Wildcard Round: Packers @ Eagles - Sunday, Jan. 12th 3:30 PM

[CheezWizHed]

I'm not convinced about Jordan Love quite yet, but I'd take him over Hurts.  

[adambr2]

Bears game debacle aside, I’m happy with Hafley’s first season.

I think Gute needs to re-examine his draft philosophy and the kind of players he’s targeting early. He does pretty well finding talent in the mid to later rounds, but whatever he’s trying to do in the 1st round, it isn’t working.

[yourout]

1 minute ago, CheezWizHed said:

I'm not convinced about Jordan Love quite yet, but I'd take him over Hurts.  

Eh. A horse a piece. 

Love probably throws the ball better but Hurts runs it a lot better.

[Recovering Chicagoan]

8 minutes ago, CheezWizHed said:

I'm not convinced about Jordan Love quite yet, but I'd take him over Hurts.  

Well, I dunno. Hurts obviously isn't 100 percent healthy. But then, Love may not be 100 percent healthy, either. I'm just not confident that Love will be a great quarterback like Favre and Rodgers (in their prime, of course).

[OldSchoolSnapper]

18 minutes ago, adambr2 said:

I agree that the “youngest team in the NFL” thing is way overplayed and old. Ok, well having the youngest team isn’t the goal, the goal is winning a Super Bowl. 

It’s one thing to have the youngest team when you’re straight up rebuilding. If you’re in the playoffs, and losing games with slow starts and lack of leadership, I don’t think that’s a positive.

“Youngest team” means very little besides “prefers to build via the draft.”

The separation between oldest and youngest is like an average of 1.8 years. From 1 to 10 is like .1 and .2 years. It's a stupid thing. It needs to go away. People repeat it as if one team is 25 and the other is 80,

[OldSchoolSnapper]

17 minutes ago, adambr2 said:

Bears game debacle aside, I’m happy with Hafley’s first season.

I think Gute needs to re-examine his draft philosophy and the kind of players he’s targeting early. He does pretty well finding talent in the mid to later rounds, but whatever he’s trying to do in the 1st round, it isn’t working.

The Packers need their day 1/2 picks to be more Matthews and Raji and not guys that aren't cornerstones until Year 4 and then demand a big payday. They won the Super Bowl in large part because they hit on those two guys. That was their second year in the league. 

We have more "projects" right now than a 3rd grade art class. They need at least 1 rookie that can play immediately.

[bigred]

2 hours ago, Underachiever said:

I hate that statement. The Packers are the youngest. It's a feature, not a bug. Calipari used to complain about his young teams at Kentucky, when all he did was chase one-and-dones. Don't want to be the youngest team? There are ways to fix that.

That's comparing apples to oranges. Completely different sport. 

[adambr2]

I’m not calling for Matt Lafleur’s head, but he had a very poor year.

1-5 versus the North and 0-6 against contenders, almost all of which we looked completely out of sorts and unprepared.

Not very impressive for a team that was expected to build on their huge playoff win in Dallas last year and close loss in the divisional round.

His best accomplishment this season was the development of a strong backup QB in Willis.

Aside from that, not much to hang his hat on.

[homer]

1 hour ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

The Packers need their day 1/2 picks to be more Matthews and Raji and not guys that aren't cornerstones until Year 4 and then demand a big payday. They won the Super Bowl in large part because they hit on those two guys. That was their second year in the league. 

We have more "projects" right now than a 3rd grade art class. They need at least 1 rookie that can play immediately.

Cooper, Williams  Bullard. They nailed the defense in the last draft.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

3 minutes ago, homer said:

Cooper, Williams  Bullard. They nailed the defense in the last draft.

The last defensive first rounders are Stokes, Wyatt, Walker, Savage and Van Ness. That's extremely bad. I think those guys look like solid picks at this point, but Matthews and Raji were more or less immediate stars. Going 2/2 with both first rounders in a single year is hard, but so is going 0/5. The Packers really have squandered their top pick quite a bit lately. I don't want to give up on Walker or Van Ness but they both sucked this year. 

[Joseph Zarr]

Boy the Packers just didn't lure me in whatsoever this season. You can't suddenly find an identity as a team that plays sound football when you literally didn't play a single complete sound football game. They had a quarter here and there but they mostly beat up on really bad football teams. They beat a Rams team missing the majority of their playmakers. They essentially went 0-6 in their division. They are a lot further away in my eyes than they are close. In the very least, they have some major major organizational questions to answer. I personally think they need to blow up some of this youth movement and potentially make even more shuffling of deck chairs in the coaching ranks. I would also opine Matt LaFleur had a very poor finish as a head coach and an offensive HC at that. He and Stenavich were mostly outclassed by Hafley as the season advanced. Which, well, is quite odd for a first time NFL coordinator. I really really really hope they do not lose Hafley - he's a gem and I think the Packers are in a stage where they need all the gems they can keep. 

