There are many reasons why the Green Bay Packers are 2-0 heading into Week 3 with wins over two playoff teams from a year ago. Some of those reasons have centered on improvements in blemished areas from last year. Although the sample size is small, it remains promising.
Drops were a huge issue in 2024 for the Packers. There were plenty of guilty parties, but the numbers skyrocketed partially because of two main culprits.
Dontayvion Wicks and Jayden Reed were both in the Top 5 in the league in dropped passes a year ago. Worse yet? Glance at the number of targets from everyone else in the Top 5, Wicks and Reed didn’t have the volume.
As a result, Wicks had the highest drop rate in the league among all wide receivers with at least 70 targets the previous year, and Reed was second.
It’s only been two games, but the drops haven’t even appeared as a blip on the radar.
According to PFF, Green Bay’s wide receivers have only one drop in the first two weeks. It came via Reed.
What’s even more encouraging is that Wicks has two contested targets and has hauled in both. The receivers making the easy plays, and Wicks and others like Heath, who also has converted his only contested target look, are also making the difficult ones.
Green Bay has gotten off to quick starts against the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders, something it wasn’t able to do against the top-tier teams a year ago. A big reason for that has been the ability to move the chains and not have drive-killing drops or mistakes.
Let’s not forget that last year, Green Bay led the league in percentage of third-down incompletions due to receiver error at 32.7%.
So far, so good in that department this year.
Only the Jacksonville Jaguars had a lower blitz percentage than the Packers a year ago. The Jaguars had a 13.9% blitz percentage on dropbacks from the opposing offense, the lowest in the league. Green Bay was just ahead of them at 17.3%.
That’s fine in theory. You don’t have to blitz to win. However, in Jeff Hafley’s defense and almost any defense in the NFL, they must get pressure on the quarterback while rushing four to succeed.
The Packers struggled to create pressure with their front four a year ago. Hafley ran a good defense, but all groups have their faults. For Green Bay, it came in the form of wild inconsistencies getting to the quarterback and applying pressure.
Obviously, adding Micah Parsons changes everything from that aspect for the Packers. Still, even in the snaps where Parsons hasn’t been on the field through two weeks, they’ve found a way to be much better.
Devonte Wyatt leads the team with 11 quarterback pressures in two games. Parsons is right behind Wyatt with 10.
Per PFF, Hafley’s defense has produced a pressure percentage of 43% after a combined 95 dropbacks from Jared Goff and Jayden Daniels in the first two weeks. The Packers have amassed eight sacks and 21 quarterback hits during this early stretch.
Goff isn’t a statue, but he’s not the most fleet of foot. If you need a visual example of what we mean, look at Parsons’ chase-down sack of Goff in Week 1.
Daniels is the complete opposite.
He wins with his arm as much as he does with his legs. Daniels is as dynamic as it gets running the ball at the quarterback position. If that feels heavy, he might be a peg below Lamar Jackson, but there aren’t many quarterbacks as creative as Daniels who can scoot around like he does.
For the Packers to bottle him up the way they did on Thursday night showed vast improvement from a year ago.
Green Bay blitzed Daniels 12 times, and Washington’s signal caller went 3-for-10 in those instances with two Packers sacks. Green Bay was also able to generate pressure without blitzing, keeping Daniels contained all night.
The Packers blitzed on 9.3% of his dropbacks against Goff, who’s far less likely to use his legs. That was the fourth-lowest single-game blitz rate for Green Bay since 2023. Despite that, they still pressured Goff on 37.2% of his dropbacks. In other words, right around their average over the last three years.
Green Bay has shown they can blitz and hit home. Just as importantly, they can rush four, pin their ears back, and still create chaos for the opposing quarterback.
That was something they weren’t able to do consistently or anywhere close to it a year ago.
Parsons changes a lot of that. Growth from Wyatt and Lukas Van Ness also helps.
It’s a small sample size of just two games, but those two came against a couple of highly-regarded teams that have Super Bowl aspirations in 2025. The Packers dominated both, largely because they’re addressing weak spots from a year ago and improving in other categories that weren’t strong enough.
