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Murphy and McCarty out with the Wash Water? Are they tied at the hip?
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Murphy and McCarty out with the Wash Water? Are they tied at the hip?
http://www.packersnews.com/story/spo...le/1021107001/
Dougherty: Can Mike Pettine succeed? Answer's simple
Pete Dougherty, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
Published 6:07 p.m. CT Jan. 10, 2018 | Updated 6:25 p.m. CT Jan. 10, 2018
http://www.packersnews.com/story/spo...se/1022846001/
Podcast: Draft alone won't fix Packers' defense
Packers News Published 5:54 p.m. CT Jan. 10, 2018 | Updated 5:54 p.m. CT Jan. 10, 2018
I actually agree with wist on this one - 3rd down efficiency is pretty important. I'd also put Quarterback passer rating allowed up there, along with points allowed as among the most important defensive metrics.
GB has let pedestrian QB's have QB ratings over 100 too often lately...
Forcing more punts gives ARod more chances to work his magic, and less points given up by the D is an obvious part of the game.
I too agree with Wist that the three-and-out was the rarest of rare occurrences with DC's defenses.
My own sense of Poutine is that we'll see instant and significant improvement in that defense, whether or not Guttykut drafts an OLB in the first round. Sorry, Tex. Too many years of guys in the back end throwing their hands up in confusion and frustration after some pedestrian wide receiver ends up catching the ball thirty yards downfield, no Packer defender within ten yards of him.
The more I marinate on Pettine, the more I wish we would have poached Fangio.
Fangio has really never put a bad defense on the field. Very impressive. When Pettine's defenses fell apart, they did so in Capers fashion. They were called complicated, lacking adjustment, and poorly tailored to the talent on the field. The league trends are to be simpler with an emphasis on reliably putting a hat-on-a-hat as Seattle assistants spread through the league. We seem to be going against the grain.
That's my fear too. He had some fearsome talent on the front end (especially in Buffalo) for pass rush and that Jets D was loaded.
He still produced some middling results although being that low for yardage and high for scoring does mean the team had some self inflicted wounds.
I hope he picked up a few things in Seattle. His Cleveland D was pretty bad.
Copied from somewhere else but Fangio has had bad defenses.
By his fourth and final year in Carolina as DC, his defense was 30th in the league in yards and 27th in points.
By his third and final year in Indy as DC, his defense was 29th in the league in yards and 31st in points.
By his fourth and final year in Houston as DC, his defense was 31st in yards and 32nd in points.
His only true outstanding years as a DC were with the 49ers, but look at the talent he had on those teams - he had Justin Smith, an at-worst Hall of Very Gooder, anchoring the defensive line, and then four!!! All-Pro LBs.
Looks like there’s a pattern. Players not schemes. The best schemes are done in by pedestrian players.
A lot of people have questioned whether Clay Matthews is worth keeping around at his salary. A case for keeping him with Pettine coming in.
http://packerswire.usatoday.com/2018...thews-in-2018/
Quote:
Pettine likes to play multiple fronts, with disguised blitzes and coverages. It’s a scheme that could help revitalize Matthews’ ability to disrupt, possibly even as a pass-rusher.
Former NFL safety Jim Leonhard recently described Pettine’s defense as flexible and creative. That sounds exactly like what Matthews needs. He needs a playcaller capable of finding the right matchups and creating the right situations for playmakers to take advantage. The days of Matthews lining up every down on the edge and beating left and right tackles all afternoon are gone. Get him moving around and good things happen. Pettine will find ways. It’ll be one of his top priorities.
Ideally, the Packers would love for Pettine to find Matthews the perfect new role and inject some life into his game, all while grooming a young rookie – presumably a top pick – to be the defense’s next true difference maker.
Clearing a big chunk of cap space is a tempting scenario, but the Packers will be better off in 2018 with Matthews on the roster.
Maybe Petite can revive the "W" position for Matthews. Maybe. But the above reminds me that Jim Leonhard learned at the feet of the master.
He has been doing this for a while. He has spent a good deal of time at ILB on run downs in nickel and rushing from the interior on pass downs.Quote:
The days of Matthews lining up every down on the edge and beating left and right tackles all afternoon are gone. Get him moving around and good things happen. Pettine will find ways. It’ll be one of his top priorities.
There are many ways to do this but I don't think, other than surprise until its on film, will this revitalize his career. The problem is that unless Perry is healthy, CMIII is still their best playmaker in the front seven. And best pass rusher.
One of Pettine's strengths is supposed to be using multiple fronts and disguising coverages. I had the sense this past year that the Packers under Capers were doing a poor job of disguising things. Seemed like teams kind of knew what was coming. An example was the devastating effectiveness of screen passes against the Packers defense. Screen passes should only work that well against certain defensive calls.
swapping one complex system for another...
https://m.popkey.co/107488/OwVql_s-2...=search&f=.gif
pre free-agency/draft prediction for 2018... ummmm...8-8
Swapping one complex system for another is about the best we can hope for. Pettine sounds like he's a lot like Capers. That's exactly what maximizes any defense, and it's exactly what a team with mediocre personnel needs to present an adequate NFL defense.