* Sidebar: The Packers choosing Glover as their first replacement just felt like an absolutely classic Packers post-season maneuver. Do they ever, and I mean ever, get the OL shuffle correct? It's seriously uncanny. 

[bigred]

4 hours ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

Everyone in the league is a #2 behind Chase. I don't know if the Packers need Higgins but they need someone. 

My point is, Higgins is widely thought of around the NFL, as having #1 WR talent. It's talked about quite regularly on pretty much every sports discussion shows/podcasts. He would be the #1 WR on most teams in the league. 

[bigred]

4 hours ago, adambr2 said:

I agree that the “youngest team in the NFL” thing is way overplayed and old. Ok, well having the youngest team isn’t the goal, the goal is winning a Super Bowl. 

It’s one thing to have the youngest team when you’re straight up rebuilding. If you’re in the playoffs, and losing games with slow starts and lack of leadership, I don’t think that’s a positive.

“Youngest team” means very little besides “prefers to build via the draft.”

It means very little? There's a reason why teams with more seasoned veteran players, almost always have better results than teams that are extremely young. Especially in the playoffs. 

[bigred]

4 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

I'm not convinced about Jordan Love quite yet, but I'd take him over Hurts.  

You would? The vast majority of true football fans would disagree. Pretty much every GM would definitely disagree. 

[bigred]

3 hours ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

The separation between oldest and youngest is like an average of 1.8 years. From 1 to 10 is like .1 and .2 years. It's a stupid thing. It needs to go away. People repeat it as if one team is 25 and the other is 80,

Experience trumps athletic ability on the field, the majority of the time. It's no secret. Veteran players make less mistakes on the field than young players, by a large margin. Did you not see how horrible the replacements for Jenkins tonight were? 

[adambr2]

4 hours ago, bigred said:

It means very little? There's a reason why teams with more seasoned veteran players, almost always have better results than teams that are extremely young. Especially in the playoffs. 

Then don’t have an extremely young team in the playoffs?  No one held a gun to Gute’s head and forced him not to supplement the roster with some veterans. We use “youngest roster” as a crux for mental mistakes and sloppy play, like our roster isn’t something we had control over.

Having a young roster is great when you’re rebuilding and not expecting to contend. And I even understand it last year when expectations were really not there. But this year we were expecting to contend.

[bigred]

1 hour ago, adambr2 said:

Then don’t have an extremely young team in the playoffs?  No one held a gun to Gute’s head and forced him not to supplement the roster with some veterans. We use “youngest roster” as a crux for mental mistakes and sloppy play, like our roster isn’t something we had control over.

Having a young roster is great when you’re rebuilding and not expecting to contend. And I even understand it last year when expectations were really not there. But this year we were expecting to contend.

They did sign some veterans before this past season, and they were still the youngest team in the league, so what's that tell you? Who ever said they weren't rebuilding? They traded away their HOF QB(just 2 years ago), and went with a completely unproven QB. Still doesn't change the fact that experience almost always trumps athletic ability. Not sure why some people have a difficult time realizing and understanding that? It's not a new concept. 

[adambr2]

26 minutes ago, bigred said:

They did sign some veterans before this past season, and they were still the youngest team in the league, so what's that tell you? Who ever said they weren't rebuilding? They traded away their HOF QB(just 2 years ago), and went with a completely unproven QB. Still doesn't change the fact that experience almost always trumps athletic ability. Not sure why some people have a difficult time realizing and understanding that? It's not a new concept. 

It tells me they still didn’t do enough to put their best foot forward in the playoffs. It tells me there wasn’t enough experience in the WR room and enough leadership on the roster to win games like yesterday.

That “completely unproven” QB was a 1st round pick who will be going into his 6th season and apparently proved enough to earn a massive contract extension. I think we can start having some expectations of him by this point. 

Love will be in his 3rd season starting and you say “who says we aren’t rebuilding?” Really? If you’re in the playoffs, you’re not rebuilding. Is Washington rebuilding? Houston? They have more “unproven” QBs than Love.

Every time you’re in the playoffs is an opportunity. And every time you come up short is an opportunity lost. At what point can we have expectations of them in the playoffs and not chalk up their losses to “youth” or “rebuilding”? 2026? 2027?

