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.

One Last Chance to Win the Division

Cover Photo from Monday's Green Bay Press-Gazette

Last Sunday was another weird Sunday for Packers football.  Aaron Rodgers missed his 7th consecutive start as the Packers played the Steelers with a shot at the playoffs on the line for both teams.  While the Packers played well in spots, ultimately you cannot give up 38 points and expect to win a lot of games.  

In the case of this game, exceedingly untimely penalties and turnovers essentially undid the Packers, and unlike the 1995 game between these teams, there was no "Yancey Clause" to bail them out.  Sure, the screwed up ref timing on the final 10 seconds did not help, but absent the penalties and turnovers, the Packers would not have found themselves in the position of needing a TD to tie the game.  The Lions, who should have won the NFC North a month ago, had knocked themselves out of the playoff chase earlier in the day.  And this loss to the Steelers (38-31) left the Packers planning for next year's draft.  

Unless, of course, the Bears managed to lose the Sunday night game to the Philadelphia Eagles.  Oh, boy, did they ever!  The Eagles went up by 21 points in the first quarter, and never took their feet off the gas, beating the Bears by the score of 54-11.  My old friend Dick Karth said, during the Sunday night Bears-Eagles game: "As a GBP fan who went to the game today at Lambeau Field in all the snow and everything ... I'm not happy.  But I'm glad I'm not a Bears fan tonight!   What an embarrassment it must be for Bears fans!"

As a result of the Bears' game, Matt Flynn need not have been so forlorn, as he looked in the picture above.  It turns out, the game against the Steelers did not matter one whit.  Win or lose against the Steelers, the Packers would still need to win the finale against the Bears to win the division and make the playoffs.  Dramatic developments in the last couple of days have Aaron Rodgers returning for this game, Clay Matthews out with a re-broken thumb (I can't imagine him playing again this year), Eddie Lacy will apparently play through the pain of his injured ankle, and as an added bonus, as of this writing, it is quite possible that Randall Cobb will be activated and play.

I am, to be honest, surprised that Rodgers will play.  After all of the talk last week, repeated endlessly on every football website, that Rodgers was not that close to playing against the Steelers, and that he was at "extraordinary risk" if he returned to the field, I really thought that he would again not be activated.  And particularly after Clay Matthews re-broke his thumb, I thought the lesson the Packers would take away was to err even further on the side of caution with Aaron Rodgers.  Despite all that, he will play, which not only changes the complexion of this game, but if the Packers win, it will change the complexion of the playoffs in the NFC.  Rodgers, if he is close to his normal self, is simply not prone to make the same kinds of mistakes that his merry band of backups have made in the almost 8 games since he broke his collarbone.

This game has all the looks of a shootout now.  As bad as the Packers' defense has been, the Bears' defense is worse.  And as well as the Bears' offense has played at times, the Packers' offense is capable of matching them score for score, and, I would argue, getting a couple of extra scores along the way.

The Bears, of course, have a new offense under Marc Trestman, and it has been impressive at times, with Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, and Matt Forte providing the weapons for Jay Cutler.  The Packers-Bears game earlier this season is not much of a predictor, since almost all of the game was played with Josh McCown and Seneca Wallace at quarterback.  But now that Jay Cutler is back, we just need to remember what Charles Woodson said last year: "It's the same old Jay.  We just need to be in position.  Jay will throw us the ball."  If there is one thing that is critical in this game, it is that the Packers must take advantage of every one of those opportunities.

Quite a Football Weekend!

Cover by Green Bay Press-Gazette

I never got around to writing a post last week.  My only excuse is that I have been on vacation.  But when I sat down in a vain attempt to try to write something, my conclusion was that picking the Falcons the previous week had worked like a charm!  As a result, if I had ever finished that post, I was going to pick the Cowboys.  Now that I am really on a roll, I will get the suspense out of the way, by picking the Steelers in Sunday's game.

