Back From the Dead: Nutz's Winners and Losers Week 16
Yuck! The Packers met a superior football team this past Sunday on the Cardinal's home turf and the Packers preceded to get their doors blown off in every phase of the game. This offense does not resemble any offense that Mike McCarthy has orchestrated in his time in Green Bay. The one word that can describe it, pathetic. On defense the Packers lack a play maker this season. The Packers defense was a dull bright spot in this game but did struggle at times keeping David Johnson from taking over the ball game.
Here is the good news, if the Packers beat the Vikings they get a home playoff game against the Vikings, a team that they beat 2 times this season. If they lose they most likely go on the road to face the winner of the NFC East Division. Two winnable games. If the Packers don't get healthy across the offensive line and find somebody to start making plays of defense it won't matter.
Winners
Eddie Lacy: Averaged 5.0 yards per carry and caught a difficult ball and made a couple of nice moves to get in to the end zone for the Packers only points of the day. I also thought he did a decent job moving around the backfield picking up blitzers off the edge. Was it a great day, no. Eddie Lacy is better than this. He needs to commit himself to being a football player year round otherwise he will be out of the league in 3 years.
Mike Daniels: He made a nice play on a screen pass and got the Packers back into the football game late in the second quarter. It was a play that could have shifted momentum if the Packers could have scored a TD after the interception. Unfortunately Rodgers threw it to a covered James Jones for an INT in the end zone and the Cardinals marched the ball down the field and scored with less than 10 seconds left in the half.
Tim Masthay: Hell of a run. Not a bad play call considering how little momentum the Packers had all game. Any good Packer fan thought after the fake punt that Packers were finally going to get on track. Sorry
Losers
Rodgers: This could have been his worst day as a pro. 8 sacks, three turnovers, two of them for touchdowns, one of them costing the Packers a guaranteed 3 points. He struggled to find open receivers all day and couldn't handle the extreme pass rush put on by the Cardinals defense. 15-28 and 151 yards is not an Aaron Rodgers like day, but over the past 9 weeks that is what Packer fan has been accustomed to seeing out of Rodgers.
Randall Cobb: 3 catches for 15 yards. Either he has totally forgot how to run routes and get open, or their is an issue between Cobb and the offensive scheme. Part of it might be that Cobb catches a lot of balls late in plays when he can drift into the soft part of the zone and Rodgers has time to locate him. This season Rodgers hasn't had time to throw and their isn't any soft part of the zone because teams are smothering him with man coverage that he can't shake.
Don Barclay: What a very tiresome day for the backup left tackle. He can't move his feet or pick up a stunt to save his life. It is really too bad because two years ago when Bulaga went down he did such a good job as a rookie filling in for him. Then he suffers an ACL injury and he turns to a bag of shit. I guess this is what you get with an undrafted free agent out of West Virginia, The margin of error is so small for these guys that they can't afford a major injury.
Devonte Adams: No reason to beat a dead horse.
Clay Mathews: Mathews didn't record a single tackle or assisted tackle in two straight games. He had one QB pressure, and one QB knockdown on the same play otherwise he was invisible for the entire game.
Julius Peppers: Invisible
Jake Ryan: Missed too many tackles and at times looked completely confused in pass coverage. He isn't playing terrible for a rookie, but he has to get better if he is going to be a long term solution in the middle of the defense for the Packers.
