The Green Bay Packers are on bye this week, so let’s take a temperature check on how the team’s performed. In terms of DVOA, the Packers are eighth in offense, 13th in defense, and 27th in special teams. Overall, they’ve been a solid team, certainly worthy of and on track for a playoff spot.
However, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses in Lambeau. Through nine weeks, the Packers have been the sixth-most penalized team in the NFL. They’ve also had significant special teams blunders, like misfielded kicks and missed field goals. Ultimately, the Packers have shown potential but have been sloppy. After their loss to the Detroit Lions, Matt LaFleur alluded to their consistent play.
We’ve had good moments playing good complementary football… but I think some of the mistakes that we’ve made in the last four games that we’ve won showed up yesterday against a good football team. It’s hard to overcome those in those moments. Detroit played a clean game.
However, Green Bay’s special teams play has been cringe-worthy, something fans are all too familiar with. The Packers special teams unit has drawn eight penalties so far this year, which makes them one of the more penalized special teams operations in the NFL. Green Bay is also 31st in the NFL in field goal conversion percentage and sixth in the NFL in field goal attempts per game.
The Packers have been kicking a lot and haven’t been effective. A big part of the problem is Green Bay’s offense in the red zone. The Packers are 29th in the NFL in scoring a touchdown in the red zone, only converting on 47.06% of their red-zone drives. Ultimately, the preference is to have the offense regress positively and be more effective in the red zone. In 2023, they were 17th in the NFL in red-zone conversion at 53.42%. However, thus far, they have failed and put more pressure on the kicking operation.
To start the year, the Packers had rookie Brayden Narveson, who went 12 for 17 (70.6%) on field goals and 16 for 16 on extra points — before getting cut before Week 7. They then signed Brandon McManus, an NFL veteran in his 11th season, who has gone 6 for 7 (85.7%) on field goals and 6 for 6 on extra points. McManus’ one miss against the Lions was during a rainy and windy day from 46 yards out.
If extrapolated for the entire season, McManus’s 85.7 field goal conversion percentage would place the Packers around 16th or 17th best in the league. My main argument for positive regression for Green Bay’s special teams is McManus’ veteran presence and consistency.
“The average margin of victory in the NFL is three points,” McManus said after his game-winning kick versus the Houston Texans in his Packers debut, “so you got to go into each game understanding that it might come down to you and that’s why I chose this position many moons ago. I love the pressure situations.”
While Narveson also relished the pressure of being a kicker, McManus has lived the life of an NFL kicker for a decade, including a stint with the Denver Broncos during their 2016 Super Bowl-winning season.
Beyond their kicking, the Packers will also likely spend the bye emphasizing fundamentals to hopefully reduce their penalties and clean up some blunders they’ve had in mishandling situational special teams’ play. However, the personnel changes should start to bear more fruit in multiple ways.
The offense should start performing better and take some pressure off the kicking unit, and the kicking unit shoulbeginrt to see improvement in execution. That bodes well for the Packers to improve in both offensive and special teams DVOA in the back half of the year.
