Wicks was another one who had a lot of preseason hype and he was practically invisible from a production standpoint.
I’ve been a huge Wicks supporter and I think a lot of his non-production was on him. Drops won’t earn you looks. But that whole offense seemed wrong this year, as if the coach lost confidence in his offense or something. How you could end the year before this one like they did by pasting Dallas and playing SF (?) wicked tough and then doing what they did this year (all year, it seemed) is . . . confusing.
They added Jacobs and upgraded the running game. Packers finished 5th in total offense, 5th in rushing, 12th in passing. Last year they were 11th overall, 15th rush, 12th passing. That's a pretty big improvement. Also moved from 12th to 8th in pts.
I get what you’re saying, and those look like numbers that should be definitive. But my eyes were telling me something different and if DVOA wasn’t behind a damn paywall now instead of being with Football Outsiders where it rightfully belongs, we’d have a better stat to go by. But we don’t, so total offense and arguing about SoS will have to suffice.
Darn it. Wait, hold up. I think you’re looking at this in a way where the premises aren’t leading to the proper conclusion. We’re talking about Christian Watson and the pass offense, not the efficacy of the GB rushing attack.
I mean, it’s easy to see they ran the ball more with Jacobs and chose to dominate that way. I get that. But how much they ran him should probably factor into the analysis as a
negative for the passing game. When you’re playing a ball-control and dink and dunk offense, you’re not taking the shots down the field that a guy like Watson would benefit from. (You didn’t think I wasn’t going full-circle with that comment, did you?)
So you’ve got to look at the renewed emphasis on the running game vs. the passing game (generally, coaches tend to play at the same pace as years prior unless they have a new QB or something) and how running the ball more affected the total amount of passes by the team. Here, let me look at last year’s passing attempts by team:
2024 - 479
2023 - 581
Then the rushing attempts
2024 - 526
2023 - 441
It’s pretty clear when looking at that as your premise where the concern about the passing game comes from.
So these are regular season stats and there’s pretty much no doubt left that the Packers threw the ball less than the year before (102 fewer times), or 17.5% less than they did the year prior. That’s a lot. Add to that the Packers played a more ball-control offense in philosophy from the eye test and you’ve got a significant change there.