Vince's Blog

Cliff Christl wrote a [URL="http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110116/PKR07/110116059/Baranczyk-Christl-column-Packers-have-edge-in-playmakers"]provocative article [/URL]on how the Packers match up with the Bears this week. In it, he focused on who he deems the teams' playmakers. In Christl's analysis, the Packers have more "playmakers" and therefore should win the game.

Some agree with Christl:
[B]Justin Harrell[/B]
Clearly it's more complex than just, "how many playmakers do you have", but elite talent is rare and it makes a huge difference. Enough so that you can weigh who's more likely to win based on it.

Elite talent
Overall talent level
Lack of holes

How it all comes together. Having the luxury to play Woodson inside makes our defense scary unpredictable. Having 4 good WR's makes our passing offense scary unpredictable. Having Jackson as our RB hurts us. Having Starks step forward helps. . . . Coaching, weather, luck. . . . . .

Yeah, there's a lot to it, but elite talent is rare. We're especially lucky to have it at QB and pass rusher. Rodgers, Matthews, Raji, Jennings and I think Woodson (in his inside role) are the primary reasons we're so scary. These guys make MM and dom look smart. They force teams to do things they don't want to do and make everyone on the field better. I think Shields is on pace to be good and in this defense with this pass rush he is good already but in the no pass rush Sanders defense, he'd be destroyed. He looks a half-step lost a lot of the time but QB's don't have the time to exploit it.

Others take issue with the "simplicity" of the analysis:
[B]sharpe1027[/B]
With all due respect, I think the whole "playmaker" argument is intellectually dishonest. IMO, it is an attractive argument because it is 1) simple and 2) almost impossible to prove or disprove. A team does well and we can point to whatever players meet some unknown threshold of "playmaking." A team does poorly and we can point to a lack of some unknown threshold of "playmaking." As far as I can cell, the two teams could have the exact same players and the only difference in playmakers is the outcome of the game(s).

Maybe there is something to the argument, but since I have no clue when a player is "playmaker" and when he is not, I can't make an intelligent analysis. Another way to look at it is the chicken or the egg analysis? "Playmakers" are found in abundance on successful teams, but is that just 20/20 hindsight? Think of all the preseason predictions that rely heavily upon an analysis of the big name players. Their predictions are not very accurate. I think it is telling that when players change teams they sometimes suddenly become a playmaker or stop being a playmaker. For example, few people thought Woodson was a "playmaker" when he was with the Raiders...

[B]Wootah[/B]
There are many more factors that decide the outcome of a game, having good players is just one of them. I'm a soccer coach in my free time and lately have been reading a lot of books regarding the mental aspect of playing sports. A lot of bull has been written on this topic, but I must say I was very much impressed by the work of Bill Beswick, who worked as a psychologist for multiple professional sport players and teams in a wide range of disciplines.

He conducted a survey among professional [U]soccer[/U] coaches on "what wins games" on the highest level. For what it's worth, this was the outcome:
50% - Winning mentality
10% - Defensive organisation
10% - Offensive organisation
10% - Transition organisation
10% - Set plays
5% - Special players
5% - Luck (Refs, lucky bounces...)

Yes, I know it is soccer, which is a different ballgame, but still the results were impressive to me. It means that if a player has the qualities to make it to the highest level, the biggest differentiator is the mentality of the players/team. I strongly recommend his work "Focussed for soccer, how to win the mental game" to anyone involved in coaching.

Also, I don't know if anybody saw the highly interesting episode of '60 minutes' with professional sports gambler / multimillionaire Billy Walters ([URL="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7253011n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel"]link[/URL]). He claimed that the Vikings would have got to the playoffs had Chilly been fired 3 games earlier, mainly because the team disliked Chilly and really wanted Frazier to succeed so they would play harder. I'm not saying everything what he said should be believed, but the guy has an impressive trackrecord to back his statements up, and all of his decisions have been based on an exhaustive amount of information as you can see in the episode. This confirms my take on the importance of the mental aspect of playing sports.

But then of course you could say that playmakers have the greatest winning mentality :) Not quite: remember Mr. Playmaker Vince Young?

So I don't really care that the Packers have more 'special players', I care more about the fact that they have the mental advantage in playing the Bears, even if they're playing in Chicago:
- They have proven the can block out the distractions of playing on the road in a tough environment (Georgia Dome)
- They have proven that they can overcome adversities in games, they survived big momentum swings, with the Jennings fumble in ATL, the Jones dropped TD in Philly
- They have beaten the Bears the last time, while they both were playing to win. They know they can beat them.
- Most importantly, they have become a team, a true PACK; they are 'clicking' as a group, having overcome the injuries earlier in the season and sticking to the plan which brought them to where they are right now

Now this is the law of the jungle -
As old and as true as the sky;
And the wolf that keep it may prosper,
But the wolf that shall break it may die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk,
The law runneth forward and back -
And the strength of the pack is the wolf
And the strength of the wolf is [B]THE PACK[/B].
-Rudyard Kipling

Go Pack Go!

Other good opinions can be found in the thread [URL="http://packerrats.com/showthread.php?21430-Packers-have-edge-in-playmakers"]here[/URL].