Packers film room: Breaking down the key plays on the 1st scoring drive vs Rams

The Green Bay Packers won and improved to 6-8 on Monday night versus the Los Angeles Rams in a crucial must-win home game by a final score of 24-12. The win keeps their playoff hopes alive with a slim 8% chance of making it to the postseason. They’ll need a little bit of luck and to essentially win out the rest of their games but in a week-to-week league, anything is possible until it’s not.

On Monday night, Aaron Rodgers was 22-for-30, 229 yards, one touchdown pass and one interception. The running backs amassed 141 yards of offense on 32 carries and two touchdowns while rookie receiver Romeo Doubs led all receivers with five receptions for 55 yards.

The scoring started in the second quarter for the Packers and epitomizes what they do best: short quick passing game, play action, and the inside zone running game.

The first scoring drive’s first two plays set up the Packers with a manageable 3rd-and-3 to convert with a 12-yard completion to Randall Cobb over the middle.

Third play, 2nd quarter, 3rd and 3, 9:15 remaining

The play call is a “lookie stick nod” concept out of an empty 3x2 formation. The right side is in trips with the number three receiver running the stick-nod route (1st read) and Cobb on the backside two receiver side running the lookie slant (2nd read).

Cobb is in a stack alignment with a switch release here.

The defense caps the trips side so Rodgers likely eliminated the stick-nod in his pre-snap assessment of the defense. The Rams are in single high cover-1 lurk coverage with the safety shaded to the trips, indicating to Rodgers that he has no throw there.

“Lurk” is a Fangio concept where the low hole linebacker drops into a zone underneath as opposed to “robber” with a safety. Rodgers drops back looking left almost immediately, shows some patience, and hits Cobb in the second window on the lookie slant for a gain of 12.

Fourth play: 1st and 10

The play call here is a play-action “read” route concept where the primary receiver is running a deep curl or takeoff route based on the coverage. With the safety sitting over Christian Watson’s route, he sits at a depth of about 20 yards. Rodgers passed up a wide-open throw to Watson though in favor of the check down. It’s not clear why, but it was a 17-yard gain nonetheless.

Fifth play, 1st and 10, 8:11 remaining

The play call is a stick/flat concept to the passing strength, the offense’s left, and a spot/dig on the backside of the concept as the third and fourth progressions in the play.

The play is run out of a 2x2 with Aaron Jones as the offset running back in the backfield. The defense rotates to 3-deep/3-under fire zone from a two-deep safety pre-snap alignment with a linebacker adding to the rush as the fifth rusher.

The safety rotation is away from the passing strength/nickel defender and the nickel and weak safety are the seam/flat players. Rodgers comes off the stick/flat concept to the left and sees that no one carried Cobb over the middle on his dig route because Jalen Ramsey, who should have run with him, sat on the spot route underneath. Cobb is wide open over the middle as Rodgers throws it to him, slightly behind to protect him from a hit by the defender.

The sixth, seventh, and eighth plays were uneventful and got Packer to 4th and 3 where Matt LaFleur decided to go for it.

Ninth play, 4th and 3, 5:51 remaining

The call is an inside zone run with an RPO tagged to the backside. Rodgers is reading the leverage of the defense out wide for his cue to give or pass and he elects to give the ball to Dillon on the inside zone run. Dillon picked up four yards for the first down and it looked like Rodgers could have also passed the ball out to the quick flat but either way, they earned a fresh set of downs and set up Dillon’s touchdown run.

10th play, 1st and 10, five-yard run up the middle by Dillon.

11th play, 2nd and 5 @ LA 8, 4:33 remaining

The play call is another inside zone RPO with a bubble out wide to the right in a two-receiver stack.

There is split-flow action to the backside with the tight end motion, giving the Packers basically 7-on-7 blocking with Allen Lazard coming down into the box to block the safety.

The split flow action holds the backside hold the backside safety in place and prevents him from fitting the run. With every blocker accounted for, Dillon is able to squeeze through the offensive line and use his leg drive to barrel into the end zone with the help of a few friends.

Packers lead 10-3.

Outlook

In part two of this week’s film room, we’ll look at the second touchdown drive in the 3rd quarter.