickly attack the space behind them. It’s a quick-hitting, simple and powerful concept.

Strike Stalk takes that core concept and dresses it up a bit on the vertical side. There are now two receivers away from the in-cutter (“Strike”). The outside receiver runs the vertical route (an in-and-up route, “Strike Off”), while the inside receiver sells a stalk block on the defender across from him before releasing vertically to the boundary (“Stalk Rail”).

The read goes:
1: Strike
2: Strike Off
3: Stalk Rail

The Packers are looking at 1st & 10 on the Bears 32, down 13-7 with 7:20 remaining in the 3rd quarter. They’re in 12 personnel and start with a heavy look on the right side of the line, with Tucker Kraft [85] and Ben Sims [89] in-line in a YY Wing look and Christian Watson [9] in a tight split outside of Sims.

Before the snap, Watson shifts to the left, settling in the left slot. When Watson shifts, the Bears bump their linebackers, putting Jack Sanborn [57] over Watson. Sanborn is clearly looking to play the run, inching toward the line before the snap.

At the snap, the Packers sell the run up front, with Elgton Jenkins [74] pulling from left-to-right and Love/Josh Jacobs [8] selling the playfake. Watson does his part, selling the block on Sanborn.

Sanborn isn’t even looking at Watson: he’s looking down at the line. Looks like he’s initially looking to fill a potential counter run, but is ultimately falling back into a spot-drop zone, keeping his eyes on the QB.

After selling the block, Watson releases vertically up the sideline. When Watson releases, Sanborn drops with him, looking to stay underneath while the deep defender to that side plays over the top.

Love checks Tucker Kraft [85] as the first read, but he’s not quite to his spot and there’s a linebacker dropping into the window, so he quickly moves to Romeo Doubs [87] as the second read. Love already knows that the Bears are in a single-high defense, which is exactly where Romeo Doubs [87] is running. After a quick look to confirm the safety is still in the middle and the boundary defender is following Doubs, Love moves to the wide-open Watson up the sideline.