The Micah Parsons effect is alive and well, the Packers just need to capitalize on it | Dougherty
Packers defensive end Micah Parsons not pleased with NFL refs, rules
Green Bay Packers edge rusher Micah Parsons feels the NFL rules are designed to protect only offensive players.
- Despite low sack numbers, Micah Parsons is impacting opposing offenses by drawing extra blockers.
- The Packers’ defense is allowing the fewest yards per pass attempt in the NFL.
- Opposing teams are countering the Packers’ pass rush with quick, short passes and maximum protection schemes.
GREEN BAY – The Green Bay Packers don’t even rank in the top half of the NFL in sacks.
They’re only No. 8 in pressures as determined by one independent stat service (Stathead), and rank even worse, No. 17, by another (NFL Next Gen Stats).
So you might be wondering, what happened to the Micah Parsons effect?
Well, there’s a stat that says the Parsons effect is alive and well: The Packers are allowing the fewest yards per pass attempt (5.5) in the league.
That’s up from their No. 16 (7.0 yards) finish last year, and it’s worth noting the leader was the Philadelphia Eagles (6.0 yards), who finished last season with the No. 2 scoring defense in the league on the way to winning the Super Bowl.
“He is totally changing the game,” said Jeff Hafley, the Packers’ defensive coordinator. “I mean, he’s sometimes got three guys on him.”
Micah Parsons is doing his part despite low sack numbers
Parsons has only 2½ sacks in five games, and only one in the last three, so he hasn’t stood out the last three weeks when it comes to eye-catching plays. But he is Pro Football Focus’ second-ranked edge defender, just behind Aidan Hutchinson and just ahead of Myles Garrett.
But if Parsons is earning his keep, why hasn’t the Packers’ defense looked as dominant the last three games as it did the first two against Detroit and Washington?
One reason is the Packers are 1-1-1 in their last three games, so any problems are magnified. Another is they gave up 40 points to Dallas a few weeks ago. And a third is, they aren’t getting many sacks (tied for No. 19 in the league with 12) or turnovers (only two interceptions).
A 17-play, 10-minute, 14-second touchdown drive by the Cincinnati Bengals last week hammered home the approach offenses are taking: Get the ball out fast on short routes and checkdowns, or max protect and send only three players on pass routes.
The Packers can expect to see more of this. Some may lean more toward getting the ball out fast, others more to protecting with seven blockers. But this is how most teams are likely to play.
The Packers now have to find a way to take advantage of those offensive compromises like they did in the first games of the season, when the talented offenses of the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders struggled to even function in the Packers’ convincing wins to start the season.
In discussing the issue with Hafley and a couple of defenders this week, it’s clear the Packers think that in the long run of the season offenses won’t be able to nickel and dime them to death, as the Bengals did in the second half last week.
Hafley pointed to the Bengals’ 45 pass attempts for only 219 yards.
“I don’t think teams are going to be able to go up and down the field like that and play the game like that and beat us,” Hafley said at one point during his news conference Oct. 16.
And at another: “They’re catching a lot of short passes, I got that. But if you give up explosive passes you lose football games, and they can’t do that against us right now.”
The Packers did, in fact, beat the Bengals. It’s also true that sustaining long drives is difficult because a penalty or bad play can change the possession, and the more plays you run, the greater the chance of that happening.
The Bengals had only one offensive penalty, a false start, in the second half against the Packers. Dallas had only two, both false starts, while putting up 24 points in the second half and overtime in the previous game.
But while plenty of teams will make the drive-killing mistakes as the season goes on, those games showed the Packers will need to find ways to shut down offenses that don’t.
Packers’ pass rush misses injured Devonte Wyatt
What the last six quarters against Dallas and Cincinnati have shown, among other things, is the Packers badly miss injured defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt (knee). The longer he’s out, the more he looks like their second-most important rusher.
More than Wyatt’s stats, which are pretty good for an inside rusher (two sacks in 4½ games), the Packers miss the push he gets in the middle of the pocket. A good inside rush is critical because it gives quarterbacks little room step up when outside rushers get pressure.
With Wyatt out, none of the Packers’ other inside rushers (Karl Brooks, Colby Wooden, Warren Brinson and occasionally Barryn Sorrell) has gotten much push up the middle.
It hasn’t helped that the Packers’ other main outside rusher, Rashan Gary, has no sacks and two quarterback hits the last two games. He’s averaged two pressures per game, per Stathead, which is tied for 18th in the league. The Packers need more.
Kingsley Enagbare, whose playing time is at his career norm, has no sacks and three pressures. Only Lukas Van Ness has made a jump with help from Parsons’ presence — Van Ness’ 10 pressures are only two away from his career high. But Van Ness hasn’t practiced this week (foot injury), and there’s no telling how much time he might miss.
The Packers’ best hope for getting to the quarterback fast and from up the middle is linebacker Edgerrin Cooper.
Cooper was a standout in training camp and has played well this season, but he hasn’t had the big-play impact he had later in his rookie season. He’s blitzed 25 times, or an average of five times a game.
He has only two pressures, including half a sack, on the season, per Stathead. Hafley didn’t blitz him for most of the game against Cincinnati but then sent him four times in the fourth quarter, including three times on the Bengals’ final touchdown drive.
Cooper never got home, mostly because quarterback Joe Flacco got the ball out so fast. Two of the passes were incompletions and one was only a 6-yard gain, so those were good plays for the Packers. But on the final one, Cooper bounced past running back Samaje Perine’s blitz pickup too late — the Bengals were in max protect — and Flacco hit Ja’Marr Chase against cornerback Keisean Nixon for a 19-yard touchdown.
“Sometimes when I’m coming free it’s like, ‘Yeah, they’re getting the ball out pretty fast,’” Cooper said of his blitzing this season. “You get frustrated sometimes, but you can’t do anything about it, you have to keep going, try to hit home.”
Hafley surely prefers keeping his cornerbacks back to protect them. The Packers don’t have upper-end talent at that position with Nixon, Nate Hobbs and Carrington Valentine as their top three.
But Hafley brought up his cornerbacks in press coverage more often in the fourth quarter to try to challenge the quick, short throws. The Bengals didn’t have any more 10-minute drives but still put up 11 points. Regardless of those results, the defensive coordinator will probably have to take his chances with his coverage players and do more of it in the coming weeks as teams base their game plans on the Packers’ early-season film.
“We’re trying to figure out,” safety Xavier McKinney said, “what’s the best way to have a balance between, ‘OK, if they keep (throwing quickly), obviously we don’t want just keep back, back, back all the time.
“It’s just a mixture of throwing different things at them and show ’em, ‘OK, we’re gonna be back here, and then go up, throw a curveball and everybody’s up. Now they gotta take a shot, and we have the pass rush getting there. It’s just mixing it up.”
The Packers are in fact experiencing the Parsons effect, even if he doesn’t have the big sack numbers to show it. Offenses are showing how worried they are about him by how they’re playing.
The Packers now have to figure out how turn those short passes and max protections into playing great defense.
