The Packers fixed their leaky secondary, but it came at a price

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The Packers patched up their fatal flaws in coverage — and created some new ones in the process.

The 2016 Green Bay Packers had a problem. Their passing defense had cratered.

After holding opponents to an 81.7 passer rating the year before — seventh-best in the league — a combination of lax coverage and inefficient pass rush allowed made the Pack one of the league’s easiest teams to throw against. Only one team in the NFL gave up more than Green Bay’s 269 passing yards per week that fall, and only two allowed more than the 7.1 net yards per attempt the porous defense gave up every time a QB dropped back to pass.

While that didn’t affect the team’s overall success — the Packers posted an identical 10-win record as the year before and ran all the way to the NFC Championship Game thanks to Aaron Rodgers’ superhuman efforts — it showcased the Achilles’ heel that threatened to shut this team’s Super Bowl window.

So changes were made. The Packers focused heavily on rebuilding their secondary and linebacking corps with players known for their coverage. And while the transformation hasn’t come overnight, Green Bay’s passing defense is slowly developing from fatal flaw to position of strength.

Two years after ranking 31st in the league in passing yards allowed, the Packers clock in at fifth in the league. No team has a higher defensive rating when it comes to disrupting opponents’ passing efficiency. And the way Jaire Alexander and his cohort have developed, this group could climb even higher by the time the 2018 season comes to a close.

Jaire Alexander is leading a youth takeover in the Packers’ secondary

The Packers’ plan of attack, as it typically has been in the franchise’s 97 years of existence, was to build through the draft. In 2017, the team’s first two picks went to defensive backs Kevin King and Josh Jones. One year later, Green Bay’s haul from the first two days of the draft was Jaire Alexander, Josh Jackson, and Vanderbilt safety/linebacker hybrid Oren Burks.

That’s a tremendous buy-in, but general managers Ted Thompson (through 2017) and Brian Gutekunst (2018 onward) made a point to maximize their number of chances to land a transformative talent at a bargain price. It looks like Gutekunst found one in Alexander, the former Louisville standout who has needed only half a season to acclimate himself as a versatile weapon in a Packers defense that’s relied heavily on its secondary this year.

Alexander’s proven versatile enough to work both along the sideline and toward the middle of the field; in seven games, he’d taken nearly 25 percent of his total snaps from the slot. After an uneven start, he’s emerged as the team’s No. 1 corner, locking on to opponents’ top targets and giving his safeties the freedom to focus their efforts elsewhere.

In his past three games, Alexander has broken up eight passes. That includes a five-breakup day against the Rams’ elite aerial offense.

Alexander’s emergence hasn’t gone unnoticed. His own defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine, thinks he’s on his way to making a Darrelle Revis-style impact. Patriots head coach Bill Belichick had nothing but praise for the rookie in advance of a Week 9 showdown with Green Bay. Via the Wisconsin State Journal:

“He’s a great player. He’s going to have a great career in this league. We thought that in the draft. I thought that was an excellent pick. It was a little bit ahead of where we were picking, (but) he was certainly one of the top players on the board.

“He’s a great kid. He’s got great energy. He loves football and has great football skills — fast, athletic, good hands, good ball skills, can tackle, can play inside in the slot, can play outside on the perimeter, good zone vision, breaks on the ball, good man to man coverage, has good quickness, can match up with fast receivers, can match up with quick receivers. The guy’s a really good football player and I think he’s got a great future in this league. I think he’ll be one of the top corners in the game for a quite a while here.”

Alexander’s bringing a Stephon Gilmore level of performance to the Packers’ secondary at one quarter of the cost. When you’re rostering Rodgers, the highest-paid player in the game, these are the low-cost adjustments the Packers need to maintain a constant postseason presence.

Alexander’s been the headliner, but a long line of emerging talent has pushed a defensive rebuild into focus

Alexander’s emergence as a potential lockdown corner is a major asset for a secondary that’s still defining roles across the starting lineup. But the Packers were confident in their young defensive backs before the rookie exploded onto the scene. The past two seasons have seen important contributors likeMicah Hyde, Damarious Randall, and Ha Ha Clinton-Dix all leave Wisconsin via trade or free agency.

It seemed counterintuitive to allow a pair of Pro Bowl safeties and another starter leave, but Green Bay’s faith in its drafting is beginning to pay off. That’s been hugely important for a team that’s leaning more and more on its defensive backs as it makes a postseason push.

2018 second-round pick Josh Jackson has sandwiched flashes of excellence around rookie mistakes as a sometimes starter at corner. He was one of only three Packers to play every defensive down in Week 10’s win over the Dolphins. Kevin King, the 33rd overall pick of 2017, has been useful when healthy. Josh Jones’ season started slowly due to injury, but he’s come on strong the past two weeks (11 tackles) as the kind of powerful safety who can slide up to the line of scrimmage and make key stops against the run while providing some center field coverage.

It’s not all youth in the defensive backfield, however. 35-year-old Tramon Williams has been a valuable leader in his second stint with the Packers. 26-year-old free agent signee Bashaud Breeland has added a little more gravitas to the secondary. They’ve been counted on to bolster a defense that’s focused more and more heavily on nickel and dime packages in recent weeks. The Packers defaulted to secondary-heavy set throughout a Week 9 showdown with New England in a strategy that worked until it didn’t. In Week 10, they used five defensive backs in 74 percent of their snaps.

Green Bay is placing its faith in a budding secondary, and its core of young players is beginning to reward that strategy. Against the Dolphins, they bowed up in the end zone to keep Brock Osweiler looking like Brock Osweiler — 213 yards on 37 passes, zero touchdowns, and one interception. The week prior, they held Tom Brady to just 169 passing yards through three quarters before the Patriots’ trickery eventually led to a crushing defeat.

But the Packers’ focus on defensive backs has hurt the roster elsewhere

It’s been four years since Green Bay took a skill player before the third round of the draft (Davante Adams). While late-round draftees like Aaron Jones, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and Jamaal Williams and free agent pickups Jared Cook, Lance Kendricks, Jimmy Graham, and Jahri Evans have helped in spurts, Green Bay’s lack of offensive playmakers has been an issue.

Adams has been a boon, but Rodgers has suffered due to a lack of receiving talent in 2018. With Geronimo Allison and RandallCobb both fighting injuries, the Packers have been forced to start rookie Day 3 picks Valdes-Scantling and Equanimeous St. Brown for a total of eight games this fall. That’s turned an offense that’s been a top 10 unit in eight of Rodgers’ nine seasons as the team’s primary starter into the league’s No. 13 scoring offense.

Through 10 weeks of the 2018 season, the Packers’ defense ranks as the NFL’s most efficient against the pass. Meanwhile, Rodgers’ offense clocks in at 18th in the league when you flip that metric to the other side of the ball.

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Rodgers’ has been impressively turnover averse in 2018, but the rest of his numbers suggest this could be one of his least efficient NFL seasons. The two-time MVP is throwing for more than 300 yards per game, but his completion rate is the second-lowest of his career as the Packers’ starting quarterback. And even though he’s throwing more often than ever before, he’s also finding the end zone less — his 4.8 percent touchdown rate is an all-time low.

The Packers knew Jordy Nelson was on his way out and Cobb was beginning the downslope of his career, but they deemed their secondary the bigger concern. That meant missing out on potential Day 2 picks like Cooper Kupp, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Alvin Kamara, Kenny Golladay, Christian Kirk, or Anthony Miller. Add any one of those players to the Adams-Graham duo and you’re giving Rodgers license to light up opponents this season.

Instead, Thompson and Gutekunst looked back at Green Bay’s playoff failures and realized a cheesecloth defense was, more often than not, the team’s biggest concern. It was a risk to pour year after year of draft assets into rebuilding the defense, but that foundation is beginning to settle in 2018. Alexander looks like a potential All-Pro, and the rest of the team’s young assets in the secondary have shown enough over a small sample size to inspire confidence.

The question now is whether late-round finds like Jones, St. Brown, and Valdes-Scantling can do enough for Rodgers to keep the Packers’ rising defense from eclipsing Green Bay’s suddenly-average offense. Green Bay is 4-4-1 with difficult games at Seattle, Minnesota, and Chicago remaining on its schedule. The Packers will need their defense to show up in spades in order to dispatch the talented passers they’ll face to close out 2018 — but it could all be for naught unless another weapon can step up and give Rodgers’ offense the extra gear its lacked through a .500 start.