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I think reality is somewhere in the middle, as usual. At this point in the Rodgers era they were 0-1 in the playoffs though he was admittedly playing at a higher level than Love - that will probably always be the case. Their defense went from pretty embarrassing in '09 to very good in '10. Statistically they were ok but they got embarrassed by AZ in the Wild Card.

A huge part of the improvement was an undrafted rookie FA named Sam Shields. They had some nice pieces offensively, but I would say nobody close to as good as Jacobs and their offense was actually pretty bad the first 2/3 of 2010. My point in all that is things can change in a hurry and because of unexpected things. I think they do need more out of their 1st rounders, but the undrafted FAs, the less splashy FAs can also help a lot. Just as regression happens, some guys will bounce back and others will emerge. The NFL is fun to follow because of those drastic changes that seemingly come out of nowhere.

I am not worried about Love. I think he was less healthy most of the year than he let on. I don't think he is a HOF QB but I think he's very good, and good enough. 

It happens pretty much every year that someone just hits a bad patch and limps in. It was the Packers this year. They just weren't playing well when it counted. This was really predictable. 

But for God's sake, if we want to fix the low-hanging fruit, can we have a Madden player take over the kickoff and punt/return teams?

 

[bigred]

12 hours ago, Sixtolezcano said:

Except he’s a #2 WR on the Bengals. Probably our best shot is a 30 something former all-pro.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10150646-nfl-insider-expect-packers-to-be-in-the-tee-higgins-hunt-after-loss-to-eagles

Looks like it's possible that the Packers agree about Higgins. 

[homer]

1 hour ago, bigred said:

They did sign some veterans before this past season, and they were still the youngest team in the league, so what's that tell you? Who ever said they weren't rebuilding? They traded away their HOF QB(just 2 years ago), and went with a completely unproven QB. Still doesn't change the fact that experience almost always trumps athletic ability. Not sure why some people have a difficult time realizing and understanding that? It's not a new concept. 

The Miami Dolphins were the oldest team in the league and they missed the playoffs.

I don't know what the magic "age" for a team needs to be, but if you are old and slow you won't help.

[Underachiever]

10 hours ago, bigred said:

That's comparing apples to oranges. Completely different sport. 

My point is not the sport. My point is don't have the youngest team and then use that as an excuse. You really didn't understand that?

[adambr2]

59 minutes ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

I think reality is somewhere in the middle, as usual. At this point in the Rodgers era they were 0-1 in the playoffs though he was admittedly playing at a higher level than Love - that will probably always be the case. Their defense went from pretty embarrassing in '09 to very good in '10. Statistically they were ok but they got embarrassed by AZ in the Wild Card.

A huge part of the improvement was an undrafted rookie FA named Sam Shields. They had some nice pieces offensively, but I would say nobody close to as good as Jacobs and their offense was actually pretty bad the first 2/3 of 2010. My point in all that is things can change in a hurry and because of unexpected things. I think they do need more out of their 1st rounders, but the undrafted FAs, the less splashy FAs can also help a lot. Just as regression happens, some guys will bounce back and others will emerge. The NFL is fun to follow because of those drastic changes that seemingly come out of nowhere.

I am not worried about Love. I think he was less healthy most of the year than he let on. I don't think he is a HOF QB but I think he's very good, and good enough. 

It happens pretty much every year that someone just hits a bad patch and limps in. It was the Packers this year. They just weren't playing well when it counted. This was really predictable. 

But for God's sake, if we want to fix the low-hanging fruit, can we have a Madden player take over the kickoff and punt/return teams?

 

They were better than okay. They actually had one of the top defenses in the NFL in 2009, so I think maybe the defensive debacle in Arizona is affecting your perception of that defensive season as a whole, which is fair. They were a complete no-show on that day.

I agree on special teams. If I am the coordinator my guys are ordered to take a knee on any ball kicked in the endzone, no exceptions. The small chance of a shoddy return team breaking anything big does not outweigh the risk of the many things that can go wrong returning the ball, which we found out yesterday. Just take the damn ball on the 30, every time that it is an option to do so.

And for the love of God I cannot understand how we can get so many punt return hold/block penalties when a return doesn’t even occur. We’d seriously be better off with no contact and a fair catch every time.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

20 minutes ago, adambr2 said:

They were better than okay. They actually had one of the top defenses in the NFL in 2009, so I think maybe the defensive debacle in Arizona is affecting your perception of that defensive season as a whole, which is fair. They were a complete no-show on that day.

 

Funny to debate a 16 year old team, but it's the offseason - they really weren't though. Their secondary in particular was shredded at will against any top offense they played that season. Favre twice, they could not get him off the field for the life of themselves, the Cardinals, and they padded stats against the likