Packers Vs Rams – 3 Plays That Make You Go Hmmm

After re-watching the Packers game, here are three plays that made me go hmmm, for various reasons.

Pancakes Anyone?

I’m not surprised Aaron Donald felt like choking some people yesterday. While he had some moments, mainly by using his quickness to avoid blocks, this so-called “Mt. Rushmore All-time DL” got pushed around for most of the game by household names like Lucas Patrick and Yosh Nijman. While we’ve heard about Yosh’s “elite feet” from the likes of David Bakhtiari, I was surprised by the quality of his run blocking during his previous stint of three games as the starting left tackle. Watching all his reps in this game, Yosh appears to be the real deal, albeit still inexperienced. I would expect him to be the Packers’ starting right tackle next season. Major kudos to the scouting department.

Play design

When I was a kid, different blocks in my neighborhood had “teams” of rag-tag kids who would play touch (and often tackle) football in the street against each other. I was that kid who kept a book of plays I had designed for us to run. So, I’ve always been enamored by the beauty of a well-designed play where all the components and individual assignments have to come together for the play to work (a seal here and a seal here…)  And that’s what we have here. Deguara comes in motion to take the backside defensive end. Newman and Turner block down on the DL (Robinson) with Taylor peeling off to block a LB. Patrick and Runyan double team the other DL (Donald), with Patrick peeling off to block a LB. Daffney lead blocks (more of this, please) into the hole and picks up a LB. It’s poetry in motion. However, things don’t go as planned as far as execution of blocks. Turner misses his peel-off block. Patrick can’t get through traffic to his LB target. Floyd manages to elude Deguara’s cut block attempt. The result is there is a LB waiting for Dillon and Floyd gets his hands on Dillon at the LOS as well. Of course, it’s AJ Dillon, so it didn’t matter. He plows through them all to pick up a seven yard gain. Old time football here…

Davante

This is just a Davante Adams appreciation clip. When I first saw this play, I saw Adams standing alone near the pylon and wondered why Rodgers didn’t throw to his favorite target there. Looking back at the play, you can see that Rodgers has already thrown it to Cobb (interference anyone?) before Adams completes his route. But regardless, look at the Davante route – an out and up and as he has the defender thinking “I better get to the corner of the end zone,” a hard stop and turn. So fluid and effortless.