Being on vacation, we got to watch the game with old friends from our youth, Larry Bailin and Marc Blum, and with new friend Kathy Blum.  Like everybody else, we suffered through the first half, watching the Packers limp along to a 26-3 deficit, and saw the Packers' realistic playoff chances dwindle away.  The 3 points the Packers got were fueled almost entirely to a single big pass and run by James Jones.  For the rest of the half, the Packers' defense looked inept, giving up chunks of yardage, rarely getting pressure on Romo, missing opportunities for interceptions, and the like.  On offense, there were a few good plays, but lots of misfires, everything from dropped passes by Jordy Nelson (!) to penalties, to offensive line breakdowns, and of course Matt Flynn's interception.

It was the sort of half that might have caused sane people to switch the game off and find something more productive to do.  Fortunately, we were all just crazy enough to keep watching, and we witnessed one of the great comebacks of all time.  It was, to me, sort of the flip side of the famous Thanksgiving day "Jason Garrett" game I wrote about here.  Re-watching that game, years later, it was hard to imagine how the Packers were going to end up losing the game, until it happened.  Re-watching Sunday's game, I couldn't believe that the Packers would end up winning, until it happened.

I read somewhere that someone had calculated that, going into the half on Sunday, the Cowboys had a 99.7% chance of winning the game.  Sounds about right, and that shows what a remarkable comeback it was.

The second half was a totally different game, and the Packers went on to score 5 touchdowns in the half to win the game, missing the 2 point conversion on the final one so that the final score was 37-36.  We saw everything from a 60 yard run by Eddie Lacy on the first play of the half, to Jordy Nelson stealing the ball away from the defensive back in the end zone for a touchdown, to more planned rollouts, screen passes and more quick release passes, counteracting Flynn's lack of mobility.  The Packers were still not consistently stopping the Cowboys, as they allowed 10 points to the Cowboys in the half, but they certainly looked better on defense than in the first half, by a large margin.

Let's not kid ourselves, this game could easily have gone the other way.  Late in the fourth quarter, I actually expected the Cowboys to pull it out, either by stopping the Packers on one of their TD drives, or by scoring the winning FG on the final drive, or by forcing a single turnover somewhere in the fourth quarter.  If Jordy doesn't steal that TD from the defensive back in the end zone, or if the evidence is not conclusive enough to reverse the call on the final interception, the Cowboys probably win.  And then if the Lions had not lost on a 61 yard field goal in the final minute on Monday night, the Packers still would not control their own destiny.  But now they do.  Win two games, and they win the division.  I am not sure they will be able to pull that off, but the opportunity is right there, waiting to be taken.

A Game Nobody Could Have Predicted

Photo by Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."  So goes the famous Monty Python line.  And in calculating NFL Division standings, nobody expects a tie game.  For that matter, nobody expects the Packers to have 4 quarterbacks playing in the course of three weeks.  But that, of course, is exactly what happened when the Packers played the Vikings on Sunday, with the game ending at 26-26 after each team scored a field goal in overtime, but neither team could score again.

This game felt, in a way, like three different games.  The "first game" was made up of the first 2.5 quarters.  The game started well enough, with the Packers taking their first lead in the last three games on Scott Tolzien's spinning scramble for a touchdown.  It was his first NFL TD scored (as opposed to a TD pass), and also his first Lambeau Leap.  But after that promising start, the offense bogged down, and the defense started giving up chunks of yardage, especially on the ground.  The score was 20-7 in favor of Minnesota almost halfway through the third quarter.  By that time, Tolzien had completed less than 50% of his passes, for 98 yards, no TDs and no interceptions.  He wasn't having a horrible day, but his play was not, at that point, competitive enough to keep the game from getting away from the Packers.

