Opinion: Jury still largely out on Packers' true identity, notably on defense

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Through two weeks of the NFL season, the Green Bay Packers are still a very good team on paper.

They have talent and depth that all but a handful of teams in the NFL can only dream about.

But as far as being a good football team capable of playing a complete football game against a Super Bowl contender, well, that one is still on hold. After a Week 1 debacle against the New Orleans Saints, they beat an inadequate Detroit Lions team that offered just slightly more resistance than the one that went 5-11 last year.

If you had to assess the 2021 Packers as they prepare for a road game Sunday against the 2-0 San Francisco 49ers, whose roster far eclipses Detroit’s, the best you could do is shrug your shoulders and say, “I’m not sure who these guys are going to be.”

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Their offensive identity so far is to try to get the ball into the hands of receiver Davante Adams, running back Aaron Jones and tight end Robert Tonyan any way they can. It sounds reasonable, but the way the first two opponents have sat back in two-deep safety looks and dared the Packers to run the ball, they did not unlock any mysteries about how they’re going to win games this year.

They put up good numbers and scored five touchdowns in a 35-17 victory at Lambeau Field on Monday.

 And while there’s nothing wrong with Jones and Adams accounting for 256 of the team’s 323 yards — Tonyan chipped in another 52 — they weren’t doing anything extraordinary on the field. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers averaged an impressive 9.4 yards per attempt (he was 22 of 27 for 255 yards and four touchdowns), but it was pretty shocking to see Marquez Valdes-Scantling leave the building without a catch, Allen Lazard without a single target and rookie Amari Rodgers without a play from scrimmage.

“It was another disjointed game with (just) the possessions in the first half, basically three possessions we scored on two of them,” Aaron Rodgers said. “So, that's back-to-back games kind of weird halves for us. But fortunately, we got in the end zone as opposed to last week.

“But I think we got into a flow in the second half. Sometimes it just takes one play. I think the throw over the top to Davante kind of got us going. The throw to Bobby, it was a timely one as well.”

Those were the two big plays of the game — a 50-yard bomb to Adams that broke the seal on the Lions’ Cover-2 defense — and the 22-yard shot down the middle to Tonyan to finish the opening drive of the third quarter, which lifted the Packers to their first lead of the season.

Ahead 21-17, they chipped away until the undermanned Lions, who were missing starting cornerback Jeffrey Okudah and lost starter Ifeatu Melifonwu on the opening series of the second half, succumbed. The offense might have looked different if Rodgers had completed any of the deep shots he threw to Valdes-Scantling, but he didn’t and so you can only go with what you know.

And the logical conclusion is that the league studied LaFleur’s offense and came up with some pretty good answers and now he and his staff must figure out a response. They didn’t come into the game thinking they were going to throw the ball to Jones six times (for 48 yards and three touchdowns), but that’s what it took to win.

“There were a few things (to Jones) like we always game plan, but I just really felt like going into this game, from an offensive perspective we needed to get our playmakers the ball,” LaFleur said. “And that is Davante Adams, that is Bobby Tonyan, that is Aaron Jones.

“We still had some opportunities there for MVS that we just didn't quite connect on. And so I know there's a lot more out there for not only this football team, but for our offense as well.”

Speaking of the rest of the football team, most notably the defense, identity is a big problem.

In two games, defensive coordinator Joe Barry has looked like someone who isn’t willing to take many chances and will lay the burden of getting to the quarterback on the shoulders of the two outside linebackers and whatever defensive linemen are playing between them. With only 18 snaps from star pass rusher Za’Darius Smith this season, the responsibility of harassing the quarterback has been too great for just the front four.

There aren’t a lot of teams that can pressure with just four, and the ones that do, throw linebacker and corner blitzes in to either get a free run at the quarterback or free up one of those big guys to win a one-on-one. Barry did nothing of the sort in the first half and quarterback Jared Goff lived free in the pocket, completing 13 of 16 passes for 137 yards and two touchdowns.

Finally, LaFleur told Barry either play more zone behind your four-man rush to force Goff to dink and dunk the ball down the field or send some pressure and let the secondary play some aggressive man-to-man. LaFleur shouldn’t have to tell Barry that, but the result was that Barry started sending inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell and occasionally safety Adrian Amos at Goff.

“He definitely did (start blitzing),” inside linebacker Krys Barnes said. “But it wasn't just Coach Barry, it was all of us as a mentality coming out, being aggressive to try and flush him out of pocket.

“Get to him as best we could and let our DBs make plays in the back end. So, I think we all played our part in it. We all played it fast. And when we do that, and we get two turnovers in the second half, those things happen.”

It appears like the Packers have something in rookie cornerback Eric Stokes, who prevented two fourth-down completions, including one in the end zone on the Lions’ final play of the game. Smartly, Barry played him in his nickel, moving Kevin King into the slot in place of Chandon Sullivan, and putting the rookie outside.

With the kind of speed Stokes and Jaire Alexander have, it’s a wonder Barry doesn’t blitz more and let his corners play man-to-man. But that is not his history and it has not been this defense’s identity through two games.

It has been a much more passive approach to defense, and while the result was good Monday night, LaFleur’s dream of having an aggressive defense that complements his offense hasn’t showed up much. Heading into a game against offensive genius Kyle Shanahan and his 49ers, passive is not the way you want to approach things.

“We're just trying to play fast and physical man, just really imposing our will on our opponents,” said Campbell, who had 13 tackles and an interception. “This is just a step in the right direction. But it's a very, very long season. And you can't get too high, you can't get too low.”

What they must do is be consistent. So far, they’ve played six bad quarters and two good ones. This Sunday will go a long way in determining which of those is a truer reflection of this defense.