#793 Packers Unscripted: Invasion from Indy

at lambeau Field. And what's when you look at this Colts team that's coming in here, coming off a tough loss of their own in Week one, twenty nine to twenty seven to division rival in their case, the Houston Texans. The biggest difference of course being that they don't have a quarterback injury to deal with like like the Packers have.

But Anthony Richardson, a young quarterback, a first round pick last year by the Colts, showing a lot of promise and finding his way, and this is going to be a challenging matchup for certain for the Packers.

It just shows you how dynamic he is. And before the injury last year, I thought he was a guy that had gotten off to a really strong start and it had flashed in all the ways that you wanted to see him flash out of the gates. Ultimately, it wasn't enough to win. Ultimately, they weren't able to get Jonathan Taylor going. But many of the same threats that the pass had to be leary of with the Philadelphia Eagles are also present now with the Colts.

and the Philadelphia Eagles last week. So you have to believe some of those same concepts, if from the game plan, are going to carry over from week one to week two. I pointed this out. You already hinted at it. I pointed it out in our three Things video that we shot with Larry on Wednesday after practice. Two hundred and twelve passing yards for Richardson against the Texans, one hundred

and seventy one of them on three completions. He hit Alec Pearce twice for fifty plus yards, one of those was a sixty plus y touchdown, and then Ashton Doolan also had a fifty plus yard touchdown.

He as you said, he wasn't really able to get going against the Texans last week, but we have certainly seen games over the course of his career when he gets going. He is a tough guy to slow down. He's one of the running backs in this league that can control a game and control tempo from start to finish. If that Colts offensive line is winning the line of scrim.

a number of years ago with him. There was a reason why there you know, there's a little bit of that holdout last year, but why they were so it was so important for them to keep him locked down

for the long term. In this day and age where maybe running backs aren't getting those huge contracts anymore because he really was the guy that fired that offense for so long, and yeah, they weren't able to get it going against Houston, and credit to the Texans and everything that they've been able to do there and the way they've rebuilt that thing in one year's time. It's not

an easy front to run against. But all that being said, with Taylor's ability to run between the tackles and Richardson's ability to make things happen with his feet, that there's just always that big play waiting to happen. And for Green Bay and Matt Lafuller talked about it this week, there were so many things they did well in terms bottling up Jalen Hurts and even to some extent, containing

Saquon Barkley. But when those guys, specifically Barkley on the ground, found the open lane, found the opportunity, he was able to really capitalize that and make the Packers really pay

for their mistakes. That's what you have to avoid with Jonathan Taylor, because, yeah, three yards and a cloud of dust looks really good coming off of the performance against Houston, But if your linebackers aren't where they need to be, if your gaps aren't being filled that you're not in the alignment that you really need to be able to execute with unless you're gonna make some open field tackles. It makes your job difficult and a guy like Jonathan Taylor doesn't make that any easier.

It's one thing if you, you know, if you kind of slip up in the run defense early and a guy gets an explosive, aya are right, you settle down, you know, you work on bottling him up. When a guy busts a big one in the second half like that, it kind of starts to ruin everything you've done up to that point, right, And certainly on that final drive for the Eagles, they were they were having their way and controlling the ball, but speaking.

the corrections and working on getting it fixed. And then b, of course, with the Packers most likely turning things over to Malik Willis, the Colts game plan will be, you know, defensively will be based on defending Malik Willis and perhaps trying to say, okay, we're not going to let Josh Jacobs and Emmanuel Wilson do what they did against the

Eagles and put the ball more in Malik Willis's hands. So, but the way the Packers ran the ball the last three quarters against the Eagles, the way the Colts did struggle to defend the run against the Texans, I think that is something to watch very very closely in this matchup on Sunday a lambo.

big gash to Berkley. It can be really demoralized though, on the other aspect of that, when a running back just continually in an offensive line man handles you the way that they did to be able to have that type of production, to average over five yards of carry and not have that explosive play, that is sort of booing all those statistics.

Gus Bradley became a head coach in this league because of that. This front is interesting in that you have DeForest Buckner who's been doing it at a high level for so long. He's a face of that defense. They

put a lot of resources into acquiring him. You'd imagine the mindset in trying to turn that boat around this week is going to be again what probably guides not only their game planning but also their correction and to the Green Bay Packers standpoint, and it is probably veering a little bit too much into the keys to victory of it. But with Josh Jacobs, hopefully everything works out. I believe that was the back injury. That was a back issue that made up limited in practice on Wednesday.

But with Josh Jacobs and the motions and the sweeps that the options you have with Jaden Reid, the Packers showed a lot of promising things on the ground against Philadelphia. All things considered, against Vic Fangio and that defense, you have to be able to continue to build upon that with potentially not having the downfield threat of Jordan Love or at least the consistent threat of Jordan Love in

the backfield as far as the signal calling goes. So Josh Jacobs could be the Packer's best friend in this game. And if I'm Green Bay, I see what Mixon did last week. We have our own franchise back here too. If he's available and can take that full allotment of reps, that would be my number one counter to that.

