What changed for Packers' defense since first Beastmode trouncing in Seattle?

It was a maligned offseason of re-engineering. Best-laid plans that went very wrong cost the Green Bay Packers dearly against the Seattle Seahawks and ended in a quick scuttling.

In Green Bay, it's the debacle known as the "Quad" 4-3 alignment. To the rest of the NFL world, it's not really known at all. That's because the Packers orphaned the scheme in October, after watching the designs fail miserably. And it wasn't just orphaned. It was seemingly razed, buried and erased from film. That much was evident to Seattle coach Pete Carroll this week as he digested Green Bay film snippets from the second half of the season.

One of the game's sharpest defensive minds, Carroll saw few traces on film of the Packers' experimental 4-3 look that Seattle gashed en route to a 36-16 season-opening win in September. And that's for good reason, as Packers head coach Mike McCarthy and defensive coordinator Dom Capers mothballed the scheme – at least partially – because of what Seattle did to it. Green Bay lined up in the look for 14 plays in Week 1, and Seattle managed 149 yards and one touchdown, including six rushes for 40 yards. Overall, the Seahawks' Marshawn Lynch ran for 110 of Seattle's 207 total rushing yards.

Perhaps uglier, in Week 2 Capers used the alignment and the Packers went into a 21-3 hole against a putrid New York Jets offense. Right about then, a scheme that was considered a big offseason Tinkertoy secret began to sink into the depths of the play sheet. By the end of September, it would be flushed entirely. Flash-forward to this week's NFC championship, and linebacker Sam Barrington slapped the alignment with a new tag when talking to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

"Irrelevant."

That's a harsh label for a scheme that fit into McCarthy's offseason mantra of coaching for personnel strengths and not merely for scheming different looks. A scheme that most never knew existed outside of Green Bay, and that Capers had never called in a game until the season-opener against Seattle. But thorny history aside, it's certainly relevant in the context of this week. Particularly when you consider McCarthy's dearly held NFL axiom: At any given moment, you're either getting better or you're getting worse.

The "Quad" will go down as one of the staples in 2014 when the Packers got worse. Ditching it and sticking with more historically successful 3-4 alignments, that is where Carroll and the Seahawks saw the Packers improve. And not just better, but downright dominant against the run.

"We thought this is the team we'd be playing," Carroll said of the season opener. "Like [they're playing] right now."

The change? No Quad, but some underlying themes that have yielded success. The Quad was geared very much toward being creative with linebacker Clay Matthews, allowing him to play off the line of scrimmage and use some of his versatility. It failed – for reasons that even Capers hasn't been able to shed light on since October.

But some of that flexibility remains, thanks in part to healthy personnel around Matthews that can manage a pass rush with or without him. All of which has led to Matthews being used at the line of scrimmage, off the line, at inside linebacker and out, and also in coverage wrinkles. Arguably no Packers defender has been used in such varying ways since Charles Woodson won AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year under Capers in 2009.

"You look at the guys when we're moving around, you've got me moving inside, outside, playing coverage, as well as Nick Perry, Mike Neal and Julius [Peppers] being able to rush from the inside as well as drop into coverage," Matthews said. "It definitely shows the versatility of the 3-4 defense, especially the outside linebackers here. Quite honestly, that's what these defenses are based on. Aggressive, versatile outside linebackers who can do it all."

And it has shown on film the second half of the season. Carroll in particular has remarked several times this week how stark the contrast was on film. From the season opener to about midseason, Carroll saw a completely different mindset and results when compared to the second half of the season. A period that seemed divided right at the moment when Matthews was moved to inside linebacker during the Week 9 bye. The Packers went into that week last in the league in rush defense. The following week Green Bay disassembled the Chicago Bears in a 55-14 win and seemingly became a different defensive team.

Green Bay also began a remarkable trek that would transform it into one of the league's best rushing defenses during the second half of the regular season.

Super Bowl Contenders | FindTheBest

"They've had a real obvious statistical turnaround," Carroll said. "From the first eight games to the second eight games, the rushing stats have flip-flopped. That's a big change in their approach and what they can count on. Their defensive numbers have flipped and their offensive numbers have flipped. To the point where, if you're giving up 80 yards rushing and you're rushing for 150, that's a real powerful message that you send about what you do at the line of scrimmage. I think that's what's obvious."

Carroll noted that a large part of that defensive change has been the sub-packages created by Capers and involving Matthews.

"[Capers] gives his opponents a big problem with the different substitution packages that he uses," Carroll said. "…In that, they've moved Clay around. He's played behind the line of scrimmage. They've used him for all the great ability that he has and the aggressive nature that he has. It shows up when he plays off the ball as well as when he's on the ball. We don't know how they're going to use him. We know how they have and we'll anticipate some stuff."

What they won't anticipate is the Quad 4-3 looks. It has been written off as an experiment that wasn't right, a bad fit for the persona that Green Bay was looking for.

"You get to the point that you finally have an identity," Peppers said of the current state of the defense. "I'm not sure we had the identity we wanted [in the season opener]. … A hard playing, high effort group. The attitude, we got a little nastier attitude on the team tacking and things of that sort. We've come a ways from training camp."