Packers' Ability to Generate Turnovers Helping Team Win in 2014

Six games into the season, the Packers have currently 13 turnovers, with nine coming from the air. While fumbles tend to regress towards the mean, Green Bay's ability to attack the football in the air is as prevalent on the stat sheet as it is on film.

Against the Chicago Bears, who have three tremendous athletes to throw to, the Packers nearly shutdown Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall, something thought impossible coming into the game. How did the Packers' defensive backs manage to complete the task? Pressure with limited rushers helped, as did winning at the catch point.

What Green Bay is do isn't anything innovative. They simply are executing a roster design that has been around for decades, but few have ability to pursue.

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Seifert had an innovative defensive mind. More than anybody else, he popularized the use of situation substitution, using defensive specialists at a time when teams were generally making few substitutions. ... Seifert was as imaginative with his defensive approach as Bill Walsh was on offense

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In the 80's, Bill Walsh revolutionize football offensively. On the other side of the ball, there was an equal reaction. With Walsh's offenses being up, due to a great quarterback, they spent most of their time playing offenses in their nickel or dime sets. Rather than build a base defense like everyone else in the league was doing, Walsh and Seifert began building their team as a base nickel team, with true base defenders being the situational players, not the other way around.

The issue is that to do so, you need an elite quarterback, making the sample size of teams able to make the move small, and the sample size of coaches willing to make the move even smaller. At the NFL level, there's little innovation. Most of the innovation we see in the professionals come from a coaches with a college background, as NFL types are more likely to be playing conservative to keep a job. With Rodgers leading the way for the Packers, though, the Packers have gone for it.

In Green Bay, you see much of San Francisco's theory in action. Undersized defensive linemen like Datone Jones and Mike Daniels make heavy impacts, but they're square pegs to the round hole of a base defense. Jones, under 290 pounds, and Daniels, around six-foot-flat, aren't the prototypical base ends for the traditional 3-4 defense.

In 2012, the Packers spent more time in nickel and dime sets than any other team in the league. This isn't a new approach from the Packers, simply new execution.

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Per ESPN Stats & Info, #Packers ran nickel/dime defense on 66.8 % of their defensive snaps in 2012, the highest rate in the NFL.

— Zach Kruse (@zachkruse2) February 12, 2013"

Instead of approaching games with a base defense, they're using undervalued interior pressure creators in premium positions. For an example, Daniels was drafted in the fourth round of 2012. He's now a top-five 3-4 defensive end according to Bleacher Report's NFL 1000. Even in 2014, both Jones and Daniels have made clear progressions to their overall play from last season.

Moving from interior pressure to edge pressure, defensive coordinator Dom Capers and general manager Ted Thompson have loaded the roster with outside linebackers. With Pro Bowler Clay Matthews and former first round pick Nick Perry already on the roster, the Packers managed to retain Mike Neal in free agency, sign future Hall of Famer Julius Peppers, and draft Carl Bradford early in Day 3 out of Arizona State.

The Packers were actually so deep at outside linebacker that Bradford received little playing time even in the preseason, resulting in his move to inside linebacker.

With Matthews, Peppers, Neal, and Perry all rotating, staying fresh, the Packers have been able to get after the quarterback down the stretch during games. In the fourth quarter, when teams' edge players usually fall off, they're able to pin their ears back knowing a pass is coming. To put it into perspective, Perry, who was a starting linebacker last season and produced well from the right side, is currently the fourth-most used outside linebacker on the roster.

Immediately, the only way you could justify building a team in such a way, with investments almost exclusively in pass rushers in the front seven, is to accept that with Aaron Rodgers slinging the rock on offense, that you're going to be playing most of the game in nickel or dime. Capers, an innovator of the fire blitz, must be absolutely delighted with all the options he has to choose from.

On the back end of the team, the Packers have also improved. With Sam Shields locked up on a new contract and Tramon Williams looking like the former corner in his prime, the Packers seem to be set with boundary players. Davon House and Casey Hayward are rotating as third cornerbacks on the team depending on the match up, but both are looking good in 2014. After Sunday's game, all four have netted an interception.

At safety, competition has lifted the performance of the unit. With the addition of Ha Ha Clinton-Dix and the move of Micah Hyde from slotback to safety, Morgan Burnett has looked much improved.

At the end, relative health and competition of what most of the NFL regards as situational players is how Green Bay's had a better yield in 2014 relative to 2013. Green Bay's never been a lock down defense under Capers. For his aggressive philosophy, it's much more important to attempt to steal a possession than to make sure the offense gains fewer than three yards on an individual play.

With the improved production from the Packers, they're currently on pace for 24 interceptions, which would beat the Packers' 2013 total by more than double. Up to this point in the season, Rodgers has also only thrown one single interception. If fumbles regress to the mean, as they typically do, the Packers are poised for a season with a high, positive turnover differential.

For all the criticism Thompson, Capers, and head coach Mike McCarthy have taken over the years regarding how the team has been built and executed around "finesse" principals, it seems like the Packers are finally back on defense in a way they haven't since their Super Bowl run.

In 2010, during the Super Bowl run, the Packers had 24 interceptions, the exact amount the Packers are projected for this season. In 2011, the total went up to 31 interceptions during the 15-1 regular season. From there, the numbers dropped dramatically to 18 interceptions in 2012 and 11 in 2013.

From December of 2012 until late September of 2014, the Packers hadn't even recorded an interception by a safety. Currently, the Packers are stealing drives due to a reinforced pass rush and improved secondary. Armed with the personnel to do so, they're dominating the turnover battle.

Evidently, it's working, as Green Bay's heading into Week 7 on a three game win streak and is tied at the top of the NFC North. If the playoffs were held today, not represented would be reining the Super Bowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks, who beat Green Bay in Week 1. The Packers, though, would be represented in the Wild Card round.

Many think more of the team, with Odds Sharks listing the Packers as the third-most likely team to win the Super Bowl according to their odds. If Green Bay can keep taking the ball away while Rodgers continues to avoid interceptions, the numbers agree with Vegas. If the Packers can keep up their early success, it will be difficult to defeat a team with so many extra possessions.