The Packers schemed a way to make Aaron Rodgers even better. The Rams are set up to stop him anyway.

The way the Packers make their QB's job easier will look familiar to the Rams.

The Rams did not play the Packers during the regular season, but they should be familiar with a lot of the formations and concepts they’ll see Green Bay use in the NFC Divisional Round game on Saturday at 4:35 ET.

Because they’ve seen them every day in practice for the last few months.

Packers coach Matt LaFleur, a Kyle Shanahan disciple who spent one season working for Rams coach Sean McVay, has shown what he learned from both mentors this year. But there’s been a noticeable change in approach over the last month and a half.

Since Week 10, LaFleur seems to have made some adjustments, leaning less on 21 personnel (2 RBs, 1 TE, 2 WRs) sets and opting for 11 and 12 personnel for his play-action pass game. Through the first 10 weeks of the season, Green Bay used 21 personnel on 24% of its offensive snaps. That number dropped to 2% over the rest of the season. So, what was once an offense that was closer to the Shanahan end of the outside zone/boot action offensive spectrum has shifted more to the McVay side.

Like McVay’s Rams, the Packers are running a ton of boot action from condensed, under-center formations.

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Only four quarterbacks have attempted more bootleg passes from under center than Aaron Rodgers has this season, and three of them — Kirk Cousins, Baker Mayfield and Jared Goff — are playing under Shanahan/McVay-inspired coaches. These concepts, which have been a cheat code for quarterbacks, have Rodgers looking like a god.

In fact, the Packers don’t really pass from under center without using a play-action fake. According to Sports Info Solutions, Aaron Rodgers has attempted only 33 passes without play action from under center, and only 22 of those have gone past the line of scrimmage. We see a similar split with Goff, the Rams’ starter who has attempted 24 non-play-action passes from under center.

When the Packers want to get into their drop-back passing game, they go to the gun. Same goes for the Rams. The big difference between these two schemes is the RPO usage. Green Bay uses them to enhance its shotgun run game. McVay doesn’t really run from the gun, so he doesn’t use them at all.

So Rams defensive coordinator Brandon Staley should be familiar with all of the stuff LaFleur will throw at him this weekend. Does that mean he will be able to stop it? The answer seems to be “no,” because we’ve seen this great Rams defense struggle against play-action passes.

But after watching the film of those snaps, I’m actually not overly concerned. The play-action passes that gave the Rams the most trouble this season mostly came from the gun. They’ve been pretty good at defending the boot action the Packers have used so much this season, allowing only 96 yards on 16 attempts — small sample size alert! — and 0.07 EPA.

The goal of that boot action is to take the top off the defense with the vertical route, bait the second-level defenders with the route in the flat and hit that intermediate crosser. The Rams haven’t given up those intermediate crossers. In my viewing, I found only one instance of this happening. It came in Week 2…

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And this desperation heave by Nick Foles, which was well defended, was really the only big play the Rams defense gave up against play action from under center.

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Staley’s defense, which majors in two-high coverages, is designed to take away those deep crossers that NFL offenses are throwing more and more of late. We’ve also seen him employ fronts that we typically see on Saturdays in order to help defend against the RPO, another major facet of this Packers offense. It’s like this Rams scheme was designed to combat everything the Packers do well.

I don’t think that was an accident. McVay saw where the league was headed offensively — which was easy since his philosophical approach has become the meta — and made a smart hire. It might make the difference this weekend.