I snipped this froma post I made elswhere. The answer to the question of how the Packers improved their running game is...they sort of didn't.
Someone posted stats showing how the average yards/rush for the Packers increased month by month through the course of the year. So I looked at those numbers from a few perspectives. First, how did those yards/rush by month match up to the winning percentages of the teams they faced during those months. Here's the result:
September-4.5 avg per rush (Opponents Win %: 57.8)
October-4.7 avg per rush (Opponents Win %: 47.9)
November-4.9 avg per rush (Opponents Win %: 40.6)
December-5.5 avg per rush (Opponents WIN %: 42.5)
So, they sucked early against better teams and cleaned up later against weaker teams. Just to show it's not smoke and mirrors, you can also look at this stat by comparing the Packers average yards/game gained vs. the average yards allowed for the Packers opponents. In 11 of the Packers games this year they gained FEWER yards than the average allowed by their opponents over the course of the season. It was only against five teams that the Packers actually gained more than the average allowed by their opponents.
But wait, the story gets even uglier for the Packers. If you look at their actual yards gained rushing game by game (yes, I have too much time on my hands) you see that they only outgained the average yards allowed by their opponents five times...against Minnesota, Dallas, Oakland, Chicago (barely in one game) and Detroit.
By the way, of the total yards the Packers gained rushing for the year (1600 and change), 14% of those yards came against Detroit (23rd worst rushing defense in the NFL) in the last game of the season and another 11% came against Oakland (31st worst rushign defense in the NFL). That means 25% of the total yards gained on the ground by the Packers for the year came against two very bad teams.
And finally, you seem very confident in your nice young running back Ryan Grant. Well, he was the 19th best rusher in the NFL this year with 956 yards gained. Of those 956 yards, 418 came in four games - two against Detroit, Oakland and Denver. In the other 12 games of the year he average (DRUMROLL) 44.83 yards/game. OUCH.
The more I look at this the more I start to think that the Packers won't be able to run the ball against Seattle. Oops. Just jynxed the team!