The Green Bay Packers’ 27-17 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday might have lacked style points but it was promising on a number of fronts.
One, the Packers showed they can win without dominating performances from Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams and Aaron Jones. In fact, none of the three turned in a great performance and the team still won comfortably against a quality team that was in need of a victory.
Two, the Packers had their best day of the season running the ball. That, in turn, led to their best performance on third down.
Three, the defense might not have dominated for 60 minutes but it allowed 10 points until yielding a garbage-time touchdown.
With that as a backdrop, here is our Week 4 report card.
Passing Offense
After completing only 55.5 percent of his passes, this will not go down as one of Aaron Rodgers’ finer performances. But the Steelers have done that to more than one quarterback over the years. The Steelers, in fact, were No. 1 in the NFL last season in opponent passer rating and completion percentage. Rodgers accounted for three touchdowns. Not bad for a so-so performance.
Randall Cobb really saved the day, catching 5-of-6 passes for 69 yards and two touchdowns. Four catches converted third downs and the other was a touchdown. On passes to the other receivers, Rodgers was 8-of-15; on passes to the tight ends, Rodgers was just 3-of-9. He missed opportunities for big plays on deep passes to Marcedes Lewis (overthrown, though perhaps Lewis would have made the play had he kept running) and Robert Tonyan (underthrown). When pressured, Rodgers was just 2-of-7. Two of the best plays were completions of 26 and 19 yards to Aaron Jones in which Adams cleared out the coverage and Rodgers hit Jones on the move.
Considering the Packers were facing the four-time reigning sack champions, the protection was good. Officially, T.J. Watt sacked Rodgers twice. One was a trip and one came late in the game when Rodgers ran around and slid to the turf. Right tackle Billy Turner, who saw Watt for most of the game, was charged with only two pressures by Pro Football Focus. Left guard Jon Runyan Jr. had the only big blunder as he blocked down and opened the door for Devin Bush to blitz for an uncontested sack to kill the opening series.
Grade: C-plus.
Rushing Offense
The last two weeks, Jones had 36 carries to 11 for AJ Dillon. On Sunday, the 30 backfield carries were split right down the middle. Dillon had by far the better day, turning those 15 carries into 81 yards. On the play of the day, a 25-yard run to the 1, the Steelers took the bait of jet-sweep action to Amari Rodgers and Runyan Jr. threw the key block to get Dillon into the clear. Center Josh Myers got a piece of two defenders and left tackle Yosh Nijman had a pancake. “Got to pick those legs up a little bit more and have a plan out there,” Dillon said with a smile while lamenting that he didn’t score. It was really the first time all season that he had room to run. By our unofficial count, he broke five tackles (four rushing, one receiving). Of his 97 total yards, 56 yards came after contact.
Jones carried 15 times for 48 yards. This week, he was the back who didn’t find room to run. By our count, he had 34 yards after contact, meaning he averaged just less than 1 yard per carry before contact. He’s fumbled the last two weeks – out of bounds against San Francisco and a turnover against the Steelers.
Grade: B-minus.
Passing Defense
Ben Roethlisberger is a two-time Super Bowl champion. He’s in the top 10 in NFL history in completions, yards and touchdowns. In other words, five years after he’s retired, he’ll be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But, at this point, he is a bad quarterback who is standing in the way of a team that’s pretty good, otherwise.
Roethlisberger completed 26-of-40 passes – his 65.0 percent much better than Rodgers’ mark – but for only 232 yards. Aside from the 45-yard touchdown over All-Pro Jaire Alexander on the opening series, he averaged a hideous 4.79 yards per attempt. He missed a couple chances for big plays by throwing bad passes, including what should have been a touchdown to JuJu Smith-Schuster late in the first half on a double move against Chandon Sullivan. Twice on fourth down, he completed passes in which his receiver had no chance of getting to the marker.
Kingsley Keke had a game-changing sack-strip in the second quarter and Gary had a superb sack early in the fourth quarter. Officially, the team had only five quarterback hits but Roethlisberger generally threw the ball so quickly that Deacon Jones, Reggie White, Lawrence Taylor and Za’Darius Smith wouldn’t have had a prayer.
Roethlisberger went after first-round pick Eric Stokes early and often. He gave up a lot of catches; when he made the tackle, the damage was limited. Tackling was a problem overall. Unofficially, Sullivan had three misses, Stokes had two and linebacker Oren Burks had two. Because of swarming defense, only one of Stokes’ misses, which turned into 14 yards after the catch for James Washington, was an issue.
Grade: C-plus.
Rushing Defense
It was a box score victory for Green Bay, which limited first-round running back Najee Harris to 62 yards on 15 carries. For Harris, though, his 4.1-yard average must have felt like the easiest day of his professional life. According to Pro Football Focus, 41 of Harris’ 40 yards last week against Cincinnati came after contact. Against Green Bay, by our count, 38 yards came after contact with one missed tackle.
Green Bay did what it should have done against a bad offensive line. Defensive lineman Kenny Clark and inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell continued their excellent play. Clark had a hand in four tackles that gained a total of 5 yards. Starting outside linebackers Gary and Preston Smith kept the edges contained. With Harris kept under wraps, the Packers allowed just 4-of-13 on third and fourth down by mostly staying out of short-yardage situations.
Grade: B.
Special Teams
For the second consecutive week, the Packers averted disaster on their field-goal unit. After Mason Crosby’s game-winning field goal at San Francisco was almost blocked last week, Minkah Fitzpatrick’s block and return for a touchdown was nullified by a controversial offside penalty on Joe Haden. Haden went outside of Tonyan and Fitzpatrick went inside of Tonyan; Tonyan didn’t stop either of them. It’s easy to see why the flag was thrown; Green Bay’s blockers – Tonyan among them – were incredibly late off the ball. As long as Tonyan is the wing on the right side of the field-goal formation, opponents are going to test him until he shows he’s up to the task.
Meanwhile, Equanimeous St. Brown’s holding penalty wiped out a nice punt return by Amari Rodgers and Kylin Hill averaged 18.5 yards on two kickoff returns. He’s going to get hurt or turn over the ball with his hurdling habit.
Not everything was bad. Punter Corey Bojorquez had a 57-yard bomb with a fair catch forced by Malik Taylor and a 36-yarder downed at the 4 by Taylor. Shemar Jean-Charles drew a holding penalty on a third-quarter kickoff. Moments later, Darnell Savage almost blocked a punt that resulted in a 20-yard shank and set up Green Bay for a touchdown and a 27-10 lead.
Grade: C-minus.
Coaching
The Packers played the entire game without Pro Bowlers David Bakhtiari, Elgton Jenkins and Za’Darius Smith and still beat a good team by 10 points. Green Bay’s offense wasn’t great but a 27-point performance without two of the NFL’s premier blockers and big-play receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling is excellent.
Football games are won on third down. The Packers went 9-of-15 and the Steelers went 4-of-11. They’re also won in the red zone. That’s got to be an emphasis moving forward. Offensively, Green Bay went 2-of-4 on Sunday and is 20th for the season with 60.0 percent touchdowns; defensively; it’s one of only three teams in the NFL without a red-zone stop.
Grade: A-minus.
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