Explosive Plays

Moving the ball is good. Moving the ball in big chunks is even better.

Time and time again, we’ve seen that teams that can move the ball efficiently (i.e. in big chunks) score more frequently and win more often. It makes sense, then, to track how often teams and players are producing big plays, or, as we call them, explosive plays.

For our purposes, explosive plays are categorized as run plays of 12 or more yards and pass plays of 16 or more yards.

Here’s how the Packers have done producing explosive plays since Aaron Rodgers’ first season as the Packers’ starting quarterback.

Why track explosive plays this way?

Our definition of explosive plays comes from pioneering Packers researcher Mike Eayrs. Eayrs was a key member of the Packers' staff from 2001-14 and discovered in the course of his analytic research that drives featuring a run of at least 12 yards or a pass of at least 16 yards were more likely to result in points. Significantly more likely.

According to Eayrs, a single explosive play increased an offense's chance at points to 40%. Two increased the chance to about 80%.

Suffice it to say, producing explosive plays is important. Fortunately, the Packers have a host of players capable of producing significant numbers of explosive plays. Below is a chart of all the active players on the Packers who have produced an explosive play in Green Bay and their season-by-season explosive play totals.