I expect to see more discussion and articles like this about the performance of the defense.
"Ripe with talent, Packers’ D vastly underachieving as losing streak reaches 4 games"
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Following the Packers’ 27-17 loss to the Bills on Sunday, Green Bay inside linebacker Quay Walker abruptly left his postgame interview with reporters in tears.
The first-round rookie spoke for about two and a half minutes in the visitors’ locker room at Highmark Stadium, primarily being asked about the unnecessary roughness penalty that resulted in his ejection late in the second quarter Sunday against the Bills, before fielding a question about his visible emotion and what was going through his mind.
“I don’t know,” he answered through tears before taking a sharp right turn down a hallway that led to the exit.
Walker had just tackled his college teammate at Georgia, Bills rookie running back James Cook, when he tumbled into Buffalo’s sideline. Cook had earned a first down with a 7-yard run on second-and-6, going out of bounds at the Packers’ 43-yard line. Walker’s penalty gifted the Bills another 15 yards, and they scored four plays later to take a 20-7 lead.
Here’s Walker’s perspective on what happened: “I just felt as I was getting up, I felt somebody push me from behind and I probably misinterpreted on what it was and I just felt the push,” said Walker, who then shoved Bills practice squad tight end Zach Davidson, who was not in uniform, before being tossed from the game.
“And I’m on their sideline, feelings just flowing,” Walker said. “I’m very hyped and everything like that and I just let it out (out) of emotion. Right away, as soon as I did that, I regretted that I did that. But it’s something I’m gonna have to live with and I’m gonna have to face. I’m willing to do so.”
Walker’s flash of rookie ignorance served as a microcosm for what’s happening to the Packers’ defense: high-end talent combusting and costing a defense that should be much better than it is.
The Packers, who fell to 3-5, start six first-round picks on defense: Walker (2022), defensive tackle Kenny Clark (2016), edge rusher Rashan Gary (2019), cornerback Jaire Alexander (2018), cornerback Eric Stokes (2021) and safety Darnell Savage Jr. (2019). They also have a 2021 first-team All-Pro inside linebacker in De’Vondre Campbell, a 2021 Pro Bowl alternate cornerback in Rasul Douglas, an edge rusher they’ve given two big-money contracts to in Preston Smith, a solid safety in Adrian Amos and a couple defensive linemen who can hold their own.
So in essence, Green Bay’s defense shouldn’t be this bad. But it is.
Did they limit the league’s No. 2 scoring offense to just three points in the second half on Sunday night? Yes, but they surrendered 24 points in the first half and benefitted, in the form of two interceptions, from what seemed like Bills quarterback Josh Allen hurling the pigskin around with little care since his team held a comfortable lead late in the game. After the Packers forced a three-and-out on the Bills’ opening drive, Buffalo scored on five consecutive possessions. The Bills averaged 5.7 yards per rush on 27 carries Sunday, and the Packers now rank 25th in the NFL in yards per rush allowed (4.89). Perhaps one of these years the Packers will field a respectable run defense.
Through eight games, the Packers rank 16th in points allowed per game (21.63), tied for 13th in defensive EPA (expected points added) per play, tied for 26th in takeaways (seven) and tied for 18th in defensive penalties (19).
On paper, defensive coordinator Joe Barry should have a top-five unit. Instead, his defense has vastly underachieved through what was supposed to be the easier half of its schedule, facing the Bears, Buccaneers without key wideouts and offensive linemen, Patriots, Giants, Jets and Commanders. The Packers’ offense and special teams haven’t been good, but those aren’t world-breaking revelations for units that lost the best best wide receiver in football and ranked last in the NFL last season in DVOA, respectively.
But this defense being this leaky? With the individual talent it has? That has been the biggest surprise of the season.
“I feel like we got a really good team, really good defense, so yeah, it is surprising,” Alexander said of the current state of the team.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers hyped up the defense in the preseason, almost excusing the offense’s struggles in training camp because of how good the unit it faced supposedly was. Individuals on defense flaunted their optimism for the 2022 season. And Barry, days before the season opener, called his defensive front “special.” That’s the same group that struggles mightily to stop the run. The only saving grace for Green Bay’s defense is it ranks second in the NFL in percentage of pass-rush snaps resulting in a pressure — 40.2 percent — but even so, the Packers are tied for 17th with 17 sacks).
The defensive deficiencies are the fault of an entire organization.
First, there’s general manager Brian Gutekunst. For starters, he drafted Savage in the first round three years ago and even exercised his fifth-year option for next season (his salary is guaranteed at about $7.9 million for 2023). Yet Savage has never amounted to the game-changing playmaker Green Bay needs on the back end. His poor tackle attempt of Allen on a 20-yard scramble on third-and-14 in the first quarter stood out, but it wasn’t his last missed tackle Sunday night, adding to a collection of missed tackles this season for someone who’s supposed to be a thumper.
Gutekunst drafted Stokes in the first round last year, and he has been downright bad in coverage this year after a promising rookie season. On Sunday night, the Packers even benched Stokes temporarily in favor of first-year Packer and slot corner Keisean Nixon.
Why?
“Just to change it up,” head coach Matt LaFleur said. “That’s why.”
Gutekunst, along with executive vice president Russ Ball, doled out sizable new contracts to Campbell and Douglas this offseason after their breakout 2021 campaigns. So far, both those deals look bad, each player looking more like a one-hit wonder than a consistent force.
Then there’s Barry, previously the coordinator of poor defenses in Washington and Detroit (when the Lions went 0-16), who got a pass when he arrived in Green Bay because of how devoid of talent those units were at past stops. But this defense doesn’t fit that description. The team’s soft coverage has been questionable, and it’s mind-blowing that Alexander is getting paid $21 million per year as the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history to cover players who aren’t the opponent’s top wide receiver. Any time a unit with so much individual talent and potential falls this short of expectations, all eyes turn to the coach coordinating it all.
Then there’s LaFleur, the head coach who hand-picked Barry since he came from the trendy Vic Fangio/Brandon Staley defensive tree designed to keep everything in front of the safeties and prevent big plays. Not only do the Packers struggle to stop the run — they have allowed the fifth-most runs of 12 yards or more (24) — but entering Week 8, they had allowed a league-high 60.9 completion percentage on passes of at least 15 air yards. That was before Allen averaged 16.8 yards per completion Sunday night.
Then there are the players — Savage, Stokes, Douglas, Campbell, Alexander against the Commanders, Gary against the run, etc. — who haven’t delivered. They often disappear for extended stretches during games, with the first half against the Vikings, second half against the Giants and first half against the Bills being the three most notable instances.
“We know we’re good enough to win games,” Douglas said. “But we gotta play for four quarters.”
The Packers can’t overhaul the lineup and hope for better results midseason, but they can fire the defensive coordinator and hope for something better by promoting defensive backs coach and defensive passing game coordinator Jerry Gray, who called defensive plays in the Packers’ 24-21 win over the then-undefeated Cardinals in Week 8 last season while Barry was in COVID-19 protocol. If the Packers keep bursting at the seams on defense, perhaps a change will happen.
LaFleur might not want to admit just a season and a half into the Barry experiment that he made a hiring mistake after replacing Mike Pettine, a Mike McCarthy holdover. But the Packers were among the league’s worst defenses the second half of last season, ranking 29th in points allowed per game (27.29) from Weeks 11 through 18 after ranking third in the NFL (18 points allowed per game) from Weeks 1 through 10. This isn’t a new issue. If such a trend of underachieving continues, especially throughout the second half of the season, Barry’s seat will be scalding hot.
Until then, the Packers’ defense must find a way to stop the bleeding, if only because Green Bay’s offense isn’t capable of winning games on its own, as it has been in seasons past. A stout defense was supposed to be the Packers’ golden ticket this season, especially as Rodgers and company worked out the kinks with a new-look receiver corps and moving parts on the offensive line.
Instead, Barry and company have been a detriment, one threatening to make a season that has already veered off the rails even worse.
https://theathletic.com/3746896/2022/10 ... ing-bills/
