Walking through the Packers performance on their most-used passing concept
As we ramp up to the 2025 season, I wanted to take a look back at a passing concept that the Green Bay Packers have leaned on heavily over the years. It’s not unique to the Packers – it’s a concept that has been around for years – but it has become a core part of the Packers’ passing offense.
It’s called Dagger, and it’s really pretty simple. It’s a two-man concept with the inside man running a vertical, clear-out route and the outside man running an in-cutting route. The idea is to have the vertical route clear out the middle, while the in-cutting route works behind it. You can get a good look at the core concept on this page from the Packers’ 2012 playbook:
There are a handful of popular variations to this concept. The one we’re focusing on today is one I typically tag as Middle-Read Dagger. The overall idea is the same, but there’s an option on the vertical route depending on the safeties over the top. If the defense is in MFC (Middle Field Closed), the vertical receiver will bend the route to the inside and cross the face of the single high safety. If the defense is in MFO (Middle Field open), the vertical receiver will take a route a little skinnier, looking to split the safeties in the middle. You can see this illustrated in a page from the Packers’ 2019 playbook.
The Packers ran this 51 times in 2024, making it their most-used passing concept (it accounted for 9.1% of their passing plays). When running this play, they averaged 10.6 YPA and had an explosive play rate of 29.4%. Of their 10 most used passing concepts, that 29.4% explosive rate ranks 3rd, behind High Cross (35.3%) and Verts (34.2%). The 541 yards generated off Middle-Read Dagger were the most amount of yards generated by any one passing concept in 2024, and the 15 explosives generated were also the most explosives generated by a single concept.
The Success Rate of 45.1% doesn’t measure up to the level of some of their other highly used concepts (Verts was at 55.3% success, High Cross at 52.9% and PA Boot at 61.1%), but it’s not a bad return on the concept. I didn’t chart all the drops this year (sorry I failed you), but I know there were a handful of drops on this concept. If those aren’t dropped, the success rate looks a lot better.
From a success rate perspective, this was at its best on 2nd down, coming in with a success rate of 55.6%. This was their most widely used concept on 2nd & long (7+ yards), and it was a good one. They ran is 16 times in those situations, with a success rate of 50.0% and 8.2 YPA.
Due to the option on the vertical route, some of the underneath routes and all the varied ways they can run this, Middle-Read Dagger was an effective and explosive passing concept for the Packers in 2024 and there’s no reason to believe it’ll be anything different for them in 2025.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways they ran it – and the different options on the play – before we get out of here.
As you can see from the playbook pages above, the concept is designed to hit the in-cutting route as the #1 read, so we’ve got a number of examples of that being the case.
— Dusty (@DustyEvely) August 3, 2025
The vertical clear-out route is there as an Alert, so you’ll see examples of Love hitting that route if the coverage is favorable. On the last play, it acts as a hot route against the blitz of the Vikings.
There are also iso routes on the other side that the QB can take if he likes the one-on-one match-up against the coverage look to that side.
And, of course, there is the checkdown. The first clip shows the Packers running an Escort Screen on the checkdown (having a TE release in front of the RB to the right to act as a lead blocker: kind of a powered-up checkdown). Since Dagger is a vertical concept, you can find some space underneath if the defense is falling back to take away the deep middle of the field.
I mentioned how this concept can be run in a variety of ways. I won’t show all of them, but I will point out a couple of my favorites.
This play pairs Middle-Read Dagger out of Trips (three receivers spread out on the same side of the formation), with the #3 receiver (the one closest to the line) running a deep crosser. It’s kind of a marriage of Middle-Read Dagger and Cross-Country Dagger.
— Dusty (@DustyEvely) August 3, 2025
They’ll also motion into Dagger, with the motion man running the dig. In 2023, we mainly saw that kind of motion-to-dig from Dontayvion Wicks, but they ran it with a handful of different receivers in 2024, including this rep where Luke Musgrave was the motion man. This can be a good way to widen the defense on that side of the field, only to cut back in front of him to the middle.
There is one version of this that I kind of hope goes away. Or, at the very least, becomes extremely scarce. They run a version of this with the vertical route coming from Tucker Kraft from his in-line TE position. It’s a tough ask, because that man needs to clear out the middle for the (speedier) receiver to run the in-cutter behind. If there’s any delay in the release from Kraft – or any bumping down the field – the spacing gets muddled.
It’s not one of the main ways we’ll see them run it, but I’ve seen it enough to know that it’s usually pretty clunky. I’m all in favor of running this concept out of different looks, but this one is messy enough that I’d be fine if it went away.
Albums listened to: Wisp – If Not Winter; Gaslight Anthem – History Books; Lord Huron – The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1; Sixpence None the Richer – This Beautiful Mess; Slowdive – Everything is Alive; Tom Waits – Real Gone