KYPack
01-24-2008, 09:30 AM
Well, ‘ol KY is crawling out of his shell after a devastating Packer loss. This isn’t the worst one. I wouldn’t even talk Packer a month after SB32. This is the first post after Tynes kicked that dagger into my heart and back from the 47 yard line last Sunday. Actually, I gotta thank you guys for a decent post mortem after the midgets ruined our miracle year run. You guys hit on all the points and touched all the bases & all I had to do was read. I’ve almost posted several times, but I was still too wounded to do it. Bedard in the JSO wrote a decent article on MM’s post games thoughts. The coach is like me. He can’t look at the tape, either. Here’s MM’s coments with some of mine in parenthesis. Ah, you’ll figger it out.
Green Bay - Three days after his team's season-ending loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship Game, Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy still hadn't seen the game film.
"I'm not looking forward to it," McCarthy said Wednesday.
Sure he's had all sorts of meetings with players and coaches that are part of the normal end-of-season routine. But maybe part of it is McCarthy can't bear to watch the 23-20 overtime loss and his team's failures at "execution" and "fundamentals" that McCarthy said was to blame for it.
"You talk about run defense being a primary focus in the football game; it was not our best day against the run," McCarthy said. "We felt matchups were favorable with our perimeter against their perimeter on offense. We did not take advantage of the opportunities that we had. We did not run the ball very well. Just a lot of the basic, fundamental aspects of football that we work on every single day.
"When you don't execute at the level that you're capable of executing with the things that you practice every day, that's what is disappointing."
While McCarthy said he wouldn't be afraid to change anything if it would improve his team, he did say, in hindsight, that he wouldn't have altered the game plan or the team's approach to the game against the Giants.
"Frankly, if we played again tomorrow, we would do a lot of things similar," McCarthy said.
McCarthy continued that theme on several topics to which he and his coaching staff have taken heavy criticism the past few days, including:
• Not practicing outdoors or even with the doors of the Don Hutson Center open: "Let me ask you, what does that accomplish? . . . The feedback I received was that the (frozen) balls we had in practice were very similar to the footballs we had in the game. I don't think that has anything to do with what happened in the game. . . . We tried the doors open the week of Chicago and that didn't work out very well. We'll talk about it."
(This one bothered me since the game. Why didn’t we work in the cold for at least a couple days? We definitely looked colder than the Jints, espec Favre & Harris, two lads who had so-so games. Some better form of acclimatizing should have been done prior to the game)
• Not doubling Giants receiver Plaxico Burress: "You can go back to the (Week 2) contest and the matchup was very favorable as far as Al (Harris) on Plaxico. So I thought their quarterback made some good throws, I thought he made some plays. You can talk about scheme, you can talk about it all you want, that's why it's playoff football, and he had a big day against us. We all take responsibility in that. You can sit here and talk about (maybe) playing Cover-2, but we're here for a reason; we play our (man-to-man) defense that way for a reason. There's a matchup we felt good about going into the game."
(Yeah, I know. We live and die with the “Bates cover shell”. Well that shit needs to change. We have to roll some safety help into the mix. We have real young guys and real old guys at corner. They can’t be put on the island all the time. They need to have help coming from somewhere in certain situations.)
• The inability to throw into the middle of the Giants' defense: "Our biggest problem on offense was first of all the production in normal down and distance, and then the inability to convert third downs. We can question all we want about the game plan, but when you play 49 plays and you're an up-tempo offense, there's something wrong. Do you run enough keeps, do you attack the middle of the field? I mean, to me, that's all open for conversation. But. . . there's obviously a lot of things that the play-caller didn't get to that he would have liked to have done;"
(This is a situation I was sure we had nailed. We’ve got a great receiver corps. The midgets left the middle wide open against the Cowboys. Why couldn’t we exploit the middle, then run the ball when they tried to cover that spot?
• Not calling a timeout before Lawrence Tynes' winning kick, like McCarthy did in regulation: "Frankly, I thought about it. I didn't think he was going to make it. But that was my decision."
(I didn’t worry about this one, either. Told a room full of people that Tynes had “No chance” to hit the 47 yarder. How the F did he make that thing anyhow?)
• The inability to get the ball to his receivers, including Greg Jennings, who had a season-low one catch: "Third-down production, one out of 10, doesn't really give you your best opportunities for completions and big-play opportunities on first and second down. . . . Execution was not where it has been all year. Yes, they did a nice job, but as far as the coverages they played, and the things that they did, it was really nothing new for our guys."
(I still can’t believe we converted ONE third down the whole game! Oh god, I’m starting to feel sick again)
So if the cold, big-game atmosphere or the game plans weren't to blame for the Packers' stunning loss at home, what exactly was the problem? McCarthy didn't have an answer. And it probably wouldn't come from watching the game film. It's something McCarthy and the Packers will have to pick through and mull over for some time.
"I'm in charge of the Green Bay Packers and it starts with me, the responsibility," McCarthy said. "We did not play our best football in a time when we needed to play our best football. That's something our whole off-season will be based on.
