How Matt LaFleur reshaped the post-Aaron Rodgers offense (and why Dontayvion Wicks is further along than you think)

The transition to a post-Aaron Rodgers offense required months of trial and error, but the Packers gradually built a new approach and identity around Jordan Love and a young receiving corps.

From the moment Aaron Rodgers announced his intentions to play for the New York Jets, the Green Bay Packers faced an identity crisis. Rodgers, a Super Bowl champion and four-time MVP, had served as the tip of the team's spear for 15 seasons. The franchise made every major decision with him in mind, including the transition from longtime head coach Mike McCarthy to Matt LaFleur four years earlier.

With Rodgers no longer in the fold, the Packers had more than a quarterback to replace; they had a new offense to build. LaFleur, the head coach and offensive play-caller, would have to guide the NFL's youngest roster and a first-time starter under center into an uncertain future.

"I think offensively, you're going to see probably a little bit more of Matt's true offense," team president Mark Murphy said at the Packers' annual shareholders meeting last July. "Obviously, when you have a great quarterback like Aaron and somebody who's been in the league as long as he has, we gave him the flexibility to change plays and get in and out of things that really helped, but I would anticipate a strong running game and play-action off of that."

For his part, LaFleur downplayed that notion: "I don't know what that means. It's always our offense, and it's not about one person in this building. It's about us, all our players, all our coaches, and how we want to attack. I would say it's a very fluid process. Sure, we got our core beliefs and our foundational values, but it's how we do what's best for our football team."

Whether or not LaFleur has a "true" offense, the Packers' approach looked markedly different last season than in the years with Rodgers at the helm. Not only did the unit struggle to find its footing until November, but the complexion of the play-calling shifted rapidly. Certain staple plays from the height of the LaFleur-Rodgers era eventually fell out of use. Some concepts evolved new wrinkles to better fit the young personnel while others made triumphant returns after falling out of prominence years earlier.

Though the transition involved months of missteps and adjustments, the Packers cemented a fresh offensive identity around Jordan Love and his stable of first- and second-year receivers in time for the team to secure a playoff berth. The post-Rodgers unit shares the same foundation as past Green Bay offenses, but the featured concepts and players have changed in one way or another.

Strike drifts away, Yankee rallies

During LaFleur and Rodgers' time together, perhaps no play better typified their working relationship than strike. The concept -- a simple play-action design with the X receiver running six or seven steps up the field before breaking inside to open space while another receiver on the opposite side of the formation runs a vertical route to clear the middle of the field -- became one of the team's preferred ways to get the ball in All-Pro wideout Davante Adams' hands.

Even after Adams departed in 2022, the Packers still used the play frequently, most notably as a showcase for Christian Watson's speed.

That changed in 2023. While the Packers did lean on strike early in the season, the results forced LaFleur to re-evaluate. The nadir came in Week 5 when Love threw one of the year's ugliest interceptions while targeting Romeo Doubs over the middle.

After self-scouting during their Week 6 bye, the Packers largely removed strike from the rotation. Love and his cadre of young pass catchers simply couldn't get the concept to work as well or as often as Rodgers had in past years. However, another play would fill the void and then some: Yankee.

Though it goes by different names in the playbook, the Yankee concept has a long history with the Kyle Shanahan-influenced offenses like Green Bay's. At its core, Yankee involves a two-route concept -- a deep crosser on one side with a post, corner, or other vertical route going over the top from the other side -- as well as play-action. When executed correctly, the play creates a deep-shot opportunity for an open receiver working over the middle.

But while other similarly rooted offenses include a healthy amount of Yankee, the Packers didn't dial up the concept much during the LaFleur-Rodgers era. Between the 2020 and '21 seasons, Green Bay barely cracked double digits on the number of Yankee calls with Rodgers targeting Adams on just five of them. In each of those cases, the star receiver ran the vertical route instead of the deep crosser that the play's design prioritizes.

All of that changed in 2023. In that season alone, the Packers ran Yankee almost triple the number of times as they did in 2020 and '21 combined. Even wilder still, the team featured each of the team's top six receivers on the concept's deep crosser with all but one of those pass catchers also running the vertical route in other instances. Those calls led to some of Green Bay's biggest plays of the season, and arguably no one thrived in those moments more than Dontayvion Wicks.

Among the pass catchers Love targeted on Yankee concepts in 2023, none recorded more gains of 18 yards or more on those plays than Wicks. The fifth-round rookie ran both of the key routes in the design, though his catches came on the deep crossers. During the Packers' upset of the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 13, Wicks breezed through a zone coverage, finding the open space behind the linebackers and hauling in Love's pass for a 27-yard gain.

But regardless of which player the Packers targeted, the results look outstanding. Including playoffs, Love completed 61.5% of throws on Yankee concepts for 300 yards and no turnovers last season, averaging roughly 11.5 yards per pass attempt. Considering the high-variance nature of the shot play, Green Bay essentially turned it into a game of throw and catch.

