Cole Schultz reviews the game in this week's ReFo and takes a look at the poor play at LT, Luke Kuechly's down game, and Charles Godfrey's missed tackles.
Breakdown: When Byron Bell left the game with an elbow injury after 41 snaps and a -2.4 grade, it looked like a replacement tackle could hardly play much worse. Having given up four pressures already midway through the third quarter, Bell was succeeded by rookie David Foucault. And just as one could predict when you rely on an undrafted free agent to block Clay Matthews one on one, the results (-4.3 pass blocking on 19 snaps) made Bell’s struggles seem like the lesser of two evils.
So yes it can get much worse than Byron Bell to answer a season long question. As a result we helped a guy having a mediocre season return to PB form:
Clay Matthews, OLB, +4.9
Breakdown: After nearly half a season’s worth of average play, Matthews broke out in a big way against a couple of overmatched tackles. Recording a sack and team-high six total pressures, the USC product looks to have regained his form after an injury-marred 2013 season.
Signature Play: It wasn’t all pass rushing for the multi-dimensional linebacker. At 11:04 in the opening quarter, Matthews shot off the line unblocked to take down Jonathan Stewart for a three yard loss.
Stewart looked rusty in the first half but then seemed to play better late in the game. That might be because it was garbage time but it was still encouraging.
Here's some additional data on the offense provided by Joe Velardo at PFF, who by the way continues to do us a solid:
Offense
- Kelvin Benjamin, Ryan Kalil, and Greg Olsen were the only green graded players.
- The pass block grade was abysmal (-7.9) with the run block grade not much better (-2.2).
- Newton only completed 6 of 11 passes that were 10 or more yards.
- Under pressure he had a rough day, going 1/8 for 20 yards and taking 3 sacks.
- When not blitzed Newton went 6/15 for 90 yards with 1 INT and taking 1 sack.
- The Packers sent the blitz on 20 of 38 dropbacks, which is roughly 53%. He was decent throwing 11/16 for 115 yards with 1 TD, but also took a sack.
- Once against the Panthers running game was only effective off of the TE (+2.8), with no other area producing a positive grade.
- RBs accounted for 67 yards on 18 carries; Stewart forced 2 missed tackles.
- Newton only rushed 7 times on the day, but was somewhat effective going for 41 yards.
- Ogbonnaya accounted for the only drop of the day.
- Benjamin (+1.1) and Olsen (+1.3) were the only receivers to grade out in the green.
- Benjamin caught 3 of his 6 targets for 61 yards and a TD, good for a WR Rating of 125.7.
- Olsen's WR Rating was only 75.7, but he lead the team in catches (8), targets (9), and yards (105).
- Newton threw his lone pick targeting Olsen.
What's perplexing is that the Packer defense is not an elite defense, especially with all of the injuries they are dealing with at the moment. The game plan appeared to avoid the things that were working last week. Players that stepped up last week stepped back this week. Nine games still to go so this team needs to re-focus and right the ship in a hurry.
I'll have the defense analysis up later today!