Kevin Zeitler looked like Kevin Zeitler on Sunday

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I’ve watched so much bad interior offensive line film this season, and this was such a nice breath of fresh air. The signing folks spent all summer clamoring for finally got his first material snaps this Sunday, and boy did the royal we look correct. The Green Bay Packers’ Kevin Zeitler only had four pass-pro snaps, but didn’t allow a pressure and even handled a stunt better than just about any interior lineman has in what feels like literal years at this point.

Given that most of his snaps came in near-or-actual garbage time, most of those snaps involved running the ball, which the Packers actually did pretty well in his snaps. The important caveat is a lot of this came in garbage-ish time, when the Patriots were not going full bore. The counterpoint is that everyone in the building knew Green Bay was running. The Packers had a yards-per-carry of 4.93 in Zeitler’s 15 run snaps, and a success rate of 53%. If you don’t include the final drive, which was just to burn out the final bit of clock, the yards-per-carry number jumps up to 6.25 and the success rate all the way to 67%. In the non-Zeitler snaps, the run game was atrocious, with a yards-per-carry of 3.18 and a success rate of a truly abysmal 17.2%.

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Now, is Zeitler responsible for all of that difference? No. No offensive lineman is that important. But it’s not nothing. And how does the film look?

The Pacekrs don’t convert here because Morgan can’t successfully pull off a pretty difficult reach block, but Zeitler does his job.

Belton, who had his worst game in over a month, ends up running into Zeitler’s man here, but there’s nothing wrong at all with this rep.

Designed quarterback draw where the entire objective is to not let the man beat you across your face, and Zeitler makes sure he has to take the long way around.

This is well-blocked across the board. Williams and Zeitler displace the nose, and Zeitler gets his butt into the hole and seals out the nose. I don’t think Johnson should have cut this back against the grain, but rather have taken this right off of Zeitler’s butt, but it ends up being a solid gain either way.

If Williams doesn’t get beat back inside, this play might have picked up a few more yards.

Exhibit A of why Jager Burton was seen as a center prospect. He gets isolated with the three-tech here and gets stonewalled, which wastes the displacement Zeitler and Williams get on the nose. Belton has to make a pretty tough reach here given the front alignment, and can’t pull it off.

Zeitler does his job on outside zone, as he successfully reaches the 1-tech. Redman whiffs hard, and it blows the whole thing up, only worsened by no one (John Williams) accounting for the play-side linebacker.

A couple snaps of just doing your job. Not moving bodies, just winning the body shape battle.

Watching live, I thought John Williams just whiffed this, but it’s a tough beat for him here. New England calls a run blitz into his gap (always rough on combo blocks), and he gets held by the nose tackle, so he can’t even reach the linebacker.

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Another successful reach by Zeitler, but the front side of the play blows it up here. Jonnu Smith and Anthony Belton combine to not block the end man, forcing a sharp cutback that still ends up being a workable run.

How much of the improvement in the run game is the game being mostly over? How much of it is not having Aaron Banks, who has been abysmal in both the run and pass game in his two games, and Travis Glover, who has not played well even if he’s been modestly better than the apocalyptic play of Jacob Monk, Donovan Jennings, and Jager Burton? Hopefully we find out. Based on his snaps this week, and the play of Aaron Banks, there’s no reason the Packers shouldn’t start Laken Tomlinson at left guard against Minnesota and Kevin Zeitler at right guard. Especially with the exotic pressure looks Brian Flores brings, the veteran’s experience and the more successful run game are going to be very important in a game that will more or less determine if Green Bay can make a run at the division this season.

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