The Green Bay Packers‘ offense is expected to have a slow start. With so many young players and pieces coming together, wanting immediate prolific results is unrealistic. That much has been clear during training camp.
Matt LaFleur has created competitive team periods for situational football and, so far, the defense has dominated. Ultimately, even if there are critics of the defense’s performance, the unit has several veteran players, and the unit is playing together in the same system for the third season. It’s natural that the offense will have more growing pains.
Can all of this mean the offense will be flat-out bad in 2023? Well, it could, but not necessarily. First, quarterback Jordan Love has shown real signs of improvement, even though the offense is still a work in progress. Second, exactly because the offense is a work in progress, the unit should be better in the second half of the season.
“We’re practicing a situation for a reason,” first-year starting quarterback Jordan Love said after practice on Tuesday. “That’s when we need to drive down and win that game, so it’s frustrating that we haven’t been able to even get a drive started, let alone move the ball downfield to score. It’s something we’re going to go back to film, figure it out, watch it, see what areas we need to improve on, and come back to it next week.”
The third point, and this one could be particularly intriguing, is the schedule the Packers’ offense will face in 2023.
Zone Coverage alum Arif Hasan ranks NFL defenses for the season for Pro Football Network. And while defenses are so unpredictable from one year to another, Hasan’s exercise is made to project which defenses will be good or bad the next season, considering coaching and personnel changes.
According to Hasan’s projections, the Packers will only face one top-10 defense throughout the entire season: the Denver Broncos in Week 7, right after their bye week. To start the season, Green Bay faces the Chicago Bears (31st) and the Atlanta Falcons (28th). The team will face average units against the New Orleans Saints and Detroit Lions after that but again faces a bottom-tier defense, the Las Vegas Raiders, before the bye.
- Week 1: Chicago Bears (31st)
- Week 2: Atlanta Falcons (28th)
- Week 3: New Orleans Saints (14th)
- Week 4: Detroit Lions (15th)
- Week 5: Las Vegas Raiders (30th)
- Week 6: bye
- Week 7: Denver Broncos (9th)
- Week 8: Minnesota Vikings (26th)
- Week 9: Los Angeles Rams (32nd)
- Week 10: Pittsburgh Steelers (16th)
- Week 11: Los Angeles Chargers (25th)
- Week 12: Detroit Lions (15th)
- Week 13: Kansas City Chiefs (13th)
- Week 14: New York Giants (29th)
- Week 15: Tampa Bay Buccaneers (20th)
- Week 16: Carolina Panthers (22nd)
- Week 17: Minnesota Vikings (26th)
- Week 18: Chicago Bears (31st)
This sequence of relatively favorable matchups doesn’t mean the Packers will set the world on fire immediately, but it should allow the unit to establish itself in more favorable circumstances. The schedule wasn’t as beneficial in 2019, for example. LaFleur’s first game as Green Bay’s head coach was also against the Chicago Bears, but in a very different situation — that was one of the best defenses in the league.
The Packers won the game but only scored 10 points. It was a bad look for the Aaron Rodgers-led offense, but that was much more related to the stiff opposition. Green Bay went on to score at least 20 points in 13 of the next 15 games, including six games of 27 points or more. The team finished the season eighth in offensive DVOA. The first game wasn’t a real reflection of the Packers’ offense, just an issue of starting the season against a strong defense. The Bears also finished that season eighth in defensive DVOA.
In 2020, the Packers had the best offense in football, according to DVOA. In Week 1, they faced the Vikings, who ended up in the 18th place in the defensive rankings. Even starting a season that had a short training camp and no preseason, the team was able to score 43 points.
Those stats show that maturation is important, and the quality of the offense obviously is as well. But it also helps when the team is facing lesser competition. This year’s schedule might allow it, and it would empower a young unit to gain confidence while getting more information and opportunities to improve the group from week to week.