Doesn't it concern you that everywhere Capers has ever coached his defenses have had a steady downward trajectory? Dom's only success has been as a reboot artist. The JJ Abrams of defense.
Tell me what you think of this theory. What if Capers is a mad scientist when it comes to X's and O's and a genius at innovating new defenses out of leftovers, but terrible at projecting talent into his schemes. Dom lands in a place with players from the last regime, builds a winner immediately, then gets worse and worse the longer his influence exists. What if Ted is giving him everything he's asking for but he was asking for the wrong things? This could explain why guys like Casey Hayward and Micah Hyde immediately turn to studs when they leave Dom. Contrast this with McCarthy who seems to have a very good sense of what matters most to him at each position and overall did a great job working in harmony with Ted to get those players. Its clear that the coaches are a big part of the scouting process by the insights they share in the post draft interviews they give.
Pettine hasn't been anywhere long enough to gauge whether or not his defenses reliably trend downward but fingers crossed.
Couple of problems with your Capers assessment 31. It's just as easy to say that he did well when Thompson brought in talented experience. Did well with Woodson and Pickett right off the bat and last good year was 2012. Revived when brought in Peppers and had experienced groups in 2014 and 2015.
Hayward was good right off the bat with 6 INTs in 2012 and 3 INTs in 2014 - you can't say Capers wasn't capable of getting a lot out of him. Injuries, not Capers ended his stay in GB
Same With Hyde. But Hyde still is more limited - recall the dropped game winner against SF.
Capers was an above average DC who needed talented and mostly experienced groups, but he did well with teachable youth so long as a structure was there. I think he was ranked 7 and 2 in his first two seasons because the talent was there - Wood, Pickett, #1 picks Clay and Raji and a total gems Williams, Shields, and Collins in 2010 made him look great. Losing Collins killed him for two years and losing Shields killed him last year. I think he was pretty much a top 1/3 DC. Not great, but good.
The fact remains that Dom was still a reboot artist elsewhere. And coming in as a new DC is not exactly a stacked deck. You're walking into a situation that got the last DC fired albeit probably aided by a high draft class. I think the "Dom's defenses need experience" idea is a bit overplayed. At some point if your scheme needs experience from people who've been playing football their whole lives its just a bad scheme. Plus Matthews and Shields came online and weren't even experienced by college standards and were immediate playmakers. Injuries are obviously central to the story of the Capers Packers. I can't think of a theory for why Capers defenses are more injury prone but I can theorize why his offseason input could make for a steady decline no matter where he coached. Also is there at all an equivalent to the TT/MM offensive lineman or WR? Even we as fans know the prototype there and they hit with near certainty even as midround picks. That's a type of talent that MM wants, TT could reliably find, and MM's staff could reliably coach into a solid NFL starter. We don't really seem to have anything like that on defense.
The fact remains that Dom was still a reboot artist elsewhere.
maybe he was just a better DC than what they had
And coming in as a new DC is not exactly a stacked deck. You're walking into a situation that got the last DC fired albeit probably aided by a high draft class.
OK. So Dom is better than the last guy and properly used Clay and Raji right away. He's a good coach
I think the "Dom's defenses need experience" idea is a bit overplayed.
So do I. That's why i said I thought he did well with youth if a structure is there. Maybe when Shields got hurt and Raji quit, the better solution was solid FA leadership though, rather than rely heavily on development of rookies.
At some point if your scheme needs experience from people who've been playing football their whole lives its just a bad scheme.
Not whole lives, just more than a couple of seasons maybe.
I can theorize why his offseason input could make for a steady decline no matter where he coached.
I disagree on the steady decline assessment. Dom was 7,2, gap 11 gap 12, 13 ranked. I see a guy mostly hovering around top 1/3.
Also is there at all an equivalent to the TT/MM offensive lineman or WR? Even we as fans know the prototype there and they hit with near certainty even as midround picks. That's a type of talent that MM wants, TT could reliably find, and MM's staff could reliably coach into a solid NFL starter. We don't really seem to have anything like that on defense.
I dunno, I see reasonable starters all over the defense: , Perry, Shields, Williams, Martinez. I guess I don't see the mid round guy who turned into a All pro studs, but Burnett Daniels and Hyde seemed like capable mid-rounders. Maybe not enough of them.
Really good posts in here in the past couple pages. I still have mixed feelings on Pettine but I will choose to be optimistic and hopeful. Maybe it's a reflection of myself but I expect a better product on the field if only from hearing a different voice for a year.
The philosophy that I mostly closely align with personally is erroring towards a simpler scheme and maybe losing out to superior talent. I would rather my players play as fast as possible and to their greatest extent, even if it means they get beat by better players.
http://packerswire.usatoday.com/2018...ckers-defense/
According to Bedard, Pettine believes in what he calls the “sponge theory,” a philosophy based on feeding the players more and more content until you get “feedback,” meaning the players have been saturated with as many calls and adjustments possible before it affects communication, aggressiveness and – most importantly – execution.
In Silverstein’s report, Pettine allegedly has simplified his system based on his time with the Seahawks, a team who’s notorious for its simple Cover 3 system.
You're right that guys like Hayward, Hyde, and even Peppers or Walden aren't good evidence of the theory I put forth. If Dom can use his guys well he can use them well no matter where they came from. And I don't think the problem is Dom's scheme. I've never really bought the media narrative that learning it is akin to a graduate degree. NFL rookies have played football their whole lives and I think Dom's scheme is probably fine for them. I'm still theorizing though because the defense does seem worse than the sum of its parts and the parts break too much.
Theory #2: On the Athlete:Football Player continuum that exists when making tradeoffs outside the top 10, Ted is on the Al Davis end. Especially on defense this is true. Rarely did Ted spend resources on guys without elite measurables. When he did it was because they were simply too good of football players to ignore where the market placed them (Haha, Hayward, and Bishop come to mind). Because of this the Packers have a disproportionate amount of powerful freaks that more often exceed the structural limits of the human body. We draft athletes whose body's pull themselves apart leading to a disproportionate amount of tendon and hamstring injuries.
Theory #3: The Star theory of team building. For whatever reason a defense with 3 HOFers and the rest suspect starters is a consistently better unit than a defense with 0 or 1 HOFers otherwise staffed by quality starters. The opposite of this theory might be that you're only as good as your weakest link. The Packers lost all their top defenders even while plugging some pretty bad holes with some pretty good players. The overall talent might be the same or higher than ever but football doesn't care. It takes stars to move the needle and jags are jags. I shouldn't expect a defense with talent distributed like ours to perform like a sum of its parts.
I'll take Theory #3, for $600 Alex. Star players or difference makers. Woodson, Collins, Matthews, Peppers, Shields. All replaced by decent guys but not by guys who can, with some consistency, make big plays and change games.
Theory #4: Interference.
Not the kind from nincompoop Snyder and his cronies, but the kind the head coach or GM could introduce by mandating an approach. And one of the things M3 and Dom agreed they could not have were big plays in the passing game against the Defense. Dom was free to experiment but he couldn't allow quick scores via the pass. McCarthy pushed the nickel starting in 2010 and even more in 2011. He is a big believer in matchups and personnel groups.
Dom had featured leaky defenses that played better as the year went on until this year (in 2016 in went from good to train wreck to kinda pathetic due to injuries). I take that as a sign that the coach and the players need a long lead time to settle in for whatever reason (unstated above is the chance the assistant coaches were not working well together).
This year it started OK then got worse quickly. When they started hemorrhaging big plays, Dom sent Dix 25 yards deep and apparently threatened to harm his family if he got closer to the sticks. That was to stop big plays. But it so limited the coverage that they simply leaked everywhere with no pass rush. So you had a LOT of long scoring drives.
McCarthy approach to numbers is simplistic. He sees teams that win tend to run late so he runs a lot late with ANY kind of lead or game play. I'd bet a mortgage payment he has a similar approach to defenses that allow big plays/TDs being harmful to your overall record.
But if they learn Dom's D (or any D) during the season for whatever reason, then pulling the normal D in favor of the do no harm D in the middle of the schedule is bound to backfire.
Theories 3 and 4 are not mutually exclusive. You have to ask yourself why they started hemorrhaging big plays on defense. The answer is they ran out of bodies to wreak havoc - both in the pass rush and in coverage. If you can't blanket cover and you can't rush the passer, the #4 option of the slow bleed is your only solution. But without a scoring offense to force the opposing team into a catch up offense, you have no leverage at all. Slow bleed and hope for error is all that remains.
Yes. The slow bleed defense might actually be the best strategy for an outmatched, underdog team. Slow bleed shortens the game much like a run-heavy offense. Sprinkle in some risky maneuvers and this is the recipe for stealing games.
I don’t think it pairs well with Hundley at QB. Need turnovers and risk from the D.
Perhaps not Capers but MM sure does. For a list of games where he most felt like an underdog look at games where a surprise onside kick was performed.
At some level turnovers are a numbers game. Slow bleed at least means numbers.
You people are so dumb. If Capers's first defense when he's hired is always so good, why not fire him and then hire him back every year?
Sheesh. It's obvious.
Its kinda chicken and egg though. I do agree this year's combo of DB injury and pass rush incapacity was weirdly worse yet more coordinated than last year's wet paper towel of a defense.
However, if you take no risks on 3rd and medium to long (and the run D held up for the year) you are going to allow more converted 3rd downs regardless of your talent level. Hundley needed a hand, got one occasionally, but the D was usually not in a position to help. I will say that Capers D did get some stops especially in the second halves of games the offense was just standing in place. With BH at QB, the D delivered much more often than the O.
Being in the same defense does have advantages. But it’s probably not what gets you from 30th to 15th ranked.
Roger Mays
Of the Vikings' 11 starters on defense, 7 have been with the team for at least four years. I wrote about Minnesota's key advantage: a unit-wide bachelor's degree in Mike Zimmer's scheme.
https://t.co/flu3nVIX86