Have the Packers done enough to fix their defense?
The reigning NFC North champion Green Bay Packers must be better on defense.
It’s basic common sense, football-wise. It’s hard to sack the quarterback when he doesn’t have the football. Last offseason, Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst and the organization broke recent form when it came to free agency and opened up the checkbook.
The focus was on the defensive side the football and specifically the pass rush. The club added former Baltimore Ravens’ edge performer Za’Darius Smith and Washington outside linebacker Preston Smith. The duo combined for more than half of the team’s 41 sacks, with the former totaling 13.5 QB traps and the latter a dozen sacks.
But here’s the rub. One year after finishing 22nd in the league against the run, Mike Pettine’s defensive unit ranked 23rd in the NFL in rushing defense this past season. Talk about symmetry?
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Matt LaFleur’s club allowed 1,921 yards on the ground in 2019, a difference of two yards (1,919) from the previous year. Round off the numbers and it’s basically 120 yards per game. But despite this shortcoming a season ago, Aaron Rodgers and his teammates finished 13-3 and won the NFC North.
Eventually it caught up to them in the conference title game as the San Francisco 49ers amassed a whopping 285 yards on the ground (via Jason Wilde via the Wisconsin State Journal), the eighth-highest single-season game total in postseason history.
This offseason, the club added former Cleveland Browns’ inside linebacker Christian Kirksey, a bright spot for that team his first four NFL seasons but limited to a total of nine games the past two years (via Jason Wilde of the Journal Times). It is worth pointing out that linebacker Blake Martinez, now a member of the New York Giants, racked up his share of tackles but had his issues against the run.
But was that one major addition enough to right things? Of course, the Packers used most of their draft adding pieces to the offense that suggests there might be a change in philosophy — perhaps sooner than later — when it comes to that side of the ball.
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So could a ball-control running game be in the future for LaFleur’s club sooner than later? And could that prove to be the team’s best defense when it comes to permitting other teams to push them around with the running attack? In any case, Green Bay’s defensive unit has been an issue for too many years and it has cost the team in many ways.