With Clay Matthews out at least a month, there’s been speculation that the Green Bay Packers offense would change things up.
One school of thought says they’ll run more in order to control the clock and keep the defense off the field. The other says they’re going to sling it around more and try to point up a ton of points.
Well, neither of those things is going to happen, according to Aaron Rodgers. On his weekly radio show, Rodgers said the offense is going to trust the defense to make plays.
“I think you just keep putting your faith in the defense and guys to step up. We’ve dealt with injuries in the past and it’s got to be a next guy up mentality.”
Rodgers went on to say the Packers have to do a better job of scoring touchdowns than they did against Detroit. The Packers got into the end zone just once, while the majority of the Packers 22 points came from Mason Crosby.
Relative to the Matthews, the Packers have been through this before. He missed four games last season with his annual hamstring injury.
Those games came in weeks 11 through 14. The Packers went 3-1, with the only loss coming in a blowout at the New York Giants.
The Packers generated very little pressure on the quarterback, though. During that stretch, the Packers had six sacks, but five of those came in week 11 against Detroit.
The two guys the Packers will count on to rush the passer this time — Nick Perry and Mike Neal — were in drastically different situations then. Perry was on injured reserve and Neal was a situational defensive lineman who primarily rushed from inside.
The Packers will are hoping those guys can pick up the slack better than guys like Erik Walden and Dezman Moses did last year.
Even with this improved running game over the past three weeks the Packers aren’t really putting up a ton of points or putting teams away. Washington is horrible. They lost to the Bengals, and scored one touchdown against a Detroit team that was without Calvin Johnson. Just an observation. Potential is there. Should be interesting to see where they go from here.
Duh Mason Crosby rules. We will be fine relying on him to make at least half hours field goal attempts. Everyone already forgot Stafford put up 500 yards against GB last year, there, hey. The D is so much better this year, too, or no.