The "second game" started when McCarthy benched Tolzien and brought in Matt Flynn, and lasted until about the end of the fourth quarter.  Flynn lit a fire under the Packers' offense, and perhaps sensing some hope, the defense played better, too.  The defense only gave up a field goal during that quarter and a half, to make it 23-7, while Flynn drove the Packers for 2 touchdowns and 1 field goal, to tie the game at 23-23, and put the game in overtime.  With perfect hindsight, when the Packers scored their first touchdown under Flynn with 11:27 left in the fourth quarter, they could have gone for 1 point, and since they would go on to score 10 more before the end of the game, they would have won, 24-23.  I have already seen some second-guessing online about the decision to go for 2, but I think that critique is overblown.  The Packers had just scored for the first time since the first quarter, and with 11:27 left in the game, 2 TDs with 2-point conversions seemed like a better shot to tie up the game than 2 TDs and 1 field goal.

The "third game" started in that final Packers drive of the 4th quarter, and continued throughout overtime.  The Packers had gotten to first down at the Minnesota 12, with 1:10 left, but at that point the Packers seemed to get a little tentative, and had to settle for the field goal to tie the game, rather than getting the game-winning touchdown.  The same thing happened even more clearly in overtime, when the Packers, with some grit and some good fortune, overcame a bad start on their first drive to aggressively move the ball down the field to first and goal at the Minnesota 7.  But a run, a run and a pass later, they had to settle for a field goal to go up by three points, and give the Vikings a shot to either tie or win the game on their next drive.  At that point, the Packers' defense started giving up yards in big chunks again, allowing the Vikings to tie the game at 26.  The Packers' next opportunity was killed by incomplete passes, and their final opportunity was squandered with three offensive line penalties rendering it all but impossible to score.

With all the attention to the quartet of Packer quarterbacks and Flynn's heroic comeback, it would be easy to lose sight of the fact that it was poor defense by the Packers that let the Vikings build up their 16 point lead in the fourth quarter, and poor defense that led to the Vikings' field goal in overtime to tie the game.  Yes, the Packers' defense at times made crucial stops, and they did get 6 sacks and recover 1 fumble.  But on the whole this was not a good effort.  When you give up 447 yards to a bad Vikings team, something is not right on defense.

One could go either way in evaluating a tie game.  Was it basically a victory for the Packers, in engineering the comeback to avoid the devastating loss?  Some fans reacted that way, as did at least one columnist.  Or did this tie basically amount to a loss for the Packers, because of the squandered opportunities to win the game in the 4th quarter and in overtime, and because of the lost chance to move into a tie for the division lead?  Some fans, many of the players, and another columnist take that view.  Count me mostly in the latter category.

So going into the Thanksgiving week, the Bears and Lions are in first place at 6-5, while the Packers are half a game back at 5-5-1.  I guess there are two silver linings here.  A tie is still better than a loss, although it is heartbreaking to have that kind of a stirring comeback and not come away with a win.  Beyond that, it is now highly unlikely that the Packers will end up in a tie for the division lead at the end of the season.  They might win the division by half a game, or they might lose it by half a game (or more).  But it is not going to come down to a tiebreaker, which is just as well, given the Packers' losses in the division and conference.

Who will start at quarterback for the Packers on Thanksgiving?  McCarthy said he has "no idea" if Rodgers will start.  (Well, he must have some idea, but we can let that pass as the usual McCarthy uncommunicative response.)  I am assuming it will be Flynn.  My guess is that Rodgers could use the extra 10 days to heal before the Falcons game.  I like Scott Tolzien, I thought he would be the winning QB Sunday, and I felt a little bad for him getting benched.  But given the Packers' current circumstances, McCarthy had to treat this game as akin to a playoff game.  If he felt Flynn gave the Packers a better chance, he had to make the change, and it is clear to me that he made the right call.  Flynn just looked more comfortable out there, and despite the Packers' offense bogging down twice, when a touchdown would have won the game, the offense was much more productive under Flynn on Sunday.  He completed 21 of 36 for 218 yards and a touchdown, in about 2.5 quarters (including overtime).  Can he beat the Lions?  Well, he did have a record-setting day against the Lions less than two years ago.  It would be great to see a repeat of that game, but ideally with better defensive play.