I mean, a team, a team gets, you know, Houston gets that running game going with Mixon and they feel like, Okay, we can really lean on this we can really pound away with this guy to set up everything else we want to do offensively, and it can be tough to stop. So were the Colts issues more execution, were they more schematic? Probably a combination of the two as usual. But again that's that's definitely something to watch. I do want to

get to our keys to victory here. Oh, one other thing you mentioned, you mentioned to Forrest Buckner on this this Colts defensive line. I believe they had was it, four sacks against the Houston and Texans. Yeah, and those four sacks that didn't even include a handful of pressures by their rookie first round pick in that pass rush lie it to Latu from UCLA. I believe he played, you know, thirty some snaps and and according to uh

some of the statistical metrics, was credited with five pressures. Yeah, like thirty snaps. Now he didn't get he didn't get any sacks, he didn't get anything else on the on.

sub in a bowl. Cousin Subbs fifty plus years of better. All right, looking at the Packers and the keys to victory, what's it going to take to pull this game out? Assuming that Malik Willis is the starting quarterback, Matt Laflair has not officially ruled out Jordan Love. He says the door remains open for him to potentially play at the time that we are taping this episode. We will see what happens by the time we get to the end

of the week. But if it is Malik Willis, I think you know, it's stating the obvious right that it puts that much more of a burden on the Packers running game. On Josh Jacobs on Emmanuel Wilson, you mentioned the changeups the end to round stuff with Jaden Reed.

The other changeup you potentially throw in here is designing some runs for Malik Willis, you know, which is not something you would do on a regular basis with Jordan Love, but it might be something that's a little bit more of a staple of the game plan with a quarterback lake Willis.

performing right tackles in the league. Last week, when you look at some of the metrics and some of the stats that have come out about that, I felt really good about Zach in how he showed out in Brazil. But I mean I've been even more impressed watching some of the film and Pro Football Focus and some of these other NFL next Gen stats talking about how he performed in one on one pass coverage. The guy's a hit like, he's solid, So you hope that you can go tit for tat with them in the pass game.

The run game is where this game is going to be one though. If you go back to the stats last week, Mike, there were three players with double digit tackles for the Indianapolis Colts in that game. All three of them were defensive becks. If you are able to generate that much statistics against the defense, it shows you you're doing something well because it means you're beating the

defensive front. It means you're beating the linebackers and you're forcing them to make tackles at the second and third level at the defense. That's where Green Bay needs to get to. And when they struggled early in that game against the Eagles, it was because they weren't able to get a hat on a hat with a lot of those backers and things were getting washed out in the front. Being able to build on some of the successes they had in the second half is going to be inner

to this victory. The other aspect of it, I think is going to be the motion. It's going to be the pre snap stuff. It's going to be working end around, it's going to be building pass combinations off of those end of rounds. They probably could have gotten more of that in Brazil, But as I was talking about an insider inbox Calm, if you watch the game, there was a lot that they developed off of that early Jaden Reid play and there was a lot of pass concepts

that were built off that. And Tucker Craft was mentioning this at is Locker this week and that you are going to have opportunities to get open in the passing game, but you got to earn those with what you do in the run game early, and that's what Green Bay is going to have to do in this game to come up with a victory against the Colts.

explosive play for the Packers. That's all set up not only by the run and being in the same formation and then running it as a play action pass, but Tucker Craft is coming off the line of scrimmage and selling that he's blocking the linebacker right, He's got his head down, he's put you know, he's about to put his arms up like he's gonna block, and then like, oh, here I go, you know, bang, and then the ball

is on him. He makes the catch, and that's all set up because of what you're doing running the ball, and all of those little things play into getting the execution there on the defensive side of the ball. Just looking at what the Colts did in Week one against the Texans, and certainly with you know mentioning Saquon Barkley busting a thirty four yard run against the Packers, AJ Brown with the sixty seven yard touchdown on the opening possession of the second half. Packers defense has got to

limit the big plays. You can't let Anthony Richardson throw the ball over top of you in this game. And and I think, I think defensively. I think defensively, if the Packers limit those big plays and they give themselves more chances to get off the field, they won't get into, you know this, this real negative time of possession area that they got into against the Eagles.