Why did Yankee work so well in 2023 after years of limited use? The variability of the rebuilt receiving corps provided the play's secret sauce. Whereas the strike concept featured an inordinate amount of one receiver (Adams) running the primary route (in breaker), the Packers deployed nearly every pass catcher of consequence in multiple roles on Yankee. As a result, defenses struggled to sniff out both when Green Bay would run the play and which player would serve as the primary target.

And once the offense established the play as a staple, LaFleur began to truly toy with defenses. In the postseason, he had Doubs turn a deep crosser into an out breaker, resulting in a 46-yard gain against the Dallas Cowboys. The following week, LaFleur dressed up the concept by sending Bo Melton on orbit motion, a tweak that dumbfounded the San Francisco 49ers defense and left Jayden Reed completely unattended.

The Packers use some concepts more often than Yankee, but they didn't have a more reliable shot play in their bag last season.

There is your dagger

Unlike Yankee, the Packers have always relied on dagger during the LaFleur era. The play comes in many forms, but a vertical "thru" route with a deep dig run behind it forms the crux of the concept.

Green Bay made hay with dagger during Rodgers' back-to-back MVP seasons with Adams as the primary target.

Though the Packers no longer have an established All-Pro wideout in their arsenal, they still use dagger with great frequency. During the 2023 season, they ran versions of the concept well over 40 times. Just over 31% used heavy personnel, roughly 29% came off play-action, and only 22% placed the quarterback under center. Even so, Green Bay hardly lacked variety and unpredictability in the way it utilized dagger.

During the LaFleur-Rodgers era, dagger designs hardly looked static. The Packers dressed up those plays with pre-snap motion to help create coverage tells and matchup advantages. LaFleur and his coaching staff have always taken that approach when possible.

Still, the Packers ramped up the idea to 11 this past season. Not only did many of their most successful dagger calls feature motion, pass catchers would more regularly travel from one end of the formation to the other to mess with the defense. And unlike other staple concepts, Green Bay had the right approach to dagger from the opening month of the season as exemplified by Wicks' first NFL touchdown.

Wicks' impressive display underscores how much better developed he entered the league than anyone could have initially imagined. The touchdown shows him beating man coverage at the top of his route, hauling in the pass, and then breaking multiple tackles on his way to the end zone. One can draw parallels between that play and any number of big moments delivered by Adams in years past. Wicks doesn't have the All-Pro's array of releases nor does he have the same top-end speed, but the nuances of their games share more than a few similarities.

And though Wicks had just one career reception prior to that trip to paydirt, he would come to dominate the dagger concept for the Packers to a degree not seen since Adams' departure. When LaFleur dialed up dagger, no one on the roster caught more passes (five, tied with Doubs) or gained more yardage (133, more than double that of the second-place finisher) than Wicks. That production looks even more impressive when considering the rookie wideout played less than half of Green Bay's offensive snaps.

Like reading a book

With so many talented receivers sharing the field, the Packers needed more designs that could exploit their strengths simultaneously. One of those concepts, XZ read, grew into a staple by the end of the 2023 season. As the name suggests, XZ read features two choice routes with each receiver running either a deep comeback or going vertical depending on what the defense presents.

For the play to work, the receivers and quarterback have to read the coverage identically, a dynamic that necessarily presented considerable risk for a Green Bay offense with a first-time starter under center and almost exclusively first- and second-year wideouts and tight ends. The Packers ran the concept just three times before their Week 6 bye, resulting in an 8-yard checkdown, an incompletion, and a back-breaking interception.

With Love and his receivers not able to get on the same page, the Packers wouldn't return to XZ read for several weeks. This stretch coincided with many of the offense's other struggles, the majority of which stemmed from inexperience.

But eventually, the young Packers found their bearings. That development allowed XZ read to emerge as a fixture in the passing game.

The breakthrough moment came in Week 11. Trailing late in the third quarter and in need of a spark, LaFleur called XZ read out of a heavy formation with Watson and Wicks at receiver. The Los Angeles Chargers presented a two-high look before the snap and kept the safeties back. Both wideouts correctly read the coverage and broke off their vertical routes to turn back toward the quarterback. The play left veteran linebacker Eric Kendricks to cover two receivers, a no-win situation.

The Packers took off from there. Each of the next four times they ran the concept resulted in gains of 16 yards or more. LaFleur called XZ read five times against the Chiefs alone, a testament to how far the young offense had come in a relatively short period.

Despite the success, the Packers eventually dialed back their use of XZ read due in part to Watson's hamstring injury and slow recovery. While the concept can generate explosive gains for far less athletic receivers -- Malik Heath produced his longest play of the season on an XZ read call -- Watson's elite speed and ability to stop down with minimal warning unlock the full potential of the design.

Accordingly, look for the Packers to run XZ read with Watson even more during the upcoming season so long as his body allows.

-- Jason B. Hirschhorn is an award-winning sports journalist and Pro Football Writers of America member. Follow him on social media: @by_JBH on Twitter / @byjbh@bsky.social on Bluesky / @by_jbh on Threads