Packers Film Room: Attacking the Seahawks in the Red Zone (2025)

As I tend to do most weeks, I went through all the red zone touchdowns scored against the Green Bay Packers’ next opponent. I typically don’t write about it, because writing takes time and energy and I am often in short supply of at least one of those things.

This week, as I was going through those snaps, I found a little something and I thought it might be fun to draw up something for this week. But first, some numbers.

The Seahawks have been a solid red zone defense this year, allowing a TD on 52.2% of opponent trips to the red zone (11th best in the league, per Team Rankings). Over the last 3 games, they’ve only allowed TDs on 37.5% of opponent trips to the red zone, 2nd best over that span. Three games is a small sample size, but it also matches up with how the defense has looked overall. The defense was a little rocky early in the season, but they’ve been improving over the last few weeks.

The Packers offense had a habit of stalling in the red zone early in the season, but they’ve been on a heater since they came out of the bye. Going into the bye, the Packers were scoring a TD on 47.1% of their trips to the red zone, 29th in the league. In their 4 games since the bye week, they’re scoring TDs on 75% of their trips to the red zone. (The Ravens are currently the best team at scoring TDs in the red zone this year at 75%.)

With both the Packers' offense and Seahawks' defense performing well in the red zone as of late, I was looking for something that has worked against the Seahawks this year that the Packers could work into their offense.

Per NFL Pro, teams have scored 24 TDs in the red zone against the Seahawks this year: 16 of those have been called passes and 8 have been called runs. Four of those TDs have come off a trick play, and that’s where we find ourselves today.

There were a couple of trick plays early in the season - a direct snap to Rhamondre Stevenson and a Philly Special throw from Amon-Ra St. Brown to Jared Goff - but we’ve also seen the same type of trick play be successful against the Seahawks in the last two weeks. I am talking, of course, about a Shovel pass.

The Jets scored on one in Week 13...

...and the Cardinals scored on one in Week 14.

They’re of two different varieties. The Jets are running a more standard Shovel play, pushing to a WR crossing under the line in a condensed formation. The Cardinals run it from spread and it plays out more like a RB middle screen. Those looks - combined with a play the Lions ran against the Packers last week - got me thinking about how the Packers could build in a shovel pass this week. (You can certainly argue that the Cardinals one is a screen, but, since it takes place behind the line of scrimmage and directly in front of the QB, I think this fits into the shovel bucket.)

The Packers have had a lot of success with the run game out of their split-gun formation. The variations to the run game out of that look have been one of my favorite things about watching the offense this year, so I thought I’d start there as a formation. They’ve shown so much out of this look - and have so many pullers, motion and misdirects built in - that it can already be hard for a defense to try to stop.

Since we’re in the red zone, I wanted to go a little heavy. I want to spread the field horizontally, which can be tough to do with two running backs in the backfield. So I opted to have Jayden Reed [11] in the backfield with Josh Jacobs [8] and put the heavy look up front, with 2 TEs in a YY Wing formation out of 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR). The pass is going to Tucker Kraft [85], who is aligning as the inside TE while Ben Sims [89] is off the ball on the outside. Christian Watson [9] will function as our receiver on the right, both for the threat of his speed and his blocking ability.

I had to take a couple of liberties with the formation name, but we’re gonna call this formation Gun Red RT West. We’re trying to sell a hard run off-tackle on the left, then slip shovel to Kraft inside.

Sims goes in motion pre-snap as part of their Escort motion, with an eye on kicking out the EMOL (End Man On Line). Sean Rhyan [RG] is pulling to the left from, but instead of working as a lead he’s pulling up in the B gap on a trap block. Elgton Jenkins [LG] and Josh Myers [C] are sealing to the inside while Rasheed Walker [LT] is kicking out. Zach Tom [RT] is blocking down to protect against someone shooting the gap left by the pulling Rhyan.

Jacobs is crossing Love’s face and Love will give a flash-fake to sell the run to the left. Reed is releasing to the right flat to help influence the linebacker on that side of the formation away from the middle of the formation.

Kraft pulls under the formation, Love pitches it to him and he follows the trap block from Rhyan.

If you want to see what that might look like in motion, here ya go.

Do we prefer Jenkins as the puller? I think Rhyan has done a nice job this year, but Jenkins is a great puller so we could run it to the right if we want.

Will we see this on Sunday? Probably not! But it sure is fun to dream sometimes.

Albums listened to: Florence + The Machine - Lungs; Old Sea Brigade - If Only I Knew, Pt. 1