Green Bay Packers leaning on run as passing lags behind

Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy and his assistants don't have much to go on as they huddle to assess the state of their team with the players away through the weekend for the bye.

The small sample size of three games, however, has revealed plenty about how the Packers have functioned thus far.

McCarthy referred to a self-scouting nugget that came out of a chat he had with quarterback Aaron Rodgers in a meeting on Monday, prior to the coach excusing the players for the rest of the week.

"This is the first time in my career here that our run game is ahead of our pass game," said McCarthy, who is in his 11th year as Packers coach.

The statistics are telling of the early body of work by both the offense and the defense.

As they sit idly by with a 2-1 record until they resume playing on Oct. 9 against the New York Giants at Lambeau Field, the Packers' nearly annual strengths of throwing the football and defending it through the air have shown to be weaknesses.

Green Bay's passing offense ranks 29th out of the NFL's 32 teams with an average of 193.3 yards per game. That woeful output received a slight boost Sunday, when Rodgers bounced back from an atrocious performance the previous week and threw four touchdown passes in the 34-27 win over the Detroit Lions.

"It feels good to see some of the potential," said Rodgers, who delivered all of the scoring strikes in the first half as the Packers raced out to a 31-3 lead, their most points before halftime since December 2014.

However, Green Bay wound up relying on its somewhat better half - the rushing attack - to keep the Lions at bay as they mounted a big comeback to get within seven points late in the game. Punishing back Eddie Lacy pounded away for 103 yards in 17 carries, his first 100-yard game of the season.

That helped send the Packers past the century mark for season average with 100.3 rushing yards per game, good for 17th in the league.

"I definitely think we responded in the right way (Sunday), and it gives us a glimpse of how good we can be once we're on the same page," Lacy said. "It just gives us confidence and lets us know that if we have to run the ball we can definitely do so."

Meanwhile, opponents are quickly discovering that running the ball against Green Bay's defense may be a no-win proposition.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, Minnesota Vikings and the Lions rushed for all of 128 yards - combined - when they played the Packers. The team said it's the fifth-fewest rushing yards allowed by an NFL team after three games since 1980.

Green Bay not only is a runaway leader in the league with an average of 42.7 rushing yards allowed, but it also ranks first by allowing only one run of 10 or more yards. The Packers are giving up an average of just 1.8 yards per running play, also No. 1 in the league.

Conversely, the Green Bay pass defense has been torched for an average of 307.3 yards per game, ranking 28th.

Playing without four starters Sunday, including linebacker Clay Matthews and the secondary duo of cornerback Sam Shields and Morgan Burnett, the Packers surrendered 385 passing yards and three touchdowns to the Lions' Matthew Stafford.

"Our pass rush has always been outstanding the last couple of years, and we've had some challenges with the players being injured and so forth, but our run defense is ahead of our pass defense right now," McCarthy said. "We understand that. It's a focus of ours, and that's the beauty of this game. We'll work on that, and it'll be a big part of our game planning and emphases as we go into the Giants' game."