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Mike McCarthy, predictable Packers struggle through same offensive issues

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Jeff Janis won't be able to play without a club cast protecting his broken right hand until after the bye week, so scratch him off your list of options to help jumpstart the Green Bay Packers' lethargic offense.

But coach Mike McCarthy has plenty of others at his disposal. General manager Ted Thompson gave him seven receivers on the 53-man roster to start the season. Through two weeks, however, McCarthy has largely stuck with the same trio: Davante Adams, Randall Cobb and Jordy Nelson.

In the process, McCarthy has created a homogeneous offense that leaves little to the imagination. In two games, he's used a three-receiver set on 95 of 123 offensive snaps, according to ESPN Stats & Information. That's 77.2 percent of their plays with three receivers on the field. Of those 95 snaps, all but 11 featured that same trio of receivers.

What's more, 86 of those 123 snaps featured the exact same personnel group: three receivers, one tight end and one running back. That's 69.9 percent of their offense with the same look that most teams call their "11" package.

The Packers' offensive struggles have surprisingly carried over from last season even though Nelson, a Pro Bowl receiver in 2014 before he blew out his knee last year and missed all of 2015, and free-agent tight end Jared Cook were expected to change the dynamic.

Instead, two games into the season the same questions that dogged McCarthy last season remain on the table for the asking.

Aaron Rodgers hasn't finished a game with a 100 or better passer rating since Week 6 of last year and just when you thought his yards per pass attempt couldn't get any lower than it was last year (6.7), he's averaging just 5.9 yards per attempt so far.

"It's like anything in this game, you really have a decision one way or the other," McCarthy said Monday. "Do you want to play personnel formation [and match] exactly this player to this play? We played like that at one time here. We do that sometimes in situations, and there's times where we don't. We play tempo and no-huddle. So the ability to do both is important, I feel, especially over the course of the season, and the utilization of the players in both formats is important because it definitely challenges the defense."

McCarthy likely was referring to 2011, when the Packers led the NFL so many offensive categories it was difficult to keep a count, and Rodgers won the first of his two NFL MVP awards. That year, McCarthy changed personnel groups often. He still relied on the three-receiver, single-tight-end, single-back set but only at a rate of 45.2 percent of the snaps. There were games when he seemingly changed personnel play after play after play. He used four-receiver sets on 29.9 percent of his snaps.

The more McCarthy wanted to play faster on offense, the more he used the no-huddle which inherently limits his chances to change personnel from play to play.

Since 2011, his use of the "11" personnel group has spiked. Last season, he used it on 62.1 percent of his offensive players, according to ESPN Stats & Info. It was roughly the same in 2014 (62.3 percent) and even higher in 2013 (72.0 percent).

The four- and five-receiver sets that were used liberally in 2011 have all but disappointed. Last year, McCarthy employed a four-receiver set on just 81 of 1,050 plays (7.7 percent). So far this year, it's slightly higher at 11.4 percent.

Perhaps at some point McCarthy will try different combinations but to date his other receivers have played only sparingly on offense. Jared Abbrederis has played just 20 snaps in two games, and that's the most of any receiver outside the top three. Ty Montgomery played 11 snaps in the opener and none in Week 2. Trevor Davis was inactive for the opener and then played five snaps. Janis, because of the hand injury, has played only on special teams so there's no way to know yet if he can add the deep-threat dynamic he did when he finally got his chance in the playoff loss at Arizona.

"We certainly have and are capable of doing both," Packers offensive coordinator Edgar Bennett said when asked why they prefer the no-huddle, limited-substitution philosophy on offense. "Obviously the no-huddle situation, we've got to clean up a few things and make sure we're operating at a high level as far as our tempo.

"We feel like we have the answers, and we'll have a plan in place so that we can be more efficient."