McCarthy - Where is thou sack??

[Lurker64]

How can anyone say the playcalling was fine? Was what our longest pass attempt, 20 yards in the air? The reason the offense worked so well last year was the ability to go deep.

You can't throw the ball to guys who are covered, Dallas was playing off and deep, and the middle of the field (the 7-9 yard routes) were more or less open. You throw to where the defender isn't. Dallas schemed to take away the deep pass so we tried to hit them with the underneath stuff. Didn't work as well as it could have, but if we'd have pressed the issue with deep passes, we'd have thrown a lot more interceptions and incompletions.

[Carolina_Packer]

On the short to intermediate routes, when the receiver caught the ball, the Dallas D seemed to be there to prevent a lot of YAC. I never know whether to blame play calling or play execution. Obviously if you call the wrong play against the defensive formation, you're not going to have a lot of success. If you call a fine play but the protection breaks down before the QB can get a pocket, or he has to scramble to set/throw and the receivers have to change their first route, it can be a challenge. There were some plays by the Dallas offense when Romo had all day and he made completions. If he had thrown the ball badly, would it have been a bad play call? Not necessarily.

[Partial]

How can anyone say the playcalling was fine? Was what our longest pass attempt, 20 yards in the air? The reason the offense worked so well last year was the ability to go deep.

You can't throw the ball to guys who are covered, Dallas was playing off and deep, and the middle of the field (the 7-9 yard routes) were more or less open. You throw to where the defender isn't. Dallas schemed to take away the deep pass so we tried to hit them with the underneath stuff. Didn't work as well as it could have, but if we'd have pressed the issue with deep passes, we'd have thrown a lot more interceptions and incompletions.

Yes, you can throw the ball to guys who are covered. I'll take my chances with 6'3" Jordy and Jennings and his solid ball skills. Hamlin is bad in coverage, and with Newman out there corners left a lot to be desired.

When theres 5.5 minutes left and you need 3 scores, you take the shot deep and risk the interception because if you don't score quick you're going to run out of time. Almost 3 and a half minutes on a drive with less than 5.5 minutes left when they're down by 18. That is crazy talk.

[BF4MVP]

I didn't have a problem with the playcalling, really..Pass protection yes, but I thought the playcalling was fine.

[mission]

I love MM as the leader of this team in general but man his playcalling and gametime decision making is grading in the C or B- range for me ...

[Freak Out]

How can anyone say the playcalling was fine? Was what our longest pass attempt, 20 yards in the air? The reason the offense worked so well last year was the ability to go deep.

How long was that pass to 80?

[cpk1994]

I don't understand why people get upset when McCarthy calls running plays on early downs. In fact, I would like to see more of it sometimes. In the NFL, history shows over and over again that when offenses become predictable they are less effective. The second half of last year was case in point. Grant frequently had bad runs early on, but by staying with it McCarthy was able to keep the defense on their heels.

Did you see what happened to the Packers offense when McCarthy went shotgun and four wides repeatedly on early downs? He started doing that early in the second quarter, if memory serves, and sure enough the offense started bogging down. The Cowboys began bringing more pressure and pass protection began looking shakey.

The Packers problem last night wasn't calling too many run plays on 1st and 2nd downs. It was their inability to stop the run. Barber and the Dallas OL more or less had their way with the Packers front seven, and when they began overplaying Barber they got burned on the Felix Jones misdirection play (I only saw one replay of that, but it looked like Barnett in particular totally bit on the fake to Barber. No doubt because they were getting run over by Barber at that point).

Exactly. You have to stay with it. YOu cannot abandon a part of the gamelpan becuase its not working. MIke SHerman did that a lot and it cost the Packers heavlily. MM run philospohies on 1st down are no different than Shermans and he was pretty successfull with it no matter how annoying it got to fans.

[pbmax]

64 plays. 21 rushes, 43 passes or sacks.

Apparently, we had 11 first down plays, 10 second down plays and 43 third down plays. I didn't think this was mathematically possible.