Every Play Counts: The Green Bay Packers' Poorly-Coached Defense

Every Play Counts is Michael David Smith's weekly look at one specific player or one aspect of a team on every single play of the previous game.

A year after Brett Favre led them to a 13-3 record and the brink of a Super Bowl, the Green Bay Packers are 5-8 and just about eliminated from playoff contention.

But while the knee-jerk reaction would be to blame the decision of the front office to trade Favre and make Aaron Rodgers the starter, folks in Green Bay are mostly supporting Rodgers. The reason? Packers fans are smart enough to see that the real problem is on the other side of the ball, where opposing offenses are pushing the Packers' defense up and down the field.

That was on display in a big way on Sunday, when the Houston Texans rolled up 549 yards of total offense in a 24-21 win at Lambeau Field. So what's wrong with the Packers' defense? We explore in this week's installment of Every Play Counts.

The short answer is that the Packers' defense looked badly coached on Sunday. Cornerback Charles Woodson moved to safety to replace the injured Atari Bigby, even though the Packers didn't have an adequate replacement for Woodson at cornerback, and that turned out to be a big tactical mistake. The Packers were also rarely able to get any pressure on Texans quarterback Matt Schaub, and their blitzes were less likely to rattle Schaub than they were to give him an easy mismatch to exploit. Against the run, the Packers didn't get off their blocks. All in all, it was a putrid performance, and one that would have yielded a lot more than 24 points if the Texans hadn't shot themselves in the foot a couple of times.

The Texans' very first offensive play set the tone for the game. Schaub faked a handoff to Slaton going left, then rolled out to his right, looking to pass. This is a staple of the West Coast Offense, a play that had been around for years even when Texans coach Gary Kubiak was John Elway's backup in Denver in the 1980s. Bill Walsh used to run this play all the time with the San Francisco 49ers, rolling the quarterback to the right when it was the right-handed Joe Montana and to the left when it was the left-handed Steve Young. This play should not take any defense by surprise.

But you'd think the Packers had never seen it before. The Packers' entire front seven fell for the fake handoff, and so did cornerback Tramon Williams. So when Schaub rolled to his right, he had fullback Vonta Leach all alone right in front of him, and tossed him the ball. Williams did a fairly good job of recovering and tackled Leach after five yards, but giving up an easy five yards every time the offense wants it is no way to play defense.

I'm not the only one who noticed this; here's Vince Verhei of Football Outsiders:

Houston ran at least 1,000 naked bootlegs off of play action, the kind of play that usually leaves an end or linebacker with an unblocked route to the quarterback. I hate these plays, because it seems like nine times out of ten the pass rusher is not fooled by the run fake at all, but the Green Bay ends never had a clue, and Matt Schaub found himself standing all alone, with no blockers or pass rushers to impede his vision, over and over again.

Schaub almost always had an easy throwing lane when he rolled to his right. Of course, the one time he didn't, the Packers were unable to stop it anyway. That was on a two-point conversion attempt in the fourth quarter, when Schaub faked a handoff on an end around, then rolled to the right, looking for Andre Johnson in the end zone. Packers defensive end Mike Montgomery was there to pressure Schaub, but Johnson still made a great catch in the end zone and got both feet down just before he was pushed out of bounds.

The decision to line up Charles Woodson at safety makes no sense. It's not that Woodson can't play safety, it's that the Packers couldn't compensate for his absence at cornerback. Williams started at cornerback and was frequently left alone in man coverage, and he couldn't handle it.

On the Texans' third offensive play, wide receiver Kevin Walter ran deep down the left sideline, and Schaub underthrew him. The problem for the Packers is that Walter had already blown past Williams before Schaub had released the ball, meaning Williams had his back turned, trying to chase Walter, and didn't know the ball had been underthrown. That allowed Walter to come back to it and grab it at the 30-yard line. Packers safety Nick Collins came over to try to help but ended up colliding with Williams, giving Walter an easy stroll to the end zone.

As FanHouse's Bruce Ciskie pointed out, finding the ball was a struggle for Williams all day. Williams is a good athlete who made an excellent play on an interception, but he's just not ready to be left alone on even a halfway decent NFL wide receiver. It makes no sense that Packers defensive coordinator Bob Sanders thought he could leave Williams one-on-one with Walter and move Woodson to safety without suffering a drop-off in coverage. As it turned out, Walter had six catches for 146 yards, his first 100-yard receiving game of the year.

Having Woodson at safety and Williams one-on-one with Walter was the biggest problem with the Packers' pass defense, but there were others. A big one was the complete inability to generate a pass rush. I've mentioned that Schaub rarely had anyone in his face when he rolled out. He also rarely had anyone in his face when he stayed in the pocket. On the Texans' first play of the third quarter, Schaub took a seven-step drop and had all day to scan the field before eventually finding Leach for a gain of 21 yards; with how much time he had he was bound to find someone open.

And then when the Packers blitzed, they did so in ways that created mismatches the Texans could easily exploit. With the score tied and less than a minute to go, Sanders called for cornerback Will Blackmon, lined up in the slot, to come on a blitz. That left linebacker Desmond Bishop in one-on-one coverage on Texans tight end Owen Daniels. The result was a 27-yard completion to Daniels that set up the Texans' winning field goal as time expired.

Bishop's coverage breakdown was huge, but he actually had a good game up until that point. Making the first start of his NFL career, Bishop made several big plays: On a third-and-1 handoff to Cecil Sapp, Bishop looked like he was shot out of a cannon and drilled Sapp for a loss of three yards. Bishop also forced Daniels to fumble at the 1-yard line in the second quarter, saving a touchdown, and he recorded the Packers' only sack of the game. I can't imagine why Sanders didn't send Bishop to blitz on the key pass to Daniels and leave Blackmon back in coverage.

Of course, the big problem for the Packers for most of the season has been the run defense, not the pass defense. That run defense was just as putrid as ever Sunday, with Slaton picking up 120 yards on 26 carries. Perhaps the greatest indictment of the Packers' defense came on a third-and-10 from the Texans' 11-yard line in the first quarter. Houston called for a simple off-tackle handoff to Slaton, the kind of play you run on third-and-long when you just want to give your punter a little more room. But the Texans' offensive line cleared a path for Slaton that allowed him to pick up 13 yards with ease.

It's amazing how much trouble the Packers' front seven had at getting off the Texans' blocks. Texans assistant head coach Alex Gibbs has been the league's foremost offensive line guru since his time with the Broncos in the 1990s, and I'm sure he loved Slaton's 34-yard run on the last play of the first quarter. The film of the Texans blocking the Packers on that play is something a high school coach would use to show young players the right way to do it.

And the film of the Packers' defense throughout the game is something Sanders must wish he could destroy every copy of. This was an ugly performance, and a good demonstration of why the Packers aren't going to the playoffs.