If you thought things on the Green Bay Packers-related internet this week were bad, I can inform you that they were just as bad, if not worse, in person at Lambeau Field on Monday night. The Packers offense spent the entire evening shooting itself in the foot between poor offensive line play, hyper-conservative playcalling, procedural penalties, key drops, a derpy Jordan Love fumble, Christian Watson playing defense on a ball that ended up hitting him in the head, and the Eagles calling out the play before the snap on fourth down. I’m not sure it could have felt much worse.
The Packers have a plethora of soul searching to do. The offensive line has played poorly, particularly given the resources put into the unit, and that simply cannot continue. As our own Justis Mosqueda pointed out, they’re just going to have to figure it out, both for this year and going forward, because further attrition is coming. Matt LaFleur has gone from a coach who called running plays a little bit too much, to one of the most conservative play callers in the league over the past two months.
At some point there is going to have to be a come-to-Jesus moment with LaFleur’s playcalling tendencies or this offense is just going to be dead on arrival. They cannot run block to save their lives, but everyone and their mother has already written, podcasted, or radio ranted about this. This is well-covered ground.
The rather obvious pivot if you can’t run the ball is that you’re going to have to pass the ball more, which, on early downs, Green Bay has been quite good at this season. They’ve averaged 8.2 yards per play on first down passes, more than double what they’ve managed on the ground in the same situations. There are a couple of problems the team faces at the moment with that, though.
The first is just going to be part of any discussion regarding the offense for the rest of the year: no more Tucker Kraft. Kraft is probably the most important receiving weapon the Packers have, and he’s not coming back this season. But Kraft isn’t the only one who has been out of late.
Jayden Reed has missed most of the season, but seems on track to return some time in late November, but the other big player missing on Monday night was Matthew Golden. I find Golden’s absence to be the more impactful of the two at this time, particularly with Christian Watson back. The idea of being able to play Watson and Golden together is quite appealing, since both of them have legitimate deep speed that defenses must respect; however, with only Watson healthy, he is forced into running a lot of clearout routes to open things up underneath for his fellow receivers. And that is how you get a situation where he and Bo Melton had the same number of targets despite Watson running about twice as many routes.
While Golden’s statistical volume is not impressive — he has just 23 catches for 262 yards on the season — he is getting open at a legitimately elite rate. PFF grades him out as an elite separator.
From the very first games of the season, Golden has existed in that quadrant: reliably getting open, despite not having much in terms of raw production. Part of that is due to the problem outlined earlier, with the Packers just not throwing the ball enough. Couple that with Green Bay having four-plus different weapons to spread the ball to in most weeks, and it’s just hard to put up volume, especially when Green Bay almost always brings rookies along slowly. Rookie Randall Cobb and rookie Davante Adams put up pedestrian volume numbers, but both turned into good, and in Davante Adams’ case, great, wide receivers. A slower start in volume doesn’t doom Golden whatsoever, but when he returns, Green Bay will actually need to utilize him.
Utilizing him appropriately is going to be key. One of my personal pet peeves is the designed touch for a receiver, simply to get them the ball. LaFleur is committing severe playcalling crimes on this with Savion Williams, who has a touch-per-play rate equivalent to superstar receivers, but LaFleur has also manufactured touches for Golden as well. In fact, Golden’s injury came on just such a play, a screen called where Golden then gets squished by an edge rusher and injures his shoulder.
These types of designed touches are not the best way to use Golden. He is not a yards-after-catch monster, particularly at or near the line of scrimmage. It’s certainly a small sample size this season, but he is at minus-16 yards-after-catch-over-expected. He can be better down the field when he’s closer to full speed, using that to create more advantageous angles for himself, but he’s not someone the Packers should be trying to use to try and recreate Tucker Kraft in the aggregate. What Golden is is an exceptional separator, and Green Bay needs to find ways to get him the ball more in the intermediate and deep areas of the field, where his skills excel.
Now, the Packers have not ignored him in these areas. In fact, Golden has the third-highest deep target percentage in the league this season at 27.6%, per Next Gen Stats. Where his volume is quite limited is in the intermediate parts of the field, and that will almost certainly have to expand if he is to play a larger role.
The Packers like to bring along young players slowly, but once Golden is back, they may need to throw him into the fire, or else the offense’s ceiling may not be high enough to make much noise.