The Redskins’ offense has found success relying on the arm of quarterback Kirk Cousins and his arsenal of weapons. That makes the Redskins’ passing attack against the Packers’ secondary one of the more interesting matchups in this game. With so much talent in the Packers’ secondary, they have the ability to run a variety of different coverage schemes. Over the past few games, I’ve seen them favor man-to-man coverage when possible.

Here, the Vikings use their 11 personnel, consisting of one running back, one tight end, lined up in the backfield, and three wide receivers. They opt to take a shot, with three deep routes.

The Packers match up man-for-man across the board, with two safeties over the top to provide help where needed. I’ve seen the Packers use both cover-one man coverage with only one deep safety, and two-man, what we see above, throughout the games I’ve watched. They tend to favor two-man closer to the goal line, and cover-one between the 20s, but not exclusively.

This is meant to be a relatively safe man coverage, with two safeties over the top to help prevent deep shots. But the Vikings take one anyway.

The throw from Bridgewater is a good one, but the receiver can’t quite pull it in for what should have been a touchdown.

While the Packers’ secondary is talented, any team that plays man coverage risks the chance of losing a one-on-one matchup. With DeSean Jackson and Jordan Reed, the Redskins will fancy their chances against pure man coverage. But the Packers do a good job of mixing things up and disguising traps.

On this play, the Cardinals empty the backfield, spreading out the defense completely. The Packers appear to be playing cover-one, with man coverage across the board and a single deep safety over the top.

But after the snap, the Packers show their true intentions. The deep safety rotates over the top to one side of the field. On that side of the field, the Packers are running a trap coverage. The outside corner has his eyes on the quarterback, instead of focusing on his receiver. He’s looking for a shorter route in front of him that he can break on. The inside defender drops back to cut off any potential in-breaking routes from the outside receiver, while the deep safety gets over the top to protect against vertical routes.

On the other side of the field, the Packers play man coverage, but with no safety help over the top.

Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer works to the man coverage side of the field and finds his tight end, who gets just enough separation from the safety in coverage.

Trap coverages have worked against Cousins in the past, although he hasn’t fallen for them of late. If executed correctly, trap coverages and disguised coverage schemes in general can be effective and produce turnovers. But they involve plenty of communication. Every player has to be on the same page or they can lead to breakdowns in coverage.

Here, the Packers attempt to show a zone coverage look with two deep safeties. But actually, they run man coverage with one of the deep safeties rotating down to pick up a receiver. The Cardinals run three vertical routes to the same side as the safety rotating towards the line of scrimmage.

As the safety rotates, he seems to get confused as to which receiver he should be picking up.

He ends up getting caught in traffic and allows his receiver to run free down the sideline.

The Packers get lucky and Palmer overthrows the ball. I wouldn’t say these types of coverage breakdowns are regular occurrences for the Packers, but they are always a possibility with young players in complicated coverage schemes. The Redskins will certainly need to jump on any coverage breakdowns should they occur.

One thing that stood out to me when studying the Packers’ secondary was how well it defended in the red zone. The Redskins are eighth in red-zone efficiency, meaning that this will be another interesting battle.

The Packers’ general rule in the red zone is to rush just three defenders while dropping eight into coverage. They did it twice in a row on the same drive against the Cardinals.

This was the first play.

They did the same thing on the very next down. But they’ve also done it against other teams.

Here’s the same concept from their game against the Raiders a few weeks ago.

And here it is again, most recently against the Vikings.

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This works well in the red zone because there is only so far the defense can be stretched vertically. With eight defenders in coverage against a maximum of five eligible receivers, the odds are stacked against the offense in finding an open target. There is very little room for error when throwing against this style of defense. There aren’t many holes in the zones and throwing windows are tight. Success against these styles of red-zone defense usually come when the quarterback scrambles to one side, eliminating half the field and focusing on fewer targets. But the Redskins have done an excellent job converting red-zone possessions into touchdowns, particularly over the past few games. That makes it an interesting matchup to watch play out on Sunday.

Mark Bullock is The Insider’s Outsider, sharing his Redskins impressions without the benefit of access to the team. For more breakdowns, click here.

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