The Sunday Night Game in Week 12 looks like an unequal fight on paper: The Pittsburgh Steelers (8-2) receive the Green Bay Packers (5-5), whose season has been trampled on since the injury of Aaron Rodgers. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, seems to be getting better and better and both teams are on opposite paths. Can the Packers still put a leg to the Steelers? DAZN will broadcast the match live from 2.30 a. m. on Monday night.
Obviously Mike Tomlin doesn’t want to allow any carelessness when his Steelers go into the duel with the Packers as a household favorite on Sunday evening. And so Pittsburgh’s head coach, Pittsburgh’s head coach, during the week, was on Green Bay’s backup quarterback Brett Hundley, representing the injured Aaron Rodgers, to praise:”His movements are excellent. He seems to be very comfortable in her offense, as you can see from how she uses the no-huddle approach and how much freedom he enjoys on the line of scrimmage.”
He is also convinced that his “Defense” will increasingly see pocket-movement, fast passing game and such things. So measures to ensure that he is exposed to the defense as little as possible. Of course, adaptations that can be expected in view of the circumstances.”
Many Packers fans will probably react to this statement with a lot of frustration. For it was precisely the supposedly logical adjustments that Tomlin addresses that were sought in vain, at least for the most part, since Rodgers’ injury. The offense is still rather static and tries to treat Hundley as a kind of “Aaron Rodgers light” instead of giving him a helping hand.
In terms of route combinations, however, a clear positive trend was evident in the previous week – coach Mike McCarthy decidedly more frequently relied on successive route combinations and helped Hundley in his play designs. As far as game planning is concerned, the Packers still leave a lot to be desired. Too seldom do they use Hundley’s flexibility in controlled lanes, for example with rollouts, zone reads, run pass options and the like. Instead, the offense remains a complex task for the quarterback. And with that, Hundley has kindly expressed his love affair.
Green Bay’s shutdown against Baltimore on Sunday – exactly eleven years after the last Franchise-Shutout, the last home shutout against a team with fewer victories than defeats had it before on 30 September. October 1977 – was symptomatic of this. Hundley could hardly capitalize on the better route combinations, because he held the ball too long and so gave the receivers and play concepts no chance and practically invited the pass rush.
The fact that Green Bay cannot provide a constant run game does not help him much, of course. Aaron Jones continues to fail, and there is a very big question mark behind the use of Ty Montgomery. The big problem, and here’s where you can get to the heart of Sunday’s game: no defense gets a higher percentage of QB presure when it flashes than the Steelers (56.8 percent) and Green Bays Line will be even more vulnerable without the injured Bryan Bulaga in the games that are pending.
Pittsburgh currently offers a spectacular defensive front. The D-Line belongs to the top league and can dominate games, the linebacker corps captivates with athletics and speed. The packers should have another big difficulty to set up a run game – and their running backs will also have a tough stand against Shazier and Co. in the passing game. have.
Pittsburgh’s offense on the other side – and that’s probably one of the reasons why the Steelers are not as dominant as they might be – is simply different from what you’d have imagined. The Steelers have downfield elements, but they are extremely marked by Antonio Brown’s individual class.
Instead, Pittsburgh has thrown the seventh-most passes on or behind the Line of Scrimmage (87) in the league. Leaders in this category are, by the way, the Packers with 104. Further on: JuJu Smith-Schuster, who was injured on Sunday, dominates the slot: his 2.13 yards per run out of the slot are only behind Keenan Allen (2.24) and Adam Thielen (2.17). The rookie gave Pittsburgh’s Offense a different identity in no time at all.
This was also necessary because Ben Roethlisberger was very inconsistent in the first weeks of the season and the run game still doesn’t get going. Despite the Steelers’ great tenacity in this area, there is a lack of efficiency. Green Bay is much more stable against the run in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metrics than against the pass, for Brown, Martavis Bryant and Co. could face another productive game after the clear 40/17 win over Tennesse. However, if Kenny Clark (ankles) and Clay Matthews (bars) fail, the run defense would also suffer.
At the same time, defeating Tennessee was the first time that Pittsburgh broke the 30-point mark this season, another reason why the perception of the offense is much more critical than the individual players would have thought. And yet this duel on Sunday gives you a clear feeling: it’s two teams that are currently heading in the opposite direction this season: Pittsburgh is marching towards the first-round play-off bye, the Packers towards an unusually high draft pick.
While the Steelers have stabilised over the past few weeks and, above all, made clear defensive steps forward, the Packers’ squad deficits without Aaron Rodgers have become more than clear. Brett Hundley may yet develop into a solid NFL-starting quarterback, but currently he’s not and the tape doesn’t give any indication that this will change suddenly within a week.
Apart from the wide-receiver corps, Green Bay has neither the individual means nor the schematic flexibility to react to it, and so Hundley threatens to play a similar game as against Baltimore last Sunday. Against a defense that should dominate the line of scrimmage and definitely can lure the young quarterback into one or two traps with different zone coverage looks.
And so the statement of Packers-Receiver Jordy Nelson seems a little helpless in the run-up to the match:”It’s not just a matter of trouble, otherwise we would have fixed it already. It’s about everyone continuing to work hard and improve to reach their full potential.”
Pittsburgh Steelers (8-2) – Green Bay Packers (5-5) (Monday, 2:30 a. m. live on DAZN)
The SPOX NFL betting game, Week 12:
Pascal
De Marco
101-59