Packers are Down, but are they Out?

Photo by Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Poof!  That sound you hear just  might be the sound of a promising season blowing up.  When Aaron Rodgers hit the deck hard, with the weight of the tackler on top of him, just like that, the chances that the Packers would make it to the Super Bowl this year were reduced to next to nothing. The 23-10 loss to the rival Vikings seems insignificant when compared to the fact that Aaron Rodgers will be out for most or all of the season.

My own opinion is that it was not in the category of dirty plays or cheap shots.  But you could fairly call it unnecessary roughness, not that a 15 yard penalty would make things any better under the circumstances.

The problems on the offensive line were not directly responsible for the hit, as Rodgers was scrambling as he frequently does to extend plays.  But by the end of the game, three of the offensive linemen who had started the game were on the sideline with injuries, and that fact significantly reduced any chance that backup QB Brett Hundley would pull a "Brett Favre" and be successful in his emergency duty.

Coach McCarthy and the staff have always seemed high on Brett Hundley, and they have had more than two years to get him ready to step in as he must do now.  McCarthy says he is happy with the QBs he has, Brett Hundley as the new starter and Joe Callahan, who has been brought up from the practice squad.  But in fairness, he said the same things 4 years ago about Seneca Wallace and Scott Tolzien, when Rodgers broke his other collarbone, before eventually signing Matt Flynn, who had become available.

But McCarthy needs to give Hundley a chance to succeed.  Watching the game live on Sunday, it appeared to me, and to family members Sam and Judy, that McCarthy had Hundley under too tight a leash.  In re-watching the game, I don't remember a single play where McCarthy had Hundley do anything other than hand off or drop straight back in the pocket.  Not a single rollout, let alone flea-flickers or other imaginative plays!  And yet one of Hundley's strengths is  his athleticism.  Take off the handcuffs and let him play!

And now the inevitable arguments have started about whether the Packers should or should not go out and try to sign Colin Kaepernick.  Tony Romo's name comes up, too, but I think signing Romo is highly unlikely.  Given his injury history in recent years, the state of the Packers' offensive line, and the fact that he is getting rave reviews as a member of the CBS broadcast booth, I just can't see him being anxious to put the pads back on.

As to Kaepernick, I don't see it for at least three reasons.  First, as mentioned, the Packers have always been high on Brett Hundley.  My friend Peter tells me that Hundley is the classic over-hyped, over-rated Pac 12 quarterback, who piled up stats against bad defenses, and is a turnover machine.  I don't follow college football, but let's assume Peter is right.  Could McCarthy and his staff have helped to mold and improve Hundley's game in his two-plus years as a member of the Packers?  I certainly hold out hope that he has, and we will begin to find out soon enough, as McCarthy certainly is going to go with Hundley for right  now.  Can we at least give Hundley a week of prep as the starter before hitting the panic button and pulling the plug on him?  The Packers went 2-4-1 in 2013 in the seven games Rodgers missed when he broke his other collarbone.  That was not a good record (barely enough to get them to the playoffs), but in that seven week span they went through Seneca Wallace and Scott Tolzien as starters before re-signing and settling on Matt Flynn.  Flynn went 2-2 in the games he started.  I think Hundley can do better than 2-4-1, but we will see.*

*As an aside, if the Packers are interested in signing some quarterback who has not played in some time, I would rather see them sign Matt Flynn - he is available as a 32-year-old free agent.  The downside is that he has effectively not played in two years.  But on the upside, he at least knows the offense, the coaching staff, and many of the players.

Second, Kaepernick has succeeded in exactly one offense in the NFL, specifically designed around his talents by Jim Harbaugh, and before NFL defenses adjusted to the read option offense.  He has not succeeded in any other offense.  Are the Packers going to re-design their entire offense to suit the skills of one player who, at most, is going to play the next 10 games for the Packers?  Obviously not.  Well then, can Kaepernick quickly learn and adapt to the Packers' existing offense?  There are no data to suggest that he can, based on his past performance.  So it is not enough to say, "well, Kaepernick has won games in the NFL as a starting quarterback, gone to the Super Bowl and to another NFC Championship game, so therefore he can win games for the Packers."  Not all former starting quarterbacks are interchangeable.  With Kaepernick, you end up with a round hole and a square peg. 

In short, I think there are serious questions about his skill set and whether the Packers (or any other team, really, since nobody is running the Harbaugh-Kaepernick read option offense right now) are a natural fit for those skills.  Mike Sando of ESPN has written an interesting article, setting forth his notes over the past 4 years from his discussions with league insiders about Kaepernick.  The takeaway is an increasing level of doubts about how good a quarterback he really is as those years go by, starting well before he became famous for his National Anthem protest.  So my basic argument is that he does not have the right skills and is not a good fit from a football standpoint.

