Packers' Defense Returns with a Vengeance

Before Monday night's game against the Vikings, I admit to being quite nervous about the Packers' chances.  Sure, with the game on the line, I would rather have Rodgers as my quarterback, rather than Kirk Cousins.  Sure, Cousins had never won a game on Monday night football.  But on the other hand, the Packers have always had trouble in Minnesota, and they had never won in the Vikings' new stadium.  Plus the Vikings' defense had broken Rodgers' collarbone there 2 years ago.  And people were arguing that Cousins has been playing better down the stretch than Rodgers.  And the Vikings were 6-0 at home this season.  Cousins had more yards and more touchdowns than Rodgers.  Blah, blah, blah.

So Packers fans (or this one, anyway) were in quite a mood after the Packers gave up 3 turnovers in the first half, while not getting any from the Vikings.  The Jones fumble on the first drive reminded me of games from the past, most recently the 49ers disaster last month.  You don't win many games when you are 0-3 in turnovers in the first half.  Still, the Packers' defense was stifling.  They held the Vikings to 3 points after that first fumble, they gave up a touchdown on a perfect pass to Diggs (Cousins' best pass of the night) after the Rodgers interception, and they gave up no points after the Adams fumble.  Meanwhile, the Packers were moving the ball well in between turnovers, but they were stalling and settling for field goals.

At halftime, as I grabbed something to eat, it hit me.  The Packers had given up 3 turnovers, but were otherwise moving the ball up and down the field.  With the exception of the perfect touchdown pass to Diggs, the Packers' defense was shutting down the Vikings, in both the running and passing games, and the Packers were only down 1 point.  The Packers had 13 first downs, to 2 for the Vikings.  The Packers had 3 times more total yards in the half, and 6 times the passing yards.  Despite the turnovers, the Packers were in great shape to win the game.  All they had to do was keep doing what they were doing, but without the turnovers.  And that is exactly what happened, with the Packers winning 23-10, in the process clinching the division, and keeping themselves alive to get a first or second seed in the playoffs and a bye week.

The heroes of the game, of course, were Aaron Jones and the defense, particularly the front seven.  Jones ran for 154 yards and two touchdowns, including the 56-yard "dagger" touchdown in the fourth quarter.  Meanwhile, the defense was shutting down the running game, and bottling up Kirk Cousins and the passing game.  Adam Thielen had no catches, while Diggs had 3 and Rudolph had one.  Now in fairness, it has to be mentioned that the Vikings were down to their third and fourth string running backs, Thielen is probably still hobbled with an injury that kept him out a few weeks, and Kirk Cousins had, well, a Kirk Cousins special awful game.  But you still have to make the plays on defense, and the Packers' defense did exactly that.

You could say that this was another ugly win, primarily because of the 3 turnovers.  But the heck with that.  Division games are always tough, and for the Packers to win a division game on the road against the Vikings, in a building where they have never won before, while overcoming the three turnovers, is good enough for me.  If that was ugly, let's have another ugly win this week.

After the game, the emotion and joy in the locker room, with the team sporting their "The North is Not Enough" T-shirts, was just overwhelming.  Later, I saw Tom Pelissero interview the "Smith Brothers" on the field, and I saw Za'Darius Smith literally choke up talking about how much the win meant to him, and how he had said that all he wanted for Christmas was a hat and a T-shirt.  And Z. Smith was a huge part of the win.  He had 3.5 sacks and 5 total tackles for a loss, the highest total in any game this year.  He was a one-man wrecking crew on this evening, and if he and the rest of the front seven can keep that up, it will be huge for the Packers in the playoffs.

Speaking of emotion, I saw that in Rodgers' post-game press conference, he mentioned the fact that he had been jeered in this stadium 2 years ago when he broke his collarbone.  I guess he has been holding onto that for awhile now.  While I am not sure that holding grudges is Rodgers' best quality, it is clear that nobody is better at it than Aaron Rodgers.  And if he can use that for motivation, more power to him.  Now the truth is, he did not play particularly well on Monday night.  The interception, his third of the year, was inexplicable to me.  Was he that inaccurate that he under-threw the ball by that much?  If not, what did he think he saw on that play?  But he got it done when it counted, by engineering drives resulting in field goals in the first half, to keep the game close, and by engineering touchdown drives in the second half, to put the game away. 

