Game 8: Green Bay @ Buffalo - Sunday October 30th 7:20 PM CT

[Sixtolezcano]

9 minutes ago, wOOgiE22 said:

Just don’t understand how you have so many 1st round picks and you are still this bad on defense. 

It’s called poor drafting.

[HarveysWBs]

If we would not have been absolutely non-competitive in half one, this would be interesting now.  Then again, if Buffalo isn’t up so big at the half, they wouldn’t have mailed it in on offense here in the second half,

[adambr2]

I understand it's hard to force the ball downfield, but you have to try. You can't keep checking down with no timeouts down 2 scores with less than 2 minutes left. 

[adambr2]

2 minutes ago, HarveysWBs said:

If we would not have been absolutely non-competitive in half one, this would be interesting now.  Then again, if Buffalo isn’t up so big at the half, they wouldn’t have mailed it in on offense here in the second half,

Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into it as a turnaround or anything. Its pretty much been garbage time since the 3rd quarter. I guess we could maybe make the final score look close, but the Bills were never not in control of this game.

[HarveysWBs]

Covered the spread, which I didn’t think we’d do. So there’s that.

[SomewhereInTime]

7 hours ago, adambr2 said:

They Packers passed on significant draft compensation in trade capital and are paying Aaron Rodgers $50M dollars a year to hand the ball off to Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon because it's the best offense we have because our pass protection is terrible and we didn't do anything to address the departure of Davante Adams. 

What an asanine use of resources. 

Given the situation, it would help a lot more to have a QB who can run.

[SomewhereInTime]

5 hours ago, HarveysWBs said:

Covered the spread, which I didn’t think we’d do. So there’s that.

It turned into a good betting night for me!

[SomewhereInTime]

Remember, good teams win, great teams cover!

[SomewhereInTime]

6 hours ago, Sixtolezcano said:

It’s called poor drafting.

It's that and they put absolutely no emphasis on stopping the run, basically as an organizational strategy.  Edge players like Gary and Smith consistently lose containment on the edges.  The safetys never play in the box.  It works about as poorly as you'd expect.  If you can't stop the run you have a bad defense.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Stopping the run isn't really that big of a deal anymore. Collinsworth mentioned this at one point. Buffalo didn't exactly stop the run either. Most teams have prioritized the secondary and a decent pass rush and will basically allow teams to rush for 4-6 yards a play. In today's game you'll eventually falter doing that with a fumble, a hold, etc. and if you can't pass your way out of that then it's a problem. As long as you aren't consistently giving up 8+ runs and getting gashed for 20s, it doesn't matter the way it used to. 

Packers definitely have a bad team this year but depending on what they want to do I think it could be similar to last time where they could rally the following season with a few prudent moves. There's a lot of talent, but just massive holes in important spots. I'm really interested to see what happens there. No idea what Rodgers is thinking but can't imagine he'd be excited to play here next year.

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

Defensively, the biggest weakness is unfortunately the middle of the field - Amos has lost a step and Savage just isn't a starting caliber NFL safety.  Campbell hasn't been the same player that he was last season but he's been ok, and while I still think Walker is going to be a really good every down LB he's getting picked on schematically by teams letting his athleticism run himself out of position.  Also, the Dline hasn't played nearly as well upfront as I had hoped.

And as many others seem to feel, the Packer defensive personnel doesn't seem to be a good fit for the passive scheme Barry wants to run.

Offensively, the line that was routinely viewed as a team strength almost independent of the personnel on it is now a sieve and in constant flux due to injury/injury recovery/bad play.  Have to think a big reason why this is happening is coaching since the personnel isn't all that different, and the offseason staff overhaul after coordinator and QB coaches left for promotions at other organizations - even if those guys aren't setting the world on fire in their new roles elsewhere, they had a good thing going here and I think moving Stenavich up to OC has created coaching problems at the Oline position group.  They just seem to be ill prepared, blowing assignments much more than being physically beaten.

There is a fine line between being really good and an afterthought in the NFL, and this year's version of the Packers looks like they're an afterthought.  I think it makes a ton of sense for the Packers to try and deal Aaron Jones to a team in a better position for the postseason if there's any interest today, in effort to try and start getting in front of yet another year of salary cap pain and to try and gather some more draft capital.  I honestly don't see how Rodgers would want to be back here in 2023 unless he's just wanting to continue cashing checks, so it could be a heavy rebuild offseason where the 2023 season is primarily spent cutting vets and sacrificing a year to rid themselves of cap problems while giving Love a season+ to make a case that he's a longterm answer with this group of young receivers.  If it all goes completely off the rails, then the Packers become an attractive spot for a new GM/coach combo in 2024 after picking a new franchise QB and starting from scratch.

[CheezWizHed]

Ok, I'm going to buck the trend and say that the D wasn't really that bad tonight (*ducks*).  We looked bad early, but I thought they were pretty solid later.  If we had some WRs and an O-line that could block, we could've won that game. 

• Yes, Savage looks like HHCD (actually slightly better).
• Yes, Walker needs to improve on his run D and aggressiveness overall. 
• Yes, our run D still stinks
• But regardless, there is still a lot to like going on.

But at the end of the day, they did start playing better together and gave the Bills some fits. 

If we trade for a WR, I'm assuming Watkins is out (assuming Cobb/Lazard come back from injuries).  On a team the last two weeks with zero experienced WRs the last two weeks, Watkins has 3 receptions for 21 yards.  Maybe we should trade for Jake Kumerow? Toure should be getting reps over Watkins now.  Even Rodgers is showing more receiving capabilities than Watkins right now. 

Pretty night-and-day contrast for Tom moving from Tackle to Guard.  Yes, we knew there was a size issue, but pretty rough night for him. 

I did like that something seemed to "click" with Rodgers last night.  He stopped sitting in the pocket and letting it collapse on him and started rolling out and moving around.  Not sure if it was play calling or just that he started doing it more.  Looks like a bit of his old-self. 

McDuffie looked surprisingly solid at MLB.  Nice to see some depth there. I forgot that Barnes was still on IR.  

Engebare continues to look like an answer to OLB depth.  

Those were impressive picks by Jaire and Douglas.  I hope this game continues to push them to play with an edge. 

Stefan Diggs is still an idiot. I wondered who was "right" when he parted ways with the Vikes, but looks like the Vikes were right... and would've been right even if JJ didn't turn out to be a 2x Diggs player (and not a jerk).