But finally, and I know this will piss some people off, I am arguing that Kaepernick's political activism is not only not a plus, but is a negative, and he would become a distraction if he joined the Packers roster.  I don't care if he is from Wisconsin, and if there is that cute picture of him as a kid in a Favre jersey.  The Packers are the team of the smallest town in the NFL.  They are owned by members of the community, your humble blogger included.  People from Wisconsin have somewhat traditional values and, for the most part, do not appreciate National Anthem protests.  The fans in the stands at the Bears game, for instance, did not seem to have any interest in adopting Aaron Rodgers' compromise suggestion to lock arms during the anthem.

While the National Anthem protests have expanded to have a wider focus than the one originally espoused by Kaepernick, he is the one who started the whole thing in the NFL.  And he was very clear about his motivation: "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color." So others joining in the National Anthem protests, like Martellus Bennett, may not be protesting the flag or the country, but Kaepernick, in his own words, clearly was.  And now he has apparently filed a grievance against the NFL for collusion.  And then there are the socks he wore on the sidelines depicting police as pigs.  And the praise for the Castro regime.  I agree with Boomer Esiason, who said, "This guy's like a tooth ache that just won't go away. . . " 

If you think all of that is consistent with him being a "Packers person," and a welcome addition to the Packers' locker room, then your definition of the term is very different from mine.

Great Win Over The Cowboys

Last Sunday's Packer victory against the Cowboys (even though I did not predict it) represented about two-thirds of what I hoped for and expected from the Packers this year. A dominant, aggressive defense controlling the game, combined with a special teams unit at least good enough not to cause problems for the team. The third that was not quite there was of course the offense. I was looking for an offense powerful enough to grind it out whenever that is needed, with a combination of the running game and the short passing game, and explosive enough to put the fear of the big play in the mind of the opposing defense.

When the defense comes within a garbage-time touchdown of shutting out a team like the Cowboys, that is news. I have complained, several times this year, about the "play-it-safe" defensive strategy. I wanted to see more aggressiveness, putting the opposing quarterback back on his heels, not knowing where the next rush is coming from. Now, obviously, every time you devote more players to rushing the quarterback, you take the chance of giving up a big play. And yet, in the Vikings games in particular, the opposite philosophy led to the quarterback being way too comfortable in the pocket, and able to pick the Packers to pieces. So I was very anxious to see the Packers put more pressure on, and that is exactly what they did on Sunday.

Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com says it all: "Capers Brings the Heat." I'm glad somebody at ESPN keeps track of these stats, so the rest of us don't have to: in the first 8 games, the Packers devoted 5 or more players to rushing the QB on 40.6% of the snaps. On Sunday: 51.3%. The result was what one would hope for: the Packers sacked Romo 5 times, more than three times their average per game of 1.6. Now let's face it, the Cowboys didn't play very well on offense. But there is no doubt in my mind that the Packers' defense helped to bring about that result. Romo, at this point qualifying as a veteran quarterback, looked confused and harassed all throughout the game. Charles Woodson, of course, had an amazing game, and was rewarded by being named NFC Defensive Player of the week. What with the two forced fumbles, the interception, and the sack, this is probably the sort of game Woodson was thinking of when he said, after the first Vikings loss, that the Packers have a lot of tools in the bag that they were not using.

In the lead-up to the 49ers game this week, the local SF Bay Area media are focusing, more than on any other thing, on the connection between Aaron Rodgers and 49er quarterback Alex Smith, going back to draft day in 2005. (For example, here: "49ers' Alex Smith, Packers' Aaron Rodgers Forever Linked.") My wife heard the same basic story line on KGO radio, which used to carry the 49er games. The consensus seems to be that Rodgers was lucky to be Favre's understudy for three years. By contrast, Smith was the starter for half of 2005 and 2007, all of 2006, none of 2008, and then half of this year. This is the first regular-season meeting of the two quarterbacks, although they both played in a stinker of a game in San Francisco last year (written up here).

There is a lot of history in this match-up of the Packers and 49ers, most of it in the Brett Favre era. A lot of coaching connections, too, going back to the time when the Packers hired Mike Holmgren off of the 49ers staff, and including the 49ers hiring ex-Packer assistant Steve Mariucci, and even including the Packers hiring Mike McCarthy away from the 49ers, after he was one of those at the 49ers who decided not to draft Aaron Rodgers. Brett Favre had an uncanny mastery over the 49ers, playing 11 games, and losing only in the "Terrell Owens game." This will be Aaron Rodgers first chance (in a game that counts) to show that he can keep it going.