Favre Disappoints

[HarveyWallbangers]

Move Woodson to safety after he hasn't practiced all week, and wouldn't have had any practice at safety?

[Joemailman]

The decision not to play Woodson was made after the teams went through their warmups. I wonder if the decision to play zone was made at the same time. There really did seem to be a lot of confusion in the secondary for the first time this year.

[HarveyWallbangers]

i never liked Davis, I liked Mario and I would still take Mario over hawk and Young, the ROY last season, is taking his lumps but as witnesses in the Denver game, he is progressing and has started playing better again. By the way, since you mentioned that draft class, how does it feel for your big, bad Hawk to be at best the fourth best LB in that class? Ryans is definitely better, Sims is definitely better and McINTOSH is better also. Best LB in the class

I think McIntosh is better. I'm not sure about Ryans. He plays on an awful defense... led by some guy who hasn't shown much since getting picked #1 last year. Hawk is better than Sims. Vince Young blows goat. 5 TDs and 14 inteceptions this year.

[b bulldog]

Sims is way better and if you can't see it your ignorant. 91 tackles, 1 sack, 2 ff and 1 pic, ggod one Harv Your boy may be better than Greenway but that may be open for debate. Ryans is also way better. Your wrong, you mentioned stats in regards to Whitten, look at the stats for the LB's Larinitas will be overrated also at this level

[HarveyWallbangers]

To be honest, Mario is playing better and still has a shot at being a good NFL player. That defense is still horrible. I'm starting to think I was correct about Vince Young being a taller Mike Vick. He throws the ball horribly. Like he's throwing a shot put. Teams adjust to the running.

[HarveyWallbangers]

We'll see how Sims does against Witten next week... at Detroit. I'm sure he's a real difference maker on a defense that gives up 25 points and 365 yards/game. That's after giving up 25 points and 346 yards/game last year. Kind of funny that they only gave up 21 points and 322 yards/game the year before adding him.

[b bulldog]

You think I have this big hangup for the Buck's who are in the NFL, I don't at all. I like some and dislike others. I will say this, like USC, when players are surrounded by talent at the college level, a lot of people think the players are better than what they are because everyone around them is so talented. I bet Hawk will never be a great LB and will struggle to ever make it to a probowl.

[b bulldog]

look at his stats, he makes plays. try to BS it all you want but he makes plays. Detroit does have a woeful D but they will most likely be addressing that in future drafts since they have been addressing the O in recent drafts.

[HarveyWallbangers]

You think I have this big hangup for the Buck's who are in the NFL, I don't at all. I like some and dislike others. I will say this, like USC, when players are surrounded by talent at the college level, a lot of people think the players are better than what they are because everyone around them is so talented. I bet Hawk will never be a great LB and will struggle to ever make it to a probowl.

Doesn't take away from the fact that he's a good NFL starter. I bet Hawk will be better than Vince Young. He's better than Mario Williams up to this point.

[HarveyWallbangers]

look at his stats, he makes plays. try to BS it all you want but he makes plays. Detroit does have a woeful D but they will most likely be addressing that in future drafts since they have been addressing the O in recent drafts.

He makes plays? He has 1.5 sacks, 1 interception, 2 forced fumbles, and 4 pass deflections in 27 NFL games. Hawk has 3 sacks, 3 interceptions, 2 forced fumbles, and 11 pass deflections. You can talk about tackles, but Bates' scheme caters to the MLB--even then Hawk had more tackles than Barnett last year and that hasn't happened in any other year of Barnett's career. Not often you'll see a WLB have more tackles than a MLB in this scheme. Hawk's played very well for about the last 4-5 games... or about the time you started ripping him. Keep doing it.

[Partial]

The top 10 of the 2006 draft looked amazing before the draft, solid in its first year, and brutal thus far this year. Huff doesn't play, Bunkley is OK, Leinart wasn't playing full-time before he got hurt, Sims looks to be solid, Hawk looks to be solid, Davis looks like a bust, Ferguson looked unimpressive against Dallas last week, Young is having a terrible year, Bush isn't accomplishing anything, and Williams looks god awful this far. That safety from Buffalo is pretty good from waht I hear but I haven't seen him closely.

[HarveyWallbangers]

The top 10 of the 2006 draft looked amazing before the draft, solid in its first year, and brutal thus far this year. Huff doesn't play, Bunkley is OK, Leinart wasn't playing full-time before he got hurt, Sims looks to be solid, Hawk looks to be solid, Davis looks like a bust, Ferguson looked unimpressive against Dallas last week, Young is having a terrible year, Bush isn't accomplishing anything, and Williams looks god awful this far. That safety from Buffalo is pretty good from waht I hear but I haven't seen him closely.

