Here's another eyeopener for me (
http://espn.go.com/blog/green-bay-pa...me-breakdown):
Against Seattle, the Packer offense ran
62 plays. Basically 6 players (
Rodgers, Bakhtiari, Lange, Linsley, Sitton and Nelson) played every offensive down (Jordy played 61).
Bulaga would have played every down but was hurt. Sherrod played the downs Bulaga missed.
Randall Cobb played 57 offensive plays.
The remaining snaps (192) were spread out among 9 players, which is an average of 21 plays each. (Injuries to Richard Rodgers and Lacy accounted for some of this.)
Now look at the defense which was in there for 70 Seattle offensive plays:
Only 4 defensive Packers played all 70 defensive plays (
Brad Jones, T. Williams, Shields, and Burnett).
Claymaker and Peppers played 66 and 59 plays respectively.
The remaining defensive snaps (364) were spread out among 10 players for an average of 36 snaps each.
A couple of things jump out at me immediately:
First, why is Brad Jones in there for every defensive play? (Lattimore and Barrington didn't play a single snap.)
Second, Capers is shuffling a lot of players on and off the field throughout the game. We've heard of running back "by committee." Capers is playing defense by committee.
My question and conclusion:
I think there is more consistency and less mistakes in the offense because Stubby fields his best core players the vast majority of the time.
On the other hand, Capers' defense suffers from many mistakes, communication errors and inconsistency because he doesn't have his best players on the field most of the time. (And he has Jones on the field
all of the time.)
It's almost like Capers believes in his schemes and formations more than in his players.
Maybe it's time for Capers' to settle on 8 or 9 core players and let them play most of the game. He could still run varying formations and schemes, but there would be more consistency because it would be the same top players in there performing for him.
The bottom line for me is screw the fancy defenses. Play something simple and play it with your best eleven players on the field.