Why the Packers Shouldn't Try to Build Around the Defense

Rashan Gary is part of a core of young talent on the Packers defense, but he should remain a complementary piece.

As the will he or won’t he conversation drags on, one of the most commonly floated plans for what the Packers should do if Aaron Rodgers moves on has drawn my attention. “Just build around the defense,” the thought process goes, and I can see where that idea comes from.

The Packers have a strong core of very to fairly young players on that side of the ball, including Rashan Gary, Jaire Alexander, Kenny Clark, and Darnell Savage. Should the Packers suddenly come into possession of a boatload of draft picks, presumably they could acquire more talent to build on top of that already promising core and go from there.

The thinking is sound, but I think the plan is wrong from the start. Here’s why.

Building around a defense runs counter to current league structure

As I read it, most of the people proposing this idea are envisioning a defense along the lines of the 2000 Ravens or 1985 Bears, units so fearsome they basically didn’t need the offense to do anything. But the years in which those teams played alone should show us why this plan raises red flags from the start. 

1985 is basically paleolithic football at this point. Approaching the game with a 1985 mindset would be like trying to fight a war with cavalry charges today; it made sense once, but not any longer. The same is broadly true of 2000. The game favored the offense then and the field has only tilted more now. The fact of the matter is that even with these two teams in the equation, it’s far more viable to build around the offense than the defense.

“Ah,” the other side will say. “But what about the Giants in 2007 and 2011? What about the Ravens in 2012? What about the Seahawks in 2013?”

Indeed, what about them. In addition to having strong defenses, each of these teams had a quarterback that put together a string of hot play leading up to and including the Super Bowl. Eli Manning’s passer rating during the 2007 playoffs was a full 20 points higher than in the regular season, and his 2011 postseason play was similar. Joe Flacco threw 11 touchdowns and zero interceptions in the Ravens’ 2012 postseason run, bettering his regular-season passer rating by 30 points. Russel Wilson, meanwhile, was bland and effective in both the regular and postseason in 2013, staying out of the way as much as elevating the Seahawks. 

Even teams that are structured around the defense bank on very good to elite play from their offenses generally and their quarterbacks specifically. Why not just skip the step of banking on the elite defense to begin with? If your team is going to need great quarterback play, start there and build around your great quarterback.

Building around a defense requires more investment

On top of that, the “build around the defense” plan undersells the difficulty of creating an elite defense. The Packers just fielded a very capable unit featuring a couple of key veteran free agent signings around their aforementioned young defensive core, but that’s where things get difficult. It’s going to be close to impossible to keep this unit together as currently constructed. If the Packers move on from Za’Darius and Preston Smith and can’t retain Rasul Douglas and De’Vondre Campbell, they’ll be far from an elite unit. Even if they can retain some of those players, they’ll need to add more to take the unit up a notch.

At minimum, the Packers probably need at least one more good to elite edge rusher, one more elite defensive lineman, an inside linebacker who’s at least as good as Campbell was in 2021, a third safety, and probably one more cornerback. That’s doable, but it’ll require hitting on virtually every draft pick they acquire in a theoretical Aaron Rodgers trade.

On top of that, all those players are going to have to stay healthy for most or all of the next season for the defense to stay elite. An elite quarterback covers a multitude of sins, but an elite defense has to be a team effort. There’s no single defensive position that can affect the game in the same way, leaving the team vulnerable at 11 positions instead of just one. Any absence leaves the team with an exploitable weakness.

Building around the defense requires just too many moving parts to make sense. Whether the Packers have Aaron Rodgers or Jordan Love under center in 2022, they’ve already established their plan. They should continue to build around the quarterback position, not just because they’ve got the pieces in place, but because it’s the only viable way forward.