Random Thoughts™ on the Packers preseason game

[Dismas]

On the sack by Matthews, my untrained eye picked up a tidbit ( I think )

The TE, might have been Willson, ran right by Matthews, looked to me like he should have tossed a little chip on him, but he didn't touch him at all, and that left Turbo to get embarrassed all alone.
IMO, if the TE had just tagged him a little bit, Turbin would have had a lot better shot at slowing him down.
So yes, was a horrid block on Turbin's part, but also, imo, a rookie mistake by the tight end to not give him a little help.

 

[TwilightError]

Golden Tate had an off day. He was clearly not himself with the drops and all. Maybe the twitter threats took their toll on his focus. He earlier said that if he scores a td, he is not going to do the lambeau leap cause he might get stabbed or something.

 

[MidwestHawker]

I lurk more than I post but just wanted to give a hat tip to these posts, kearly. I make a point of logging in after games now just to look for this thread. Nice job.

 

[brimsalabim]

I believe that Harvin was the plan to take advantage of the delay blitz?

I agree that too many penalties and game stoppages and too many absent personnel are keeping this offense from clicking.

i'd also add that RW's second season at NC state the coaches worked with him about progressing through all of his reads on a pass before committing to the run.
It was good for his development but his production did drop.
This preseason has looked a bit like that. All of this scrambling to buy time is good but sometimes he has to commit to the run early and burn them to keep the defense honest.

 

[Blitzer88]

Like you kearly, i to am starting to have some concerns about Russells play of late. He has not been very sharp. Very concerning to me.

 

[OreIdahawk]

Oh no! RW was probably just lightning in a bottle last season! Because preseason games are always an indicator of how a player will play in the regular season....

 

[The Radish]

I realized in the second half last evening that our guys appeared to be waiting for "something to happen" at Lambeau Field, and weren't applying all their efforts to the game.

Tate's threats for example. I wonder if the entire team wasn't kind of thinking in the back of their minds that the GB fans might still be pissed and be planning some upset somewhere. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Far fetched? Perhaps, but it would help explain them not looking ready to play.

:les:

 

[hawksfansinceday1]

As someone who has been a fan of NFL football since the 80s, the referees' current penchant for shooting up the field with rounds of yellow hankies out of their invisible gatling guns is beginning to suffocate the life out of the game for me. The suffocation started last year and looks to be even more stifling this year. With nearly every play is now an automatic mental "and the player to get flagged is..." -- usually there is one, sometimes shocking those times there isn't. It didn't use to be that way.

This. The NFL is fast heading towards unwatchable and as Kearly said *** you Roger Goodell. You are ruining the greatest sport in the world all in the name of lessening the inevitable cash awards from the lawsuits. Suck it up, tell your owners their high level of profit is going to be cut into for a few years, put some money into helmet technology and let the game be played physically but clean the way it was meant to be played.

I think Russ will be greatly helped by the return of Miller. Let's hope when that does happen that he stays healthy. Also feel the offense will get better if the regular season is officiated the way it was last season. That's a BIG "if".

Several people on this thread have mentioned the lack of screen calls by our team. So, in everyone's opinion why doesn't this team run more damned screen plays to counter the delayed blitzes? They ran one or two last night and they worked to perfection.

 

[13thMan]

Like you kearly, i to am starting to have some concerns about Russells play of late. He has not been very sharp. Very concerning to me.

Absolutely right.... However, I would add that I don't think you can heap it all on RW. That is to say, the receivers aren't getting much separation, and this is futher exacerbated by the fact that the Oline looks subpar at best. This better get corrected in a big hurry because our first to games are against two very good defensive fronts.

I was really hoping for more last night..... sigh.

 

[Sarlacc83]

I think Wilson's efforts so far this year are just as much a product of expectations as anything else. We expect him to go out there and be perfect and magnificent, and that's something he can always do. Every good QB has some awful games - I was reading Smart Football yesterday and Brown started to talk about the "Playoffs?! Playoffs?!" speech by Mora Sr. You know who his QB was that game? Peyton Manning.

Also, as I mentioned in a previous thread, we're no longer the underdogs playing with house money. Wilson no longer gets to come into Atlanta without the burden of expectation and put all the pressure on the other team. The pressure is now on the Seahawks, and Seattle has to learn to deal with the target on its back. This is a big mental step for the team, let alone Wilson. But I'm confident we'll get there, because now Seattle has seen it 'live' from a team that hates their guts and wants to steal their glory.

We'll get there.

 

[rideaducati]

Maybe it's just me again, but it seems to me that Russell is holding the ball WAY TOO LONG. It's bordering on Tarvaris too long. He has only hit his drop and immediately let the ball go a few times. It's becoming a habit...a bad one.

 

[13thMan]

I agree about flying under the radar vs. having a target on your back. Teams now have a year of tape on RW (which was apparent by the way GB played him).... In addition, when you know you are going to get every team's best shot, everything changes. All that being said, our 1st team O was really getting abused by the vaunted GB D's 2s and 3s, and that is cause for alarm. I'm not expecting 50 point performances by the Hawks by any means, but I do expect efficiency at least, and that simply was not there tonight. The O looks completely out of synch against even backups... further, if AR plays more than a series, I can say with a little trepidation, we don't come out of GB with a win...

We will have to make a huge leap on O to avoid going 0-2 I fear.... Here's hoping.....

