Tampa Bay can’t bank on Packers outsmarting themselves, again, in NFC championship game

Tampa Bay drilled Green Bay 38-10 back in Week 6 and that game, it went sideways on the Packers very quickly. But it really started early in the week in the game-planning phase, which is why I expect the NFC championship to be a much different football game.

The big takeaway in October – it was one of Matt LeFleur’s worst games as a play caller.

What we saw, more than any game the past two years, is the Packers taking a step back in time. They had Aaron Rodgers in the shotgun and spread formations thinking they would have matchups on the outside that they could exploit, and it really backfired on them.

They never really established the run or play-action game, which has been a huge part of that Matt LeFleur offense.

They did have a couple of decent runs. Jamaal Williams had one run for 25 yards, but he ended up with 34 yards. A.J. Dillon had a 20-yard run, but finished with 31. Aaron Jones had just 15 yards on 10 plays. The Packers’ running backs gained 45 yards on two plays and 35 on 17, so they didn’t run the ball at all, really, and they had a lead early.

I think they looked at their front and thought Tampa Bay had some matchups in its favor. So, what do they do in that situation? They said, “Well, we have Aaron Rodgers and we have Davante Adams and we’ll spread it out and throw it around a little bit …”

To go in with that game plan, they just outsmarted themselves, and that happens.

I’ve been in that room before. You sit in the quarterbacks room and you talk through it with the position coach and the offensive coordinator late Sunday night or Monday morning as you’re trying to put the game plan together and for whatever reason you say, “I like this matchup. What if we put the back outside, got into the shotgun and just gave them a different look?”

Packers fell into a trap

I get that. I understand it, and it works sometimes. You can catch good defenses off-guard.

Brett Favre did that to the Baltimore Ravens probably 10 years ago. The Ravens were playing good football. Favre went in there and they decided to go empty and spread them out. They took Baltimore out of all of its blitz packages, and Favre ate them up.

I’ve been a part of it on both sides, where it works out well and where it doesn’t. Either way you’re getting away from what you normally do just to hit the defense with a little bit of a surprise and at the end of the day if it doesn’t work it looks bad, as it did for Green Bay in Week 6. Tampa Bay is going to make a lot of good offenses look bad. That Bucs defense is just so fast. They run sideline to sideline and they cover on the back end so well.

Green Bay hasn’t gone into a game since that Tampa Bay game saying, “OK, Aaron, go drop back, spread them out sideline to sideline, get in the shotgun and beat those guys.” It was almost like LeFleur woke up that following Monday and said, “Man, that was dumb. I shouldn’t have done that …”

As the Packers look back on that game – and they definitely have – they’re going to come in with a completely different mindset and plan to attack that defense. I think they take their shots when they can, but they do it off play-action, off the run game. They keep Rodgers clean, which really is what they’ve done so well this season.

I don’t think they can get back into a situation where they’re asking Rodgers to drop back and make tight-window throws against a defense like the Bucs. The Packers’ drop-back pass concepts are pretty vanilla, pretty basic. If they decide to just drop back and throw against these guys without David Bakhtiari and against Jason Pierre-Paul and Ndamukong Suh and those guys, that could be a long day.

Green Bay will need to get creative with run game

The Buccaneers are going to make more plays, and on the other side of the ball Tom Brady is going to control the clock. Tampa Bay has the weapons to score with anyone, but as explosive as the Bucs can be they can also play keep-away. They can manage the situation because of their quarterback.

The Packers have to try to dictate the terms. They have to go in with their game plan and what they do well. That’s running the football, regardless if they think the matchups aren’t in their favor. They can utilize some formations, get creative with splits and do what they’ve done. The Packers are a pretty good team when they play their style of football.

I would much rather see that than Rodgers just dropping back and getting his head knocked off trying to make throws to Adams and the rest of his receivers.

On paper it looks good, looks like they can win some of those matchups. But if they get into it and they don’t have a rhythm and they haven’t established a run and haven’t got anything going on the ground to slow those guys down, it could get ugly again.

We’ll see. It’s going to be a good game. They’re both good football teams. But I wouldn’t say the Bucs are just going to roll these guys like they did before. I expect the Packers to come in with a much better plan.