Packers Packers’ offense needs to evolve to survive, thrive

[News Bot]

Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy has talked at length about this being a different football team, one detached from whatever went right or wrong in 2011.

Seemingly every week, McCarthy deflects comparisons from the local media about the Packers offense over the last two seasons.

“We’re a different team this year. That’s always the case, it never just stays the same,” McCarthy said Monday when asked why the offense hasn’t clicked the way it did in 2011. “We have a couple new players on offense. . . . It’s never the same year-to-year.”

McCarthy is right. His offense, once the envy of the NFL and a unit that averaged five touchdowns a game in 2011, is a different machine with some different parts to start this season. Yet for all his awareness of the detachment from last season, McCarthy has been slow to evolve and grow his offense in 2012.

Last season, McCarthy rarely had to worry about any sort of offensive balance. Discounting kneel downs and quarterback scrambles, Green Bay ran the football just 322 times, or on roughly 34 percent of the Packers’ total offensive plays in 2011. The offense still scored more points than only one team in NFL history.

The sledding has been much more difficult to start 2012.

When McCarthy has went away from the running game, the Packers offense has mostly sputtered. There are a number of clear examples through five games.

McCarthy called just nine running plays against the 49ers in a Week 1 loss. In Seattle, McCarthy waited until Aaron Rodgers had been sacked eight times over the first 30 minutes to finally start featuring the run game. Sunday against the Colts, McCarthy mostly abandoned the run after Cedric Benson left in the second quarter.

The result has been defenses that can pin their ears back and get to Rodgers, who has been sacked 21 times in five games. Green Bay is currently on pace to break the franchise record for sacks allowed with 67. The previous mark, 62, was set in 1990.

The 2012 New England Patriots are a shining example of an offense evolving and growing to fit new needs. While Tom Brady has as many toys in the passing game as Rodgers, New England has also managed to rush for over 200 yards in back-to-back wins. Combined with a break-neck, no-huddle pace, the Patriots have become a different but equally efficient offense in 2012.

A new season with new challenges on the horizon, New England evolved. The Packers haven’t.

Always one step ahead of the NFL curve, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick bucked the idea that the league was turning into a pass-crazed free-for-all, developed a stable of young, explosive backs and then pounded away against defensive fronts formulated to stop Brady and the rest of the NFL’s variety of passing games.

McCarthy’s offense remains stuck in the 2011 gear. Given an entire offseason to learn and study the holes in what the Packers did well last season, defenses have appeared ready for anything McCarthy throws their way in 2012. The big plays are gone. Sacks are way up. Scoring is way down.

At some point, McCarthy’s offense needs to undergo its own evolution. If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse, and that’s pretty much been the story of the Packers offense in 2012.

Benson’s injury, which was reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter as a Lisfranc injury, complicates that evolution. Benson could miss eight weeks, or even the rest of the season if surgery is required.

Benson’s ability had given Green Bay a respectable ground game, one that defenses had to account for if McCarthy stayed somewhat balanced.

Even with Benson out for the foreseeable future, Green Bay’s run game can’t die off like it did during the final 40 or so minutes in Indianapolis Sunday. After McCarthy gave Benson nine carries over the Packers’ first 17 offensive snaps, Green Bay ran just 14 times over the last 44 after Benson was carted off to the locker room. The Colts sacked Rodgers five times in the fourth quarter as the offense turned one-dimensional.

Even combination looks on offense—shotgun spread, two tight end sets, the inverted wishbone, etc.—and the Packers’ no-huddle pace gave way to more predictable passing formations from McCarthy in the second half. The Packers scored one touchdown, punted five times, missed two field goals and threw an interception over nine second-half drives as the Colts completed the largest second-half comeback over the Packers since 1957.

McCarthy insisted Monday that he “wasn’t interested in throwing it 50 times a game.” Evolution of the 2012 offense necessitates that be true.

By definition, necessity for survival is the first factor in evolution. McCarthy’s offense is probably inching closer to that breaking point now.

Source: JSOnline.com