 

[rideaducati]

Maybe it's just me again, but it seems to me that Russell is holding the ball WAY TOO LONG. It's bordering on Tarvaris too long. He has only hit his drop and immediately let the ball go a few times. It's becoming a habit...a bad one.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

The obsession with faulting the O-line continues. Most people see a simplistic "O-line blocks people, QB benefits from protection and looks for someone" relationship between O-line and QB, and fails to recognize the twenty other factors that don't pivot on the O-line (QB choices, RB protection, WR separation, game-planning, rhythm). Kearly has watched the game carefully and concluded that the O-line actually did well. Most people on here are answering with nothing but a veiled "Well yeah, but you like Wilson", which isn't automatic proof that the O-line actually did suck.

Last year saw a lot of Wilson holding onto the ball like he did yesterday. I don't know why so many of us have selective memory over that. Once the O-line has blocked for five seconds, they've done their job and the onus is on the rest of the offense. Heck, I read somewhere that Green Bay's receivers begin their scramble drill much sooner than even five seconds.

2012 was not Russell Wilson triumphing as a classic QB. 2012 was Russell Wilson triumphing as an unusual QB who found novel ways to compensate for the things most classic QB's can do, found such ways pretty consistently, and left the league with no idea how to handle him. Now they're starting to figure him out. It will not surprise me if Wilson experiences a sophomore slump. He's always going to have limits on his game in certain areas. I love me some Wilson too, and I don't think his success last year was fluky or unsustainable. It was built on smart scrambling. But let's not pretend he's invincible, or that his WR's are better than they are. We've still got work to do.

 

[hoxrox]

The smart scrambling I don't think is sustainable. Only a matter of time before that catches up to him.

Need to lean on the ground game more, and less on the receivers and pass pro.

 

[kf3339]

I always enjoy the is thread from Kearly for his comments, and all other posters who add to the discussion. It is a fun thread to read.

My personal take from the game was that it seemed we were off last night. I don't think it was the Packers so much as that some players just didn't seem into the game for some reason. I do think as posted our run defense was excellent and our pass defense was pretty good.

I also felt that our TE's (Willson and McGrath) played better this game to me than in the first two games. That is a hopeful sign. I also felt that Kearse also had a good game, and our running backs collectively did a really good job.

So for me it's goes to the one guy as Kearly said was off, and that was Wilson. I am not at all concerned right now, as it's still preseason and we have both Miller and Rice that can make a huge difference for our offense. So I am content to just wait for the regular season to start and trust that with our injured players going and our real game plan from Bevell we should be fine.

As for our O-line other than Sweazy making some bonehead penalties they did pretty good on running plays, but the pass protection still needs some work. But it's really hard to say since we don't know how Bevell would have called a real game to minimize their blitz schemes.

So in conclusion we just need to appreciate that we have a very good and deep team to be excited about for this season, and always remember how it was before PC and JS came aboard. Those were some very rough years.

 

[RolandDeschain]

This. The NFL is fast heading towards unwatchable and as Kearly said *** you Roger Goodell. You are ruining the greatest sport in the world all in the name of lessening the inevitable cash awards from the lawsuits.

I love how there is no culpability assigned to all the former players that are trying to sue the NFL into oblivion because of damage from a really physical sport they may or may not even have, that they wanted to play in the first place.

You people sure love your scapegoats.

 

[falcongoggles]

The obsession with faulting the O-line continues. Most people see a simplistic "O-line blocks people, QB benefits from protection and looks for someone" relationship between O-line and QB, and fails to recognize the twenty other factors that don't pivot on the O-line (QB choices, RB protection, WR separation, game-planning, rhythm). Kearly has watched the game carefully and concluded that the O-line actually did well. Most people on here are answering with nothing but a veiled "Well yeah, but you like Wilson", which isn't automatic proof that the O-line actually did suck.

Last year saw a lot of Wilson holding onto the ball like he did yesterday. I don't know why so many of us have selective memory over that. Once the O-line has blocked for five seconds, they've done their job and the onus is on the rest of the offense. Heck, I read somewhere that Green Bay's receivers begin their scramble drill much sooner than even five seconds.

2012 was not Russell Wilson triumphing as a classic QB. 2012 was Russell Wilson triumphing as an unusual QB who found novel ways to compensate for the things most classic QB's can do, found such ways pretty consistently, and left the league with no idea how to handle him. Now they're starting to figure him out. It will not surprise me if Wilson experiences a sophomore slump. He's always going to have limits on his game in certain areas. I love me some Wilson too, and I don't think his success last year was fluky or unsustainable. It was built on smart scrambling. But let's not pretend he's invincible, or that his WR's are better than they are. We've still got work to do.

Hmm...on one hand I really respect Kearly's opinion. On the other, that offensive line did not pass the sniff test last night. Yes may have held onto the ball a few too many times, but their pass protection was awful. I am taking the zoomed out approach and looking at the whole body of work.

 

[Spin Doctor]

Here is something that I see glossed over in this conversation about Wilson's performance, and Bevell "dropping the ball". McCarthy likes to make game plans for every preseason game, especially this game. He saw it as a dress rehearsal for RG3 and Kaepernick. Seattle was running a very basic, vanilla scheme -- our playbook for that game looked like it was drawn up on a napkin. Greenbay on the other hand was throwing out everything and the kitchen sink on defense. Those delayed blitz's and contain schemes would have been easily countered in a real game with a draw, screen, or a quick toss over to a WR waiting on the sideline. The few times we did run a screen or a draw they went for huge gains against the Greenbay defense.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

That's also true, Spin.