http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packe...242694431.html
It's a copycat league; McGinn is justifying his trip to NYC by cranking this stuff out. Haven't checked to see how many pieces he's written about SEA and how TT should copy their approach.
I guess McGinn forgot about Jeff Saturday.
We had to know it was coming to this eventually.
So we should let Clay Matthews go to the Ravens?
If Manning missed 8 games, Denver wouldn't have made the playoffs. Everything is gravy when the franchise QB stays on his feet.
How did Seattle build its roster?
McGinn is right on one hand and chooses not to really look at the other hand.
Perhaps my old friend at the JSO forgets that the Packers have to play in the NFC and get by both San Francisco and Seattle to get to the Superbowl. Or perhaps he forgot that a fellow named Rodgers missed a number of games, ironically right after McGinn forwarded the thesis that the Packers would be just fin without him - perhaps much like the Colts after Manning was hurt. McGinn is too often engaging in two fatal flaws late in his esteemed career: 1) Bandwagon reporting - some successful team this year must be doing something better, so the Packers should consider their approach. 2) Blindly throwing darts at a 'topic' dartboard with only controversial/outrageous topics on it (the Skip Bayless stratagem) . Every once in a while you'll be right, but more often than not you will end up with bigger, stronger egg on your face.
did anyone actually read the fucking article? or anything past the first paragraph?
i like the idea
i think our over reliance on rookies and undrafted rookies to play key roles as backups is when has been hurting us. these guys aren't ready to play, its as simple as that
denver goes out and gets nfl vets for dirt cheap and signs them to one year deals to be backups. then if your starter goes down, you have someone with nfl experience to step in, you don't have some kid out there who doesn't know his head from his asshole.
I think McGinn has great resources, and I love the information that he posts that come from scouts, etc. However, he does tend to put out these head scratching articles. In the same article that he says the Packers should follow the Broncos path (they never will, whether they sign a FA or two this offseason or not), he glosses over the young team that the Broncos are playing in the Super Bowl--a team built by somebody who came from the Green Bay front office.
I stopped reading when McGinn praised them for overcoming injuries to 5 starters and a nickel back. Lets see them lose both starting Tackles and the nickel back before the first game. How about having them lose the quarterback for 8 games and their best OLB for a bunch, including the playoffs. Lets see them play defense without von miller and champ bailey (effectively what we were doing against SF). How about losing Eric Decker for most of the year (Cobb), then have Julius Thomas go down (Finley). For good measure lets remove their equivalent of JJones for a few games.
What we will get to see is how their offense works against a real defense (with all their weapons healthy)....something we had to do without the tackles or Finley.
Yea, we should consider the denver model...of staying healthy.
We've gotten plenty of dirt cheap FAs, but they rarely work out. I'm okay with opening the purse strings a little to find a veteran safety. Otherwise, I like the approach TT takes. I think we are a safety, another dynamic front seven player, and some good health away from being near the top of the list of contenders again.
and that young team in seattle signed a couple a vets to 1(bennett) and 2 (avril) year deals this season and those 2 guys have been huge contributors for them. so the seahawks also took a "page out of the broncos book" if you will
we had the cap space where we could have sprinkled in a some free agent vets like the broncos did with shawn phillips for a million bucks (12 sacks) or seattle did with bennett (5 million for 1 year)
we need experience on this team, we need guys that can show all these 21 and 22 year olds how to practice and prepare for games and play at an nfl level when he gets on the field
yes, I did read the article, and it struck me that the signing of cheap vet FA's is exactly what so many Packer fans have been bitching about Ted doing in his career here. Ted scours the bottom of the FA barrel, signs vets to the minimum or close to it, and brings them to camp while everybody bitches that he isn't signing the big-name guys.
Are there 30 newspapers around the country with this same article and we just don't read them? Or is the Urinal Scented the only one that posts contrived, simple articles?
They did a thing that worked. Other teams should do that to. All 32 teams should be in the Superbowl every season.
like who saturday? thats 1 guy in the last 5 years.
i'm not talking about signing undrafted rookies or bottom of the roster fodder from other teams. i'm talking about vets that have actual playing and starting experience in the nfl
we tried it with saturday, we tried it with klemm, we tried it with o'dwyer. those guys unfortunately didn't work out, but none of them cost us a ton of money to try out
I wonder what the hit rate is for retread veterans. For every Shawn Phillips and his 12 sacks for $1MM, how many are complete failures?
I think cheap veterans are worth a shot, but they more often than not don't work out: a la Mulligan or whatever that TE's name was.
Phillips can be an indifferent pass rusher, that's part of the reason SD let him go. However, Denver's offense has set him up for success by scoring at a prolific rate and forcing a lot of opponents to pass.
One thing McGinn fails to consider is that EVERY FA pickup the Packer made looked good in 2010 when teams abandoned the run often versus the Packers, letting the pass rushers and ball hawkers in the secondary play to their strengths.
This does not always work, as evidenced by the League record worst D the Packers played while the offense was setting its own scoring records in 2011. But just as key injuries can torpedo a D, a key FA might also be limited in exactly the correct way (Howard Green) to serve a limited role with a Super Bowl winning team.
Whatever Bob McGinn writes is moot.
The GM of the Green Bay Packers is .... Ted Thompson.
The Head coach of the Green Bay Packers is .... Mike McCarthy.
They regularly enjoy this song :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCrILFP1vc0