The Packers have spent years building an offense with enough pieces to stress a defense in every direction. The strange part is how often they’ve chosen not to let all of it breathe at once.
That’s the tension sitting at the center of the Jordan Love era: a team that has invested heavily in pass-catching talent, yet has repeatedly leaned into the run in situations where the numbers say it didn’t have to. According to rbsdm.com, Green Bay has been one of the league’s most run-reliant teams in neutral situations over the past few seasons. In early-down, neutral-situation pass calls, the Packers ranked 20th, 32nd, and 22nd over the last three years.
That would be one thing if the offense lacked a quarterback worth trusting. It doesn’t. Love is good, and the case for giving him more chances is pretty straightforward: every run call carries an opportunity cost when it takes the ball away from a quarterback who can make things happen.
The roster construction makes the pattern even harder to ignore. Since 2022, the Packers have used seven top-100 picks on wide receivers or tight ends, including the two selections involved in the trade up for Christian Watson.
They’ve also drafted four more receivers in the fourth round or later. That is a lot of investment to then spend long stretches of Sundays leaning on the ground game instead of attacking through the air.
The organization hasn’t acted like those receivers are disposable, either; it handed contract extensions to two of them this offseason.
So why does the offense keep tilting this way? The simplest answer is Josh Jacobs.
The Packers signed Jacobs to a rich free-agent deal in the spring of 2024, right as Aaron Jones was moving on. For a brief moment, it was easy to imagine Jones and Jacobs sharing the backfield, but that never happened. Instead, Jacobs arrived as the perfect fit for two overlapping ideas: Brian Gutekunst’s preference at running back and Matt LaFleur’s preferred offensive shape.
Gutekunst has clearly favored a certain kind of back. After inheriting Jones - probably the best non-Ahman Green Packers runner of the 21st century, and maybe closer to that level than some want to admit - he has kept adding backs who look more like compact wrecking balls than open-field sprinters.
Jacobs is the cleanest version of that mold. His burst is not what it used to be, but in today’s ground game, he remains the stubbier hammer.
LaFleur’s side of the equation matters too. His offense has drifted away from its wide-zone roots and toward a more power-based, gap-heavy run scheme than the Shanahan-tree systems in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Whether moving on from Jones was the right call is a question history will answer later, but Jones probably would have had a harder time in this version of the offense.
Still, the Packers may have leaned too hard into the identity Jacobs represents. A power run game can be useful.
It does not need to become the whole operation. Green Bay, though, often acts like it does.
When Jacobs is on the field, he becomes the centerpiece of the offense, touching the ball more than anyone else. The attack runs through him.
When he goes, the offense goes.
That is where the problem starts. The Packers have built two versions of an offense that can coexist in theory: one that runs through Love and the passing game, and another that pounds away with Jacobs and the ground attack. In practice, they have not let the first version take over.
If that changes, somebody has to lose touches, and the logical place to make that sacrifice is in the run game. Let Love drive the offense.
Let the receivers Green Bay has spent so much to assemble finally become the point of the thing. Pull back from the run-heavy habits that have defined the last three seasons.
If not now, when? That’s the question hanging over LaFleur’s offense. And if he can’t adjust, he may not be the one shaping the next version of it.
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