"There are a lot of positives throughout the season that we'll move forward from, and if we need to change anything with our structure, our practice structure - anything involved - I think we've shown in the last two years we're not afraid to change if it's going to make our football team better."
(I still like Mike. He’s a little mini locomotive who faces his problems straight on. He holds everybody accountable, including himself. I hope he learns from all this and puts us on track to go to the big dance next year. Maybe I can watch the tape now. I gotta get a better handle on what happened.)
Green Bay - Three days after his team's season-ending loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship Game, Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy still hadn't seen the game film.
"I'm not looking forward to it," McCarthy said Wednesday.
Sure he's had all sorts of meetings with players and coaches that are part of the normal end-of-season routine. But maybe part of it is McCarthy can't bear to watch the 23-20 overtime loss and his team's failures at "execution" and "fundamentals" that McCarthy said was to blame for it.
"You talk about run defense being a primary focus in the football game; it was not our best day against the run," McCarthy said. "We felt matchups were favorable with our perimeter against their perimeter on offense. We did not take advantage of the opportunities that we had. We did not run the ball very well. Just a lot of the basic, fundamental aspects of football that we work on every single day.
"When you don't execute at the level that you're capable of executing with the things that you practice every day, that's what is disappointing."
While McCarthy said he wouldn't be afraid to change anything if it would improve his team, he did say, in hindsight, that he wouldn't have altered the game plan or the team's approach to the game against the Giants.
"Frankly, if we played again tomorrow, we would do a lot of things similar," McCarthy said.
McCarthy continued that theme on several topics to which he and his coaching staff have taken heavy criticism the past few days, including:
• Not practicing outdoors or even with the doors of the Don Hutson Center open: "Let me ask you, what does that accomplish? . . . The feedback I received was that the (frozen) balls we had in practice were very similar to the footballs we had in the game. I don't think that has anything to do with what happened in the game. . . . We tried the doors open the week of Chicago and that didn't work out very well. We'll talk about it."
(This one bothered me since the game. Why didn’t we work in the cold for at least a couple days? We definitely looked colder than the Jints, espec Favre & Harris, two lads who had so-so games. Some better form of acclimatizing should have been done prior to the game)
• Not doubling Giants receiver Plaxico Burress: "You can go back to the (Week 2) contest and the matchup was very favorable as far as Al (Harris) on Plaxico. So I thought their quarterback made some good throws, I thought he made some plays. You can talk about scheme, you can talk about it all you want, that's why it's playoff football, and he had a big day against us. We all take responsibility in that. You can sit here and talk about (maybe) playing Cover-2, but we're here for a reason; we play our (man-to-man) defense that way for a reason. There's a matchup we felt good about going into the game."
(Yeah, I know. We live and die with the “Bates cover shell”. Well that shit needs to change. We have to roll some safety help into the mix. We have real young guys and real old guys at corner. They can’t be put on the island all the time. They need to have help coming from somewhere in certain situations.)
• The inability to throw into the middle of the Giants' defense: "Our biggest problem on offense was first of all the production in normal down and distance, and then the inability to convert third downs. We can question all we want about the game plan, but when you play 49 plays and you're an up-tempo offense, there's something wrong. Do you run enough keeps, do you attack the middle of the field? I mean, to me, that's all open for conversation. But. . . there's obviously a lot of things that the play-caller didn't get to that he would have liked to have done;"
(This is a situation I was sure we had nailed. We’ve got a great receiver corps. The midgets left the middle wide open against the Cowboys. Why couldn’t we exploit the middle, then run the ball when they tried to cover that spot?
• Not calling a timeout before Lawrence Tynes' winning kick, like McCarthy did in regulation: "Frankly, I thought about it. I didn't think he was going to make it. But that was my decision."
(I didn’t worry about this one, either. Told a room full of people that Tynes had “No chance” to hit the 47 yarder. How the F did he make that thing anyhow?)
• The inability to get the ball to his receivers, including Greg Jennings, who had a season-low one catch: "Third-down production, one out of 10, doesn't really give you your best opportunities for completions and big-play opportunities on first and second down. . . . Execution was not where it has been all year. Yes, they did a nice job, but as far as the coverages they played, and the things that they did, it was really nothing new for our guys."
(I still can’t believe we converted ONE third down the whole game! Oh god, I’m starting to feel sick again)
So if the cold, big-game atmosphere or the game plans weren't to blame for the Packers' stunning loss at home, what exactly was the problem? McCarthy didn't have an answer. And it probably wouldn't come from watching the game film. It's something McCarthy and the Packers will have to pick through and mull over for some time.
"I'm in charge of the Green Bay Packers and it starts with me, the responsibility," McCarthy said. "We did not play our best football in a time when we needed to play our best football. That's something our whole off-season will be based on.
"There are a lot of positives throughout the season that we'll move forward from, and if we need to change anything with our structure, our practice structure - anything involved - I think we've shown in the last two years we're not afraid to change if it's going to make our football team better."
(I still like Mike. He’s a little mini locomotive who faces his problems straight on. He holds everybody accountable, including himself. I hope he learns from all this and puts us on track to go to the big dance next year. Maybe I can watch the tape now. I gotta get a better handle on what happened.)