to not allow him to get into that type of pattern. Now, Hurtz is a different type of quarterback and that he is more of a possession based quarterback. He could throw the ball and not that Richardson can't. But Richardson, this was sort of his mo last year too. He's a guy that you know potentially is going to be like a fifty four to fifty five percent completion percentage quarterback. It's just the way he plays the position. It's a lot of the downfield stuff. He's going to try limit

the explosive plays. It starts with stopping the run, but limiting the downfield explosives. You cannot let them beat you that way. And I would take notice of what Alec Pierce did. Man. I mean, this guy had a lot of buzz coming out of Cincinnati a couple of years ago. People were very excited about him. A guy that rose throughout the draft process ends up going in the second

round to the Colts. And if you think about dynamic play from quarterbacks like Richardson in the National Football League, it's what they're able to do with their receivers across the middle. Pierce having that type of that background, that is going to be something Green Bay has to be leary of, whether that's gonna be on Keishaw Nixon or you know, Jabon Bullard. The Packers making sure that they don't hurt you in the same way that Houston got hurt in that matchup.

we talk about here, you're trying to fix. You're trying to change things from what happened in Week one. The Packers weren't a good team in Week one in the sub and change instances because you know, early in the game, you know, the Packers get the two turnovers, they're in, they're in the red zone. They aren't able to capitalize those. They end up settling for field goals on the flip side.

The one time the Packers turned the ball over, the Green Bay defense didn't respond, and when the Eagles had a short field twenty twenty five yards whatever it was, four or five plays they were in the end zones, had a touchdown, and you know so again when you when you win the turnover battle three to one and be a plus two, but the points off takeaways is just nine to seven, also plus two, that's not going

to get it done. And that that's where being a better team in the sudden change, both when the sudden changes are positive for you or the sudden change is a negative for you, you have to be able to respond better in those situations. And I thought, I thought those situations alone played a huge factor in how the Week one game against Philly turned out for the Packer.

Everything was relatively even. The total offense in this game was within four yards of each other, with green Bay coming out on the better half of it. It came down, as you said, the sudden change, the adversity defense offense taking advantage of that punching things in. That's where you have to make sure that you are able to respond

the right way. And I think that's also why Xavier McKinney had kind of the message that he did after the game and kind of reiterated this week at his locker as well, and that there's still a lot of confidence the Packers defense needs to still remember who it is and still carry itself with that swagger. As I even wrote in the off season program, everybody's got a plan, the Mike Tyson thing. Everybody's got a plan until you get punched in them out. Packers took a couple on

the chin in Brazil. It's can you not allow that to a affect you and take this next matchup for what it is and having that short memory.

at some of the other Week two matchups. Thursday Night Football, Nothing like a big division matchup right away in Week two Buffalo against Miami, both of these teams pulling off come from behind victories in Week one, Buffalo traveling down to Miami. This is you know, quite honestly, this is kind of a fun one. Josh Allen against Tuataga Bai Looa in Week two on Thursday night football. It should be pretty entertaining.

greatest show on turf. I don't want to start that whole thing, but I mean, just how exciting that the brand of football they play, it's it's it lends itself to prime Bacon matchups.

and a quarterback like Toua. Miami just feels like a team that can play this rope adope game where you can you can bottle them up, you can hold them down, you can think you've got control of things, and the next thing you know, Tyreek Hill is catching a pass and running eighty yards for a touchdown and completely changing

a game. I felt like the Jacksonville Jaguars felt pretty good about where they were in that game, and then all of a sudden, Tua and Tyreek land a haymaker, and then things had had suddenly shifted and the Dolphins had the ability to do that against anybody on the other side. The Bills, you know, kind of a new receiving corps. They're trying to figure some things out. On offense.

They still have Josh Allen obviously, but a lot of transition going on in Buffalo, and they fell behind early to Arizona and then just came roaring back.

troops to make a run here. But that's certainly going up into Miami is going to be a huge matchup right off the bat.

with Baker, what can they do with them? And now they come out the gate looking great. Breaker Mayfield looked exceptional last week. I mean watching Mayfield play the way that he did in that game in contrast to everything

that was happening in Cleveland. And again, one situation is not like the other, but just seeing how he's remade himself, going from a guy that was a plug and play starter with the Rams a couple of years ago to a dude that now led you know, Buccaneers of the playoffs and appears to be the the next guy in

Tampa after the transition from Tom Brady. Now he's going to be going up against a challenging Detroit defense and on the other side of it, the Lions had to outlast you know that opener is seeing exactly what they have going up against Tampa Bay. I think that's a huge litmus test for both those teams. And then one of them gets to t and oh, I mean you talk about trying to prove what they did last year is no fluke. Well, they're off to a good start.

one and Oh. But the one that is squarely on our radar is two teams that are trying to avoid going to zero to two in the Colts and the Packers, And that will be a Sunday noon kickoff. You're ready for some noon football, Ready.

of the tunnel first for the Packers. But still I just think any Sunday at Lambellfield, especially when you get those new kickoffs, you get the smell of brats in the air, you can't beat it in Green Day Wisconsin.