The very best thing about Rodgers' game on Monday, in my view, is that he repeatedly threw the short out passes that would gain 3, 5 or 7 yards, to move the chains down the field, while relying primarily on the running game.  That is exactly what his critics have been asking for.  Play within the contours of the LaFleur offense.  Take what the defense is giving you.  Move the ball down the field, rather than sitting back there looking for the big play and ending up being sacked.  If he can keep working the offense as it was designed, while benefiting from the resurgent Packers defense, they can continue to win games.  No need for heroics if they play like this and avoid the turnovers that almost sent the Vikings game off the rails.

The Packers have a great opportunity to win and secure a bye week against the Lions.  There are no "gimmes" in the NFL, and let's not forget that the Lions crushed the Packers, 31-0, in the finale last year.  But this is a very different year.  Just get it done!  And if the Packers do their job, and the Seahawks manage to beat the 49ers, the Packers will have the no. 1 seed for the first time in a long while.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all.

Kissing Your Sister?

Family Photo with Judy, Sam and Mary

I did not hear any phrase more in the first 24 hours after the Packers' tie (29-29) with the Vikings than that a tie is just like "kissing your sister."  Maybe so, maybe not, I don't have a sister, so I can't confirm this.  My friend Stan Silva thinks he suggested the idea of using this phrase to me.  But he hasn't been watching/listening to/reading midwest sports media, where the phrase has been omnipresent.  But anyway, a tip of the hat (sort of) to my friend Stan. 

I do know this much.  This game may not have been a loss, but it felt like a loss in the stands, and I am sure it felt the same way in the locker room.  Even callers in to WTMJ after the game kept referring to the game as a loss, and the hosts did not bother to correct them.  There were so many chances to put this game away, and the Packers could not pull it off.  Obviously one of those chances was flat-out stolen from them by the refs (the Clay Matthews non-roughing roughing call), but there was also the missed 52 yard field goal, the Rodgers fumble that spoiled what could have been a surprise bootleg for a first down, the holding call that negated what would have been a Jimmy Graham TD catch, poor clock management on the final drive of the 4th quarter, dropped interceptions in overtime by Wilkerson and Alexander, and probably other opportunities.  If you were a Vikings fan, you probably felt the same way - if they only had a place kicker who could kick, they would have won this game a couple of times over.  Not surprisingly, they have replaced their kicker since Sunday.

As a side note, we were in the Chicago area for most of the past week, other than going to the game on Sunday.  It was extremely entertaining listening to sports radio in Chicago.  They just could not move past their stunning loss to the Packers in Week One, and in a way, who could blame them?  One of the memorable lines was the guy who called in to say that when a guy goes out on the cart, "nobody comes back off the cart, at best, you are out for the game, at worst you are out for the season.  But this guy did and then proceeded to beat the Bears on one leg."  Bears fans were extremely critical all week of Coach Nagy and Mitch Trubisky, saying that Nagy called the wrong plays, and Trubisky executed them poorly.  I heard somewhere (I think it was on the Packers Therapy podcast), that when the Bears were up 20-0 in the third quarter, Yahoo Sports was claiming that the Bears had a 98.2% chance of winning that game. 

I wonder what the odds of a 29-29 tie were in the Vikings game when the score was a relatively mundane 20-7 in the third quarter on Sunday?  But that is obviously what happened, and neither fans nor players can be very happy about it.  This game is the first tie for the Packers since they played to a tie, also against the Vikings, and also at Lambeau Field, in 2013.  Fans may remember that Matt Flynn played QB in that game in Rodgers' absence, and that the Packers could not have won the division if they had not managed to pull off at least a tie in Week 12.  So sometimes a tie is not a bad thing. 

