Quote Originally Posted by beveaux1 View Post
I just don't think we had reasonable expectations for this team after Rodgers went down. We ended last year in the NFC championship game with a defense that had Gunter as our top CB, an aging Peppers as our 2nd leading pass rusher, and one of the most atrocious pass defenses I've ever seen. We couldn't cover ANY receiver with our collection of street CBs and beat-up draft pick CBs.

Drafting at the end of the first round, we made a decision to add speed to our DBs with King and Jones. We took Biegel as a pass rusher and Adams as a DL. We signed House, didn't sign Peppers, and let D. Jones go. I can't remember anybody on this board saying that we needed to keep Peppers and D. Jones. Better to let them leave one year early than one year late. Unfortunately, Biegel and Adams got hurt either before or during training camp.

When it was obvious in training camp that Fackrell and Elliott couldn't replace Peppers, we signed Brooks who was not normally injury prone. Two games into the season, he got injured.

Our CBs have actually covered much better than they did last year, even with the sometimes bone-headed play of King and Randall. King looks like he might turn out to be a player and Randall has definitely improved the past 4 games. House has been steady most of the year. J. Jones has been hot and cold but has shown flashes. Our DBs, with the exception of Dix, looks much improved over last year.

Martinez has taken the jump at ILB and may be the best we've had at that position since Barnett. DL has been steady against the run. Clark looks like a keeper, Lowry has been better than most thought, and Daniels has been great in run D.

We all knew we had a weakness in our pass rush. Maybe we should have taken Watt, but as bad as our secondary was, I don't fault us for taking King. We had two glaring holes to address and our pass rush was much better than our CB play in 2016. I certainly didn't think the loss of Peppers and D. Jones would affect us like it has. Our pass rush makes us a below average to poor defense even with the overall improvement in our DB play.

With this defense and a 5th round QB with little to no experience, how could we reasonably expect to win more than half of our remaining games and stay in the playoff race. I think it would be reasonable for us to play competitively against teams in the same shape we're in...teams that have young, inexperienced QBs and teams that were not built around their defense.

With Rodgers, in a weak NFC, we may have gone to a Super Bowl. This year, without Rodgers, we may have a top 10 draft pick. I think it's unreasonable to think otherwise.
I also don't think it's an indictment against the Packers coaches (or even the GM). It was a bad game, but like I said before, the Packers have those with Rodgers too. And Hundley--though still a work in progress--was not the reason they lost yesterday. Regarding the coaches and GM, let the greater body of work be what they're measured on.