The Green Bay Packers’ loss to the Carolina Panthers was a very painful rewatch, filled with self-inflicted wounds by the Packers. Maybe you don’t want to re-live it, but I had to, to figure out what sort of changes Green Bay made to their depth chart and game plan this weekend. So here is the fruit of my painful labor.
As always, the numbers in the tables below tell you how many snaps the team played each player or personnel group in a given week on offense or defense. Plays with pre-snap penalties (false starts, etc.) do not count in our data, but plays with post-snap penalties (defensive pass interference, etc.) do.
If a cell is highlighted red, that means that the player was not active for the game due to injury. If the cell is yellow, it means that the player dropped out of action in-game because of an injury. If the cell is black, that means the player was a healthy scratch.
Now, let’s dive into the Packers’ depth chart.
Offensive Personnel
First of all, I want to talk about the incredibly frustrating start to the game. On the first drive, the Packers were set up with a 1st and 10 on the Carolina 16. They fumbled on that play on a rep where Savion Williams didn’t know where to line up on a screen that was thrown to him.
On the second drive, the Packers drove to the Carolina 18. After two false starts and a sack, though, they only came away with a field goal. If you can believe it, Green Bay’s next drive was a two-minute drill, where the clock became a factor and they ultimately had to settle on another field goal. The next drive, Tucker Kraft was injured.
They could have gone up early, forcing the Panthers to actually have to pass the ball in this game, but they let them hang around. Brutal.
Okay, on the topic of the Packers’ personnel in this game, this was the team’s season-high usage of 11 personnel (1 running back, 1 tight end and 3 receivers) at 71 percent. For perspective, the team opened up with a 38 and 48 percent 11 personnel rate in Week 1 and Week 2, and recently played 11 personnel just 45 percent of the time against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 7.
This was the plan coming into the game, not just when Kraft was injured. If teams are going to sit back and play two-high zone coverages, it seems like the Packers are going to want to play more receivers. This happened previously against both the Cleveland Browns and Dallas Cowboys. Here’s a fun tidbit: When the Browns played the Packers, it was Jim Schwartz’s second-highest rate of two-high safeties in his NFL career. Schwartz has been a play-caller in the NFL since 2001.
The book is sort of out on Green Bay’s current version of their offense. They don’t run the ball well. Outside of Kraft, who is now out for the year, the Packers gain little to no YAC yards with quick game passing. Unless the team starts attacking intermediate zones, opposing defenses are just going to set a fence up high and rally to the run and short passes from depth. Green Bay can’t win this way, and it’s starting to feel a lot like the late-stage McCarthy offenses.
Quarterback
I have nothing to say about the quarterback snaps, but I do want to point something out: Jordan Love played a near-perfect game. Outside of the interception into triple coverage (a massive caveat, I know), Love made the right decisions all game against Carolina. There were more drops than usual, including one in the end zone from Romeo Doubs, but those incompletions aren’t on Love.
Even the weird throw that seemed to go straight to a Panther in the end zone is justified. LaFleur said that he wanted Love to not throw across his body there, but the near-side receiver on that 4th and 8 play, which was such an aggressive call that not even the numbers-crunchers would have gone for it in that spot, was running back Emanuel Wilson. Instead, Love tried to throw it to his regular pass-catchers, namely Doubs, who stopped on his route.
In fact, here was the personnel on that 4th and 8 call, a call which wound up being the reason why the Panthers only needed a field goal to win on that final drive: Wilson, TE John FitzPatrick, WR Malik Heath, WR Savion Williams and WR Romeo Doubs. Good grief, Matt, have some situational awareness. You go for it on 4th and 8 with those guys available…after burning a timeout?
Anyway, it should be a club-wide embarrassment that Love could play at this high of a level in this game and for the Packers to walk away with just 13 points on the board.
Running Back
Hey, the team remembered that Chris Brooks was alive! In just 10 plays, Brooks turned two receptions into 24 yards and did a healthy amount of pass blocking on some of the Packers’ most productive passing plays in the game. He also played more two-back looks this week.
There’s no surprise that for the second week, it was Christian Watson highlighted as the Packers’ number two outside receiver opposite Romeo Doubs. What is a little bit of a shock is what Green Bay did when Matthew Golden dropped out with an injury.
It wasn’t Malik Heath who stepped up in the slot role; it was Savion Williams, who played 11 snaps in the slot on Sunday after playing just 12 in the first seven games of the season combined. So if Golden and Dontayvion Wicks are out this week, look for Williams to step up in the slot.
Williams is essentially the team’s fourth-string slot receiver, as Jayden Reed, Wicks and Golden were unavailable to the Packers by the end of the game against Carolina. Maybe Heath overtakes Williams inside once Watson is no longer on a pitch count, but the Watson pitch count is still very real.