This season, the tie makes a tie for a playoff spot with any team other than the Vikings quite unlikely, but it also makes the November 25 game against the Vikings, at least potentially, the difference between winning the division and not.  Two weeks into the season, it doesn't look promising for the Lions this year (with apologies to my friend, Al Lawson), and while the Bears look much improved, at least we have a leg up on them, thanks to the Week One miracle.  But it would be very easy to see the Division championship coming down to that November 25 game.  On the one hand, it is in Minnesota, and it is always harder to win on the road.  But on the other hand, Rodgers may be at full strength and mobility by then, and he certainly wasn't on Sunday.

One week ago, Packers fans rightly celebrated the miracle, 21 point fourth quarter to win the game against the Bears, and Bears fans lamented the collapse of their defense.  How, then, do Packers and their fans react to the fact that the Packers gave up 22 points to Kirk Cousins and the Vikings in the 4th quarter, not to mention what should have been two field goals in overtime?  There was talk of the Packers having worn out the Bears defense with the quick pace in Week One.  It looked to me as if the Vikings wore out the Packers defense in the second half and overtime on Sunday.  (And I have to wonder why Rodgers and McCarthy did not use more fast-paced offense themselves to wear out the Vikings.)  It was certainly hot and humid out there on Sunday, so it would not be shocking if the defenders were a little gassed in the second half and overtime.  Thankfully, the forecast for this Sunday in Landover, MD is for a high of 73 degrees and showers.  So weather is not likely to be the same kind of factor this coming week.  In fact, the Packers should not have another hot-weather game this season, with the possible exception of the Rams game on October 28. 

As far as the Matthews roughing call is concerned, in the real world, there doesn't seem to be any controversy about it.  Everybody (other than the NFL) agrees that it was a terrible call.  This includes both callers and hosts on Chicago-area sports radio, not known for their partiality to the Packers.  It includes Packers haters like Skip Bayless.  I have not heard a single person not associated with the League defend the call. 

I remember reading years ago that the way Superman is depicted as flying in the comic books is impossible as a matter of physics.  It is not possible to change directions instantaneously.  And yet that is what would have been required here.  Matthews could have done nothing to change his trajectory toward the QB, and there is no visual evidence that he attempted to inflict any more damage on the QB than is a natural consequence of hitting him with a clean football tackle.  I find untenable the ref's suggestion that Matthews picked up Cousins and drove him into the ground.  I had hoped that the League would have something to say about this, because the new rule is just not working in real life if calls like this can change the outcome of the game.  A player in Matthews' predicament evidently needs to pull up and not hit the quarterback, because if the QB releases the ball just as the tackler arrives, he might get called.  (Mike Daniels did just that on a different play, only to see Cousins escape from the would-be sack.)  That stinks, and the League should have admitted that the whole thing is a mess and tried to clarify the rule.  But instead, we learned on Monday that the League is doubling down on the rule, and insisting that this is a proper call.  I think I will find time to write a letter or email to the Commissioner (roger.goodell@nfl.com, or NFL, 280 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017).  I hope others do so as well.

Going to a Packers game in person is always so much fun.  The guy next to us in the stands flew in at the last minute from Myrtle Beach.  That is real fan devotion, as I would have thought the residents of Myrtle Beach had other more pressing concerns over the weekend.  When we arrived at our hotel near the O'Hare airport Sunday night, some guy came out from the lobby to talk to us when he saw our Packers gear.  He had been at the game as well.  On the shuttle bus from the rental car place to the airport, we ran into a Japanese Packers fan, who was also at the game, and who was attending the second game in his life after being a fan for about 35 years.  And on our flight to LAX Monday night, we ran into at least 5 other Packer fans who had been at the game, a husband and wife sitting in the dreaded middle seats, and a two-generation family of three a couple of rows behind us. 

For now, the Packers just have to keep winning games that they should win, while Rodgers gets healthy.  That means winning against the Redskins this week.  The Redskins seem to be improved this year, but they still should be no match for the Packers.  And then the Packers certainly must win at home against the Bills the following week.  If they can finish the first quarter of the season at 3-0-1, they will be in good shape, and be in no worse place than a tie for the division lead.