The Elephant In The Room

[pbmax]

Capers obviously didn't have much confidence in going after Ryan, but as you said, his patented soft read and react approach was just as fruitless. I think we both said last week Maxie that the Packers HAD to get to Ryan to have a chance. They're the #1 offense in the league by a good margin for a reason, but that obviously didn't happen.

I know they were burned equally when they did blitz on those occasions when they did but I tried to find some stats on the game, and I'll continue to look but here's what PFF said:

We might get Bob's pressure numbers tomorrow in his grades article.

I'm going to ask for a preview via Twitter. Doesn't someone have his email address? Could ask that way too.

[Maxie the Taxi]

What's disheartening, Vince, is that if you know that, and I know that and experts from around the NFL know that, why does it seem to be such a mystery to our strategists in chief, most especially Stubby?

[pbmax]

What's disheartening, Vince, is that if you know that, and I know that and experts from around the NFL know that, why does it seem to be such a mystery to our strategists in chief, most especially Stubby?

So few of their blitzes got home that I doubt increasing them would have helped.

[red]

out of all playoff teams this year, we ranked dead last in yards given up

for the season

we ranked 21st in points given up per game
22nd in yards per game
28th in yards given up per play
19th for 1st downs allowed per game
24th for third down %
24 for 4th down %
23rd for penalty yards


yeah, lets all talk about how we should keep capers

[Maxie the Taxi]

So few of their blitzes got home that I doubt increasing them would have helped.

The question is why?

If someone asked me what do successful post-season and Super Bowl teams have in common, I'd say a devastating pass rush. We see it every year? We saw it yesterday where the difference was Atlanta's pass rush was in Arod's face all afternoon.

So, if this is true and not a figment of my aging imagination, somebody in GB has to do something to make our pass rush get home. It's like Tex said, we have a "warning track" pass rush...we almost get home but not quite.

Whether we need better players or better schemes or a switch to 4-3, I don't know. But the status quo is unacceptable.

[The Shadow]

The question is why?

If someone asked me what do successful post-season and Super Bowl teams have in common, I'd say a devastating pass rush. We see it every year? We saw it yesterday where the difference was Atlanta's pass rush was in Arod's face all afternoon.

So, if this is true and not a figment of my aging imagination, somebody in GB has to do something to make our pass rush get home. It's like Tex said, we have a "warning track" pass rush...we almost get home but not quite.

Whether we need better players or better schemes or a switch to 4-3, I don't know. But the status quo is unacceptable.

What he said.

[vince]

What's disheartening, Vince, is that if you know that, and I know that and experts from around the NFL know that, why does it seem to be such a mystery to our strategists in chief, most especially Stubby?

It's not a mystery to him. They know far more than we do Maxie. You think pressuring Ryan wasn't part of the plan because it didn't happen?

Because the strategy they employed didn't work doesn't mean it may not have been their best chance. This game wasn't lost by the coaches, although I'm for a new defensive philosophy, which obviously means a new DC.

Even so there's such a strong tendency for fans to confuse/conflate results with strategy. In another post somewhere here, someone blamed McCarthy for Rip's fumble. I mean seriously? McCarthy should have known that Rip was going to barrel through the hole, threaten the goalline - but fumble? He's shown good ball security to that point. Talk about hindsight analysis...

The Falcons #1 (by far) explosive offense was too much for the Packers #31 passing defense. On a good day they Packers maybe could have hung with them - by avoiding turnovers (nope), maximizing their possessions (nope), and getting one or two turnovers of their own (nope).

[Pugger]

When you have to rely on an undrafted kid like Gunter to cover Julio Jones...who is arguably the most physically talented receiver in the entire league...it doesn't matter who your DC is.

Your argument that Capers should be put to pasture may have merit, but that is hardly the reason we lost this game. We had the talent on the offensive side of the ball to be able to do better than a huge goose egg on the board at halftime. If Capers is incompetent, then so is McCarthy.

