Quote Originally Posted by 3irty1 View Post
I understand the Packers need to take desperate measures in order to avoid injury but should we be surprised that our starters miss this many tackles when the only contact they get before week 1 comes from a handful of reps in the preseason? This may just be a tradeoff that MM is willing to make in his preparation.

I'm always hesitant to blame playcalling because its usually and exercise in hindsight but there were some calls of Capers's that I just can't wrap my head around. We gave a 6 man front to some balanced sets in short yardage situations. I'm not sure we even have the horses to adequately challenge that kind of look with a 7 man front. Taking into account the mobility of their QB and he factors into the headcount, we were asking an awful lot of our guys in those situations. This defense does look like they'll be lights out against the pass though. The other Jones played alright, he was easily our best lineman which is nice to see. Burnett secretly had a decent day. Haha was in position to miss a lot of plays but it seems like he's got the hard part down. Firing Capers and executing Brad Jones are pretty drastic moves, but giving the playcalling duties to Winston Moss and sprinkling in some contact drill in practice might make this defense only half bad. It sure would be nice to get a thorn in the middle of this D like Seattle has but the way the draft and FA shook out I'm not sure who that would have been. Now that the safety and OLB positions seem patched up ILB is clearly the most pressing need of the team.
I don't think the Packers went light on D lineman because they feared the passing attack or doubted the backend. They went light because they feared the speed with Harvin as the 3rd WR and Wilson.

So they play the new 4-2 nickel a lot and try to match quickness for quickness. Sometimes it works. But far too often it failed on the misdirection and sweeps.

Some of that I blame on the first game. Seattle got to rollout a bunch of new stuff with Harvin. And in that alignment, you are going to have trouble with Lynch.

But Lynch's yardage doesn't bother me as much as the fact that the new speed didn't make more of a dent in Seattle's ability to get the edge and break big plays. That plus penalty-fest hurt them a lot.

The one thing I liked, other than having mostly functional safeties, was the pass rush seemed a bit more threatening.