GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers made a $35.3 million investment this offseason in Jaire Alexander and Rasul Douglas. You might not know how they used the two tight ends in Sunday’s season-ending 23-7 loss to the Minnesota Vikings.
Alexander, with his $30 million signing bonus in the bank as part of his massive contract extension in May, mostly stayed on one side of the field — often the opposite side from where Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson lined up. — or sat on some of defensive coordinator Joe Barry’s zone calls.
Douglas, with a $5.3 million signing bonus from the $21 million, three-year deal he signed in March, played just 41 of 62 snaps. The team’s top playmaker in the secondary last season (while Alexander was out with a shoulder injury) has dropped to play in the slot as the third cornerback in nickel packages. Meanwhile, last year’s first-round draft pick Eric Stokes played all 62 snaps as the outside cornerback on the opposite side of the field from Alexander.
Throughout, Jefferson torched what was supposed to be the Packers’ strength to the tune of nine catches for 184 and two touchdowns — most of them lightly contested.
Enter Alexander, who said after the game that he repeatedly asked to face Jefferson whenever possible.
“But it has nothing to do with me,” said Alexander. “It’s about the team. It has nothing to do with me. If it were my way, you know what I would do.”
On Monday, Packers coach Matt LaFleur offered a reminder that matching up a defensive back — or any defensive player, really — with a player isn’t a big part of Barry’s zone-based scheme.
“If you want to change the structure of your defense, I mean, you can certainly do that,” LaFleur said.
However, the Packers actually played less zone than it might have appeared. Barry called that type of coverage on 51.5% of opponents’ drops, which, according to ESPN Stats & Information, was the seventh-lowest rate among the 30 teams that had played in Week 1 through Sunday.
The Vikings chewed up Barry’s zone calls. Quarterback Kirk Cousins completed 12 of 17 passes for 188 yards and a touchdown against that scheme. It included Jefferson’s second touchdown, a 36-yarder that Alexander said probably should have stayed with Jefferson longer, even though he was waiting for help. There was an abundance of miscommunications that left Jefferson so open.
Against the man calls, Cousins was 11 of 15 for 81 yards and a touchdown.
LaFleur supported Barry’s decision to play in the zone game in part because of the preemptive moves used by new Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell.
“There were many times during the game where it wasn’t just a single move, but a double move, right?” LaFleur said. “So now you’re talking about going after a guy, whatever, but you have to commit to man coverage. I don’t know how you can do it any other way.”
LaFleur admitted it was something the Packers could have done in a few cuts. Jefferson had four of his catches and one of his touchdowns on third or fourth down.
“I think that’s something we’re going to talk about every week, and every week is a little bit different,” LaFleur said. “But we have a lot of faith in our other corners there as well, whether it’s Stokes or Rasul Douglas. So how exotic do you want to be and what exactly do you want to do?”