Do you really think even if Rodgers played another otherworldly game yesterday we would have won? Our defense had NO answer for Atlanta's high powered offense from the beginning. They punted just twice all damn game long. We gave up over 40 points and 500 yards and you are gonna blast the offense? smh

[Pugger]

Somethings got to change for sure. I don't really even know if it's Capers fault or not. This D has ranged from Suspect to Dreadful for many years now. They were suspect the year they went to the super bowl, but turned out to be good enough to get by. Other than that it's just varying degrees of crappiness. I fear they will let AR rot just like they did Favre unless someone wakes up and decides to alter things. I don't think they need to completely scrap everything. I think developing young players is good for longevity. However, they need to do a lot better at using FAs to fill in the other areas. It can be done. The Patsies do it every year. Plugging in players who are will to go there to try to win a Super Bowl. We've gotta do a little more of that I think in order to firm this D up.

Our defense in 2010 wasn't suspect. We were pretty darn good that year.

I do agree we have to fix this defense. We don't want to let AR rot too.

[Maxie the Taxi]

It's not a mystery to him. They know far more than we do Maxie. Because the strategy they employed didn't work doesn't mean it may not have been their best chance. This game wasn't lost by the coaches, although I'm for a new defensive philosophy, which obviously means a new DC. Even so there's such a strong tendency for fans to confuse/conflate results with strategy.

The Falcons #1 (by far) explosive offense was too much for the Packers #31 passing defense. On a good day they Packers maybe could have hung with them - by avoiding turnovers (nope), maximizing their possessions (nope), and getting one or two turnovers of their own (nope).

Two comments:

One, no the game wasn't lost by the coaches. But the problem with this argument is that neither can you argue that games are won by coaches. It's never that simple.

Two, What coaches can control and what they can be held accountable for is game planning, strategy and adjustments during the game. I didn't see anything yesterday that credited the Packer brain trust in these areas. IMO the coaches went into the game with the attitude: "We beat Dallas by playing well. If we play well, we'll beat Atlanta." After the game: "We didn't play well."

That's not good enough. I think we all felt we matched up well against Dallas, but that Atlanta was a different animal that required different, out of the box tactics.

I'm an ignorant fan so I don't know for sure, maybe Stubby and company did install a dynamic game plan and innovative strategy and player errors blew up the plan. I can't deny those occurred. But that doesn't mean Stubby doesn't have some 'splainin" to do.

[Pugger]

yea, that was a case of stubby. Michaels ran backwards and danced a bit the play before instead of plunging forward to either get the first or be a tad short and MM was pissed so next time around he gave Rip the ball. I get it, but it backfired bad.

The Falcon stripped the ball out of there. That happens. I'm not gonna rip on Rip.

[red]

Our defense in 2010 wasn't suspect. We were pretty darn good that year.

I do agree we have to fix this defense. We don't want to let AR rot too.

didn't we give up a ton of yards every game that year, but also ended up with a ton of takeaways?

the bend, don't break days

or like i use to say. bend, bend, bend, bend, bend, NOW TRY NOT TO BREAK!

[Pugger]

My thought exactly. I wondered about that from the start. I would love to know what Stubby was thinking there. In fact, I'd give anything to know what his strategy was going into this game,i.e., did he expect a shoot-out? Did he think our defense would stop or slow down Ryan?What did he think of Atlanta's defense? How did he plan to attack given Atlanta's strengths or compensate for our weaknesses? Something tells me it was business as usual with him. IMO he approached this game exactly as he had Dallas.

Sometimes deferring isn't a bad idea. If at the half you are behind you get the ball first and try to get it going. If you are leading you can try to extend the lead. But this game was one in which giving them the ball first was a major error. We should have taken the ball first and tried to get an early lead. Once we were behind by 2 scores the game was over.

[Maxie the Taxi]

Sometimes deferring isn't a bad idea. If at the half you are behind you get the ball first and try to get it going. If you are leading you can try to extend the lead. But this game was one in which giving them the ball first was a major error. We should have taken the ball first and tried to get an early lead. Once we were behind by 2 scores the game was over.

I'm going to go out on a limb and blame Stubby's "business as usual" approach to this game. "Just play well and we'll win." Well, I don't know if they could have won merely by playing well. Atlanta was clearly the better team and that called for extraordinary measures.

[Pugger]

I'm not certain they are. Football Outsiders has injury stats. The Packers are up and down like a lot of teams.

Not sure if it was 2014 or 15, but they just had a healthy year. That was after a terrible year or two. And prior to that, they were one of the healthiest teams in the League.

We got hammered at 2 positions - CB and RB. It also didn't help to get an early bye this year. We've been going nonstop since week 4. You could see the guys were running out of gas once we got behind by 2 scores. We've been playing playoff type games for 2 months and we finally collapsed.