LaFleur Not Panicking Over Early Red-Zone Issues

Five games into the season, the Packers have almost as many red-zone failures as they did all of last season.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Last season, the Green Bay Packers led the NFL in scoring. Through five games this season, they’re 12th with a scoring average that’s down almost eight points.

The easy-to-point-to reason for the offensive mediocrity is the team’s less-than-mediocre performance in the red zone. Last season, Green Bay scored touchdowns on 80 percent of its red-zone possessions, tops in the NFL. The league has been tracking that stat since 1998; Green Bay’s success rate is No. 1 over that span, meaning it potentially fielded the best red-zone attack the NFL has ever seen. The Packers had never even had a 70 percent touchdown rate over those 23 seasons.

The mighty have fallen. Green Bay enters Week 6 ranked a woeful 27th with a red-zone touchdown rate of 55 percent.

Nonetheless, LaFleur said he wasn’t going to spend any more time working on it during Friday’s usual red-zone period.

“I’m not as concerned as everybody else, I would say, about our red zone. I think we’ll be fine,” he said after Wednesday’s practice. “We’re five games into this thing and, certainly, we set a standard a year ago of what it should look like and we haven’t lived up to that standard, and that falls on me. I’ve got to do a better job of giving our guys plays that can be successful vs. whatever look the opponents come out in. We’ll continue to work on it, but I’m not going to panic over it quite yet.”

He's right about it being early in the season. Numbers can rise and fall quickly based on limited attempts. If the Packers were to go 4-for-4 on Sunday in Chicago – no small feat against the third-best red-zone defense in the NFL – they’d be up to 62.5 percent. That would be almost in line with the eighth-ranked 64.0 percent from LaFleur’s debut season of 2019.

LaFleur put it on himself and his staff to come up with a better red-zone game plan after defenses apparently have unraveled Green Bay’s dominance from LaFleur’s first two seasons.

“Anytime you’re one of the top teams in ball, whether it’s scoring, whether it’s in the red zone, whether it’s on third down, everybody is studying you,” LaFleur said. “So, you’ve got to continue to evolve and just make sure that you have plays that are conducive to whatever the defense is going to give you. I think the one thing that is a little bit of a challenge for us at times is that teams are going to go a little bit off-script and give you some unscouted looks, and you’ve got to be able to adjust to those. Ultimately, it comes down to us just having plays that no matter what the look is that our guys can go out and execute.”

Whatever is concocted by LaFleur and offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, quarterback Aaron Rodgers and receiver Davante Adams hope the plan is more aggressive. That doesn’t necessarily mean throwing the ball more often, they said. Green Bay has thrown the ball on 55.6 percent of its red-zone snaps. That’s less than its overall pass-to-run ratio but only five teams are more pass-happy in the red zone.

“It just means we have a ton of scheme down there and let’s keep rolling it off the sheet,” Rodgers said.

Last year, Rodgers completed 72.0 percent of his passes with 35 touchdowns and zero interceptions in the red zone. Adams led the league with 23 receptions and 14 touchdowns, and tight end Robert Tonyan was tied for seventh with seven touchdowns. This year, Rodgers has completed 61.5 percent of his passes with eight touchdowns and one interception, Adams has four receptions and two touchdowns and Tonyan has two catches and zero touchdowns.

With opponents taking away what Green Bay did so well last year, not to mention the potential impact of a makeshift offensive line had had on LaFleur’s planning, it’s been kept out of the end zone on nine of its red-zone possessions this season compared to 12 all of last season.

LaFleur, however, isn’t fretting after going 2-of-5 at Cincinnati and 7-of-14 since going 4-of-4 vs. Detroit.

Asked at what point in a season stats matter, LaFleur said, “Stats are for losers. Sorry. You guys can have a heyday with that. All I care about is wins and losses and, we’ve won four in a row and we’re trying to go 1-0 this week. So, as long as we keep winning, I’ll let you guys write about the stats, and we’ll just try to keep taking it one game at time and go 1-0 each week.”

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"It’s always a battle against them and always fun when we can beat them."#Packers QB Aaron Rodgers has owned the Bears, and he has no intention of joining them.https://t.co/owP28oblFh

— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) October 14, 2021