Ready for the Playoffs?

(Photo by Dan Powers, Appleton Post-Crescent)

Until I got around to re-watching the Lions' game on Thursday, I had forgotten what a mess it was in the first few minutes.  First, Pat Lee (in place of the inactive Randall Cobb) mishandled the opening kickoff, with the ball rolling through the end zone for a touchback.  Matt Flynn had the ball stripped away on the first possession, resulting in a turnover and a touchdown.  Then, Pat Lee (evidently through inexcusable ignorance of the rules), mishandled the second kickoff, resulting in a safety and a 9-0 hole.  Tim Masthay free-kicked the ball, despite not having been given a signal by the officials for live action.  And of course there were some dropped passes, too.  Those first few minutes were ugly.

All of this seemed slightly beside the point in the wake of the 45-41 victory over the Lions, with Flynn setting all-time Packer records for TD passes in a single game, with 6, and for passing yards in a game, with 480.  He also managed to position himself very nicely in the free agent market, having another sensational game in only his second career start.

There was a lot to like on offense, despite a makeshift offensive line, with the Packers scoring 45 points against a playoff team that was actually trying to win the game, in a vain effort to avoid a trip to New Orleans to play the Saints this weekend.  I was not a big fan of sitting relatively healthy playmakers like Rodgers, Matthews and Woodson, on top of players who were actually injured and inactive like Jennings, Bulaga, Starks and Cobb.  But the Packers sat them all anyway, and yet they still managed to win the game, extend their team record for regular season wins in a single season to 15, and extend their home winning streak against the Lions to 21 years.  The Packers scored the most points of any team in the league this season, with 560, and of course they had the best record in the league as well.  It was also a nice touch for the Packers to let Rodgers call the offensive plays in the first half, which can only help him in calling audibles when he is on the field.

On defense, it was pretty much the same story as it has been for most of the year, but worse.  The Packers gave up 520 passing yards, 41 points, 575 total net yards, and 5 passing TDs to Matthew Stafford.  Stafford, and some of his receivers, are quality offensive weapons, but for a dome team to have that kind of an offensive game in blustery conditions outdoors, against the number one seed in the NFC, is sort of disgraceful.  Despite the Packers' 15-1 record this year, they gave up 359 points in the regular season, over 22 points per game.  For a point of reference, the no. 2 NFC seed 49ers gave up 229, and in the AFC, the Ravens, Steelers and Texans all gave up fewer than 300 points.  The Packers finished the regular season by edging out the AFC's no. 1 seed, the Patriots, for last place in the league in yards allowed per game.  So there is very little question in my mind that the Packers' problems on defense are, at a minimum, going to make it tougher for them to repeat as Super Bowl Champions.

On the slightly brighter side, in watching the game a second time, it confirmed for me that the Packers played a very plain version of their defense against the Lions.  I assume they did this, in part, because they might be playing the Lions again in the playoffs, and, in part, because of the absence of their two biggest playmakers on defense, Matthews and Woodson.  The Packers blitzed infrequently during the game, and I did not notice a lot of defensive stunts, either.  Yet despite the plain and simple version of the Packers' defense, they still managed to come up with turnovers, two interceptions (by Shields and Bush) and two fumble recoveries (by Burnett and Crosby).  Add some complexity, blitzes and stunts to the mix and the likelihood of turnovers in the playoffs will increase.

There has been a lot of discussion this week about who would be the most favorable opponent for the Packers in their first game.  Personally, I think it would be the Falcons - a southern dome team playing outdoors in Green Bay in January.  But I think it is much more likely that it will be the Giants, which will happen if the Lions lose to the Saints (which I think is highly likely) and if the Giants beat the Falcons.  The Giants-Falcons game is tougher to predict, but the Giants seem to be peaking at exactly the right time, and even though the Giants have been wildly inconsistent this season, I expect them to win.