According to Football Outsiders DVOA metric, the Green Bay Packers currently enjoy the league’s third best defense, which is great. They also boast the third best passing defense, which is also great. However when it comes to run defense they rank only 22nd, which is not great on the surface.
Under the surface, there is something interesting going on. Matt LaFleur’s offense depends heavily on play-action passing, and the Packer offense has unquestionably improved in this regard. Whereas last season they were one of the worst teams when running play-action and one of the only teams to fair better when not using it, this season they are 3.