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Packers’ 3rd-down defense is a mirage due to sacks, penalties, and early-down failures

Unless the Packers defense gets a sack or a penalty on the offense, they are having a really tough time getting off the field:

Much has been made over the Green Bay Packers’ defensive struggles this year under Joe Barry through five games. Ben Solak, writing for The Ringer, recently wrote an outstanding breakdown of all of those issues. Among his most interesting findings was just how poorly the Packers defense has played on first and second down. These early-down struggles have the counterintuitive impact of making the Packers actually look pretty good on third down — they rank 4th in 3rd down conversion rate allowed — for two primary reasons.