The Packers can keep winning by trusting Aaron Rodgers — and a suddenly scary defense

Matt LaFleur, the rising mind brought to Green Bay to reinvent a flagging offense, didn’t get to show off much innovation in his head coaching debut. He entered Week 1 with visions of a quick-hit offense chipping away at the Bears’ vaunted defense en route to paydirt. After a handful of early failures, he soon found he had good reason to fall back into a more traditional scheme that valued vertical routes over fast-developing horizontal ones.

Well, two good reasons. Aaron Rodgers and a revamped defense.

The first-year sideline general put in work to gameplan around Chicago’s elite pass rush, saddling Rodgers with a litany of short-drop passes early in the 2019 season opener. But when those plays fizzled out amidst a punishing array of penetration, LaFleur cleared the deck for Rodgers to take control and play his game at the risk of continued abuse. He allowed for longer dropbacks and greater opportunities to improvise, even as the Bears continued to swarm an overwhelmed line.

Trusting Rodgers was the right thing to do, especially against the backdrop of a suddenly overwhelming Green Bay defense. His playmaking proved to be the difference in a Thursday night rock fight between two NFC North rivals. The Packers escaped Soldier Field with a 10-3 victory over the reigning division champions, simultaneously proving Rodgers can find his patented brand of magic when he’s got an ounce of a chance and that his defense can keep him in the game those weeks he can’t.

Rodgers’ freewheeling, big-armed moments were an oasis in a desert of ugly

Green Bay’s early results at Soldier Field weren’t optimistic. Through five drives, Rodgers had attempted 13 passes where he had less than three seconds to stand in the pocket. It was clear Rodgers wasn’t comfortable with these plays, and though they mostly kept him upright, they failed to spark any kind of rhythm for the visiting team. Counting two sacks, those plays accrued 23 net yards.

They also gave us, uh, whatever the hell this was:

There was a light peeking through that dark blue blanket that seemed to smother LaFleur’s offense from the first play of the game. The situations where Rodgers found time in the pocket were different. From the opening kickoff to the first two-minute warning, he only had two plays in which he had at least three seconds to get off a pass.

They resulted in a pair of completions for 58 yards. The highlight was a 47-yard heave to Marquez Valdes-Scantling that embodied Rodgers’ passing in its prime:

More longer-developing plays followed as Green Bay ran a two-minute drill as the second quarter clock ran down. When Rodgers had time — either due to play-action misdirections, potent blocking, or panicked scrambling — the Packers’ play ceiling evolved from static shock to lightning bolt.

While these plays weren’t all successes, they gave a formerly foundering offense a little extra buoyancy in a game where neither side could find consistency. And if that’s not the lesson LaFleur takes away from his coaching debut, then Green Bay could be in for another long year.

The Packers took over when they trusted Rodgers to withstand heat in the pocket

One major unofficial reason for last year’s conscious uncoupling between the Pack and former coach Mike McCarthy was his alleged clashes with Rodgers over Green Bay’s offensive philosophy. LaFleur’s willingness to adjust and seemingly cede control to Rodgers’ on-the-fly style suggests he won’t have a similar problem with his quarterback’s penchant for falling in love with ugly plays.

Rodgers’ touchdown throw to Jimmy Graham — the league’s first touchdown of 2019 — was a prime example of this. The play should not have worked on paper. Rodgers, facing pressure (he got the pass off in ~2.3 seconds), didn’t square up to his target and threw with most of his weight seemingly on his back foot. Graham, flanked by one Packer and four Bears in his corner of the end zone, was not particularly open.

But it worked, because Rodgers trusted his throw and trusted a tight end known for boxing out smaller defensive backs in the end zone to work his magic as well.

LaFleur, to his credit, devised a way to put his quarterback in more of these situations in the second half. After running a long list of short horizontal routes in the first quarter, the rookie head coach began to stretch the field and exploit mismatches as they arose. The best example of this came in the third quarter, when Graham dragged linebacker Roquan Smith nearly 40 yards downfield in a matchup from which Rodgers never bothered to look away.

The result was 38 yards on a pass interference play so obvious Chicago coach Matt Nagy neglected to initiate the first-ever regular season PI review (LaFleur would take that honor moments later, unsuccessfully challenging what he deemed to be uncalled offensive interference).

This shift didn’t always work. The Packers still struggled to contain Chicago’s tide-shifting blitz packages, leading to five sacks, two holding penalties for All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari, and another for Bryan Bulaga. Fortunately for Green Bay, that didn’t matter. A few big plays were all the Packers needed to escape Illinois with a win.

That’s because the Packers’ defensive acquisitions paid off

Though the turmoil of McCarthy’s firing and the search for a new head coach may have been Green Bay’s offseason headline, it looks like it won’t be the team’s most important development. Instead, it’s another surprising shift in philosophy that was ultimately responsible for the first win of the 2019 NFL season.

General manager Brian Gutekunst went on an unprecedented spending spree to upgrade the Green Bay defense and create winnable situations for games where Rodgers is unable to light up the scoreboard. The Packers dropped $154 million in contracts to lure Preston Smith, Za’Darius Smith, and Adrian Amos to Wisconsin.

In their introduction to the Green Bay-Chicago rivalry, the Smiths combined for eight tackles and 2.5 sacks. Za’Darius brought the pressure that snuffed out the Bears’ final third down in a one-possession game. Preston officially ended any comeback hopes with a sack one play later.

Amos hauled in what proved to be an overtime-preventing interception in the end zone with less than two minutes left to play to doom the team that let him leave in free agency. 2019 first-round draft pick Darnell Savage contributed a pass defensed from his starting spot in the secondary and was a valuable addition to Mike Pettine’s blitz packages.

The newest Packers played some of the biggest roles in a critical opening night win. This is important after last year’s defensive troubles.

Green Bay limped to a 6-9-1 record — even after beating the Bears in Week 1 — thanks, in part, to a mediocre defense that was unable to hold down the fort when its offense failed to come through. The 2018 Packers fielded the league’s 22nd-ranked scoring defense and didn’t win a single game when scoring fewer than 20 points, which happened six times. If Rodgers’ wasn’t clicking, the Packers weren’t winning.

On Thursday, that new-look defense made Mitchell Trubisky look overmatched in his third season as a pro and won a game in which its offense averaged just 3.7 yards per play. That’s not a very Packers win, and it’s certainly not what anyone would have expected from the LaFleur-Rodgers pairing, but Green Bay will take it.

Not only is it a win, but it’s one this club can build from as the young coach and his veteran quarterback settle into a groove behind a suddenly scary defense. With dates against the Vikings, Broncos, and Eagles looming, it’s tremendously reassuring for the Packers to know they can beat a team with a lights-out defense, even if they only score one touchdown.