Studs and Duds, Staleys:

[George Cumby]

King did have seven or eight tackles, so he's getting ball carriers to the ground. FWIW

[RashanGary]

King played well overall but some of the pre snap alignments have him set up to fail. Whether that's his choice or the play call is a separate discussion but playing 10 yards off on short yardage looks bad.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Earlier in the year he failed at those off looks, but he usually did it when we had leads and he has improved. I think the goal of putting him in said situations was to round out his gsme and open up the playbook once he was able to play in the other techniques besides man. He’s gotten better and now Pettine has options. He’s still improving, but I like his overall game.

[RashanGary]

Sometimes when you take guys in the late round 1 or early round 2 they have some work to do to complete their games. There are guys who come out complete and ready but usually they’re very high picks or have some sort of reason for falling. Usually you get lower upside or high upside with some skill building to do. Watching king ascend from an incomplete young player to a more complete veteran is a normal curve. Bashing a 24 year old doesn’t always hold water over the course of his career trajectory. I thought king played his off techniques progressively better to the point he’s solid now. But that’s one guys view. Tearing him up is the easier position though. Insee the logic, just don’t agree with it

[RashanGary]

I’m sure playing man all of the time and then getting shredded by teams who are equipped to kill that defense would be preferred to rounding out young players games to avoid such disaster. Truthfully, people would bitch either way and would have no clue why whatever pitfalls happened but always short answer blame the coaching and scheme. It always sounds good coming out after a loss to spew some unfounded vitriol why things aren’t perfect. The shorter the explanation, the better it feels to vent.

[smuggler]

As others have said: Love Wagner. Love/hate MVS.

[texaspackerbacker]

I meant in this game. th87 put King in his dud category up above.

I never like to agree with th87, but I'd put King in the dud category too. He got beat several times in coverage, and he missed more than just that one tackle where he broke the cardinal rule about not wrapping up. And of course, he missed an interception that probably anybody in this forum coulda caught. King still looked quicker and better in some ways than usual in the Bears game. I would think you just about have to line him up way off the ball/"setting him up to fail", or else he's too much of a risk to get beat deep.

Nobody else was clearly duddish, but the Smiths both were big nothings relative to the money they get paid, and they backslid from the discipline they showed in setting the corner against the run in the previous game.

Our O Line was decent, but I'm not gonna call them studs when they didn't look as good as the Bears O Line against us. Similarly, our D Line wasn't horrible, but they were way less tough that the Bears D Line. Kenny Clark did stand out, though.

Barnes played pretty good, but it's hard to call him a stud with all the inside running and short middle passing the Bears had. Kirksey played way better than usual, but he still was far from a stud IMO.

Pretty much all the secondary other than King qualified as studs although allowing all those short middle passes was on somebody.

All of our skill players other than Rodgers were good but less studdish than usual - probably due to good defense by the Bears. Rodgers was as much of a stud as always - if you ignore getting lucky on 3 near picks in the third quarter.

Pettine put together a plan that held the opponent to 16 after they'd scored over 30 three straight times, I'll give him that. But allowing so much ball control and having such a hard time getting off the field could bite us some games.

LaFleur got us another 30+ point game against a tough D, but I didn't care for some of the outside zone runs. I suppose you have to throw in some things you know won't work, though, to keep the defense guessing.

[Guiness]

Have to be happy with Turner. I felt he struggled a bit in the run game but he did well in his primary job, keeping Aaron's jersey clean, and I don't recall him needing a bunch of help out there. Have to be happy with that, and it should only get better as he settles into playing on the left side.

Has there been any official announcement of the diagnosis for Bakh?

[Sparkey]

Torn ACL

[Smidgeon]

King played well overall but some of the pre snap alignments have him set up to fail. Whether that's his choice or the play call is a separate discussion but playing 10 yards off on short yardage looks bad.

How did they fail? They beat the Bears by 3 scores and except an unbelievable catch by Mooney (sp?), their receivers were contained. A.Robinson had 2 catches--lowest of the season--during a season where he had over 100 total receptions. Sure, the Bears dinked and dunked, but they went for it on 4th 5 or 6 times and still lost by 3 scores.

The game plan worked perfectly.

[RashanGary]

I think they like outside zone against good pass rush teams because it opens up some roll outs and moving pockets in the pass game. The roll outs and moving pockets are good for passing against good pass rush teams so the outside zone becomes more valuable.

[RashanGary]

Don’t know if it’s the running backs or the line who stink at outside zone, but it’s a struggle for sure.

[George Cumby]

How did they fail? They beat the Bears by 3 scores and except an unbelievable catch by Mooney (sp?), their receivers were contained. A.Robinson had 2 catches--lowest of the season--during a season where he had over 100 total receptions. Sure, the Bears dinked and dunked, but they went for it on 4th 5 or 6 times and still lost by 3 scores.

The game plan worked perfectly.

They know Trubs is erratic on his deep ball so they weren't afraid of that. King was playing off using the sideline as his help. The Bears weren't going to dink and dunk their way to a W.

[Bossman641]

How did they fail? They beat the Bears by 3 scores and except an unbelievable catch by Mooney (sp?), their receivers were contained. A.Robinson had 2 catches--lowest of the season--during a season where he had over 100 total receptions. Sure, the Bears dinked and dunked, but they went for it on 4th 5 or 6 times and still lost by 3 scores.

The game plan worked perfectly.

I'll fully acknowledge I'm criticizing after the D had a good game, but I'd like to see the D do a better job of taking away what the other team wants to do. We're a better team then the Bears, we should be looking to maximize the number of possessions to let that superiority play out. The Bears wanted to play slow, play the TOP game, and minimize the ball in Rodgers' hands. Our D strategy played right into that. Overall, I'd be fine with playing more aggressively from a D standpoint. You may give up ore quick scores but you also may force more turnovers and end possessions sooner.

[Bossman641]

Lafleur is saying the same thing...

“There’s sometimes where I think we can be a little bit more aggressive just in terms of our mentality. Some of those third downs and fourth-down conversions, a third-and-short, I want us to get up in people's faces and challenge them. Because I think we’ve got the people that can get that done, especially when you look at our corner situation.”

[run pMc]

Don’t know if it’s the running backs or the line who stink at outside zone, but it’s a struggle for sure.

Last year they struggled with the OZ, and there were some stats showing Jones was much better at inside zone runs. I think it's both the OL and RBs, but I'd also say they are better at it this year. It's a big part of MLFs offense. I think you run outside against teams with either big monster DL like Akiem Hicks and John Jenkins or penetrating DL so they have to run east-west thru blocks and trash vs. north-south. Wears them out and keeps them from getting a clear shot in the backfield. With Roquan going out that makes some sense as well; he's their fastest LB. Either way the Bears did a pretty good job of bottling up the run, but GB only had 44 plays and not much in TOP so it was hard to establish the run.