You shouldn’t feel great about the possibility of Golden and Wicks being healthy this week, either, when the Packers went out of their way to sign a fourth practice squad receiver to their team on Tuesday. It seems like they’re expecting to be down bodies in practice.
This may look a bit like a bit of a rotation at tight end post-Kraft, but that simply wasn’t the case. The only snaps that John FitzPatrick took as the single tight end for the Packers on Sunday were the immediately play following the Kraft injury and a couple of snaps in the red zone. Outside of that, Luke Musgrave was the true TE1 once Kraft went down. Most of FitzPatrick’s snaps came in two-tight end sets when Musgrave was already in the game.
Offensive Line
Aaron Banks had his eighth different injury over the last two seasons on Sunday. That is not a joke. That’s the real number.
The Packers didn’t move Jordan Morgan, usually the right guard, over to left guard, like they had earlier this season when Banks was banged up. Instead, they let Morgan finish out the game at right guard and actually moved Sean Rhyan for his first snaps of the season at left guard in 2025.
Defensive Personnel
Carolina quarterback Bryce Young only had to complete nine passes before the two-minute drill. Because the Panthers never felt threatened by the Packers’ ability to score in this game, as their bend-don’t-break defensive approach worked throughout the game, they didn’t have the urge to win the game through the air.
In this game, Green Bay’s Cheetah packages, their three-defensive-end looks, basically vanished because of the game flow. For perspective, here are the Packers’ Cheetah rates from Week 2 to Week 8: 22%, 17%, 17%, 25%, 21% and 22%. In this game, Green Bay’s Cheetah rate dropped all the way down to 11%, close to half of their season-long average.
The Panthers basically deleted those plays out of the playbook, limiting the Packers to just their nickel and 4-3 defenses because the offense couldn’t finish drives.
Defensive End
The big news at defensive end is that Barryn Sorrell’s snaps have really slowed down. In Week 7, the first week after Lukas Van Ness’ foot injury, Sorrell took up 30 snaps at defensive end and defensive tackle. In Week 8, that dropped down to 12. This week, he only played one snap. He also didn’t contribute on special teams, either. If the Packers choose to keep Arron Mosby up for special teams work once Van Ness returns to the lineup, there’s a chance that Sorrell might be a healthy scratch.
Defensive Tackle
The most important piece of information here is that Warren Brinson, who was banged up in Week 8 and on the injury report, was a healthy scratch in Week 9. Instead, Nazir Stackhouse played for Brinson as the team’s fourth defensive tackle, despite Brinson outsnapping Stackhouse the last two times that he was healthy.
This might not matter, as Colby Wooden dropped out against the Panthers with an injury, but if Wooden is healthy, expect Brinson to be another healthy scratch against the Philadelphia Eagles. Generally, the Packers only like to play Stackhouse for a handful of snaps a game, but injuries have forced the team’s hand to adjust in Week 3, Week 4 and Week 9, three of Stackhouse’s most-played games. Green Bay is 0-2-1 in those games.
Linebacker
We know the deal here. Quay Walker and Edgerrin Cooper never leave the field, while Isaiah McDuffie is the team’s third linebacker in 4-3 looks. Micah Parsons got a rep at true linebacker, instead of just hovering around the center as a stand-up defensive tackle, on a play where Quay Walker played edge rusher against the Panthers.
Cornerback
Nate Hobbs was given two drives to play as an outside cornerback against the Panthers. Otherwise, it was Carrington Valentine playing opposite Keisean Nixon, who played every single defensive snap of this game. More on the rotation in the safety section.
Slot Defender
The Packers continue to use Nate Hobbs as a situational nickelback, usually coming in on obvious passing downs. Otherwise, Javon Bullard continues to be the starter in the slot. With Hobbs now dealing with a second knee injury, we’re in a pretty uncharted territory if Bullard, who has been hurt twice this year, goes down. Keisean Nixon could play inside, but he hasn’t done it in well over a year now.
Like Nate Hobbs, Javon Bullard was given two drives to play a non-nickel position in this game. Bullard only plays safety in 4-3 looks, though, as Evan Williams has played even safety snap next to Xavier McKinney this year in nickel (and other subpackage) snaps.
How did the Packers fare on those two drives with Bullard at 4-3 safety? They were the only two drives that the team gave up a touchdown against the Panthers. Hobbs played outside cornerback on one of those drives, but not the other.
Personally, I don’t think Williams ever needs to be on the bench when the defense is on the field. I’m not a fan of mixing Bullard in at safety, something the team didn’t do from Week 2 through Week 6.