Williams is actually improving. Right now, I'd take Mario, Hawk, and then Sims or Bush in a re-do. Donte Whitner is the safety--an Ohio State product that drew near universal criticism when Buffalo drafted him. He's been okay. Probably amongst the top half of players from that top 10. Huff plays, and he's been decent too. Neither safety makes many big plays. None of these guys have played at Pro Bowl level, but that's not unusual. Give them another year or two and let's see where they stand.

[Maxie the Taxi]

Harvey,

I saw just on bad play all night from Hawk, when he filled the wrong hole on a run. Hawk is the last guy you'd look to blame for this loss (well, maybe Jennings would be the last guy).

I disagree with those who think it was smart to play for the season, if that really was the consideration for inactivating Woodson and KGB. If they were at 80-90% or better they should have played. Win this game and you can rest them all the way through the Oakland game - for two and half weeks. Winning this game would put you a game up over Dallas with the tie breaker. It should have been an all out game.

McCarthy at his postgame press conference:

(Is Woodson close?)
He is close. It was a decision made, basically, because we have a lot of football left. If this was a playoff game, Charles would have been out there tonight.

We'll see how this decision plays out in the next four games. McCarthy can't have it both ways. If protecting Woodson from injury is so valuable, why allow him to return punts? In another question from his postgame press conference McCarthy said:

(How difficult was this loss?)
I look at it as an opportunity that we didn't take advantage of. We're 10-2. That tells you exactly where we are. They're a good football team. This game may affect the playoff seed. That's fine but we still have a lot of football left. I think you need to keep it in perspective there and we have as a football team. We're disappointed because this is an environment that we have not played in as a young football team. I thought it was very important for us to come in and win this football game because we will be playing in a lot of championship atmospheres as we move forward. This is an opportunity that we need to learn from this because we did not play our best football tonight.

More double-speak? If it was "very important" to win this game, why sit Woodson? Maybe we didn't play our "best football" because we didn't play our best players.

Is the goal of this team really to win the Super Bowl? If so, McCarthy just underestimated (in my opinion) the value of home field advantage throughout in the playoffs. Something like the last three NFC Super Bowl representatives had home field all the way. It's difficult to win without it.

On the other hand...

I think the Packers can go back into Dallas and beat the Cowboys in the playoffs assuming the Pack is healthier than it is now. Maybe McCarthy was doing the right thing considering this is a very young and inexperienced team. They needed to experience the big game atmosphere and they probably needed to experience a tough loss in a big game in order to gain perspective and the will not to let it happen again. I don't think McCarthy's purpose was to have them lose -- a win would have been huge, but I do think McCarthy feels a loss ain't the end of the world and may help them in a return match with Dallas or whoever.

[RashanGary]

Everyone doom and glooming about the secondary needs to remember 1 thing "ROMO HAD ALL DAY". With those weapons, someone is eventually going to get open. The problem today was our Dline didn't get pressure on the QB.

We'll have another game and we'll have all of our dlineman. Let's see how that goes. I don't want to say Dallas can have this, but if we win the next one, this one won't matter. There is no way Dallas can be healthier than they were tonight. They had a couple football bruises, but everyone who is going to play for the rest of the season was with them tonight. Next time we face them, we have an oppertunity to have 3 very valuable defenders on our side. Two dlineman that when added to our other 4, make it possible to have a consistant pass rush and run stopping unit and our best corner. I think it's far from determined who is going to be the NFC rep in the superbowl.

[Maxie the Taxi]

Everyone doom and glooming about the secondary needs to remember 1 thing "ROMO HAD ALL DAY". With those weapons, someone is eventually going to get open. The problem today was our Dline didn't get pressure on the QB.

We'll have another game and we'll have all of our dlineman. Let's see how that goes. I don't want to say Dallas can have this, but if we win the next one, this one won't matter. There is no way Dallas can be healthier than they were tonight. They had a couple football bruises, but everyone who is going to play for the rest of the season was with them tonight. Next time we face them, we have an oppertunity to have 3 very valuable defenders on our side. Two dlineman that when added to our other 4, make it possible to have a consistant pass rush and run stopping unit and our best corner. I think it's far from determined who is going to be the NFC rep in the superbowl.

I agree with everything you said except I don't know if our d-line -- even when it's healthy -- is enough by itself to put adequate pressure on Romo. I really do think that in a rematch we have to pay attention to what New England did against the Cowgirls and design some creative blitz/stunt packages. Bigby, Collins, Barnett, Poppinga and Rouse (especially) can blitz in situations. When Woodson is back I'd even send him on occasion.

Why keep all the guys mentioned above back in the secondary if they can't cover anyway? Wouldn't they be more valuable blitzing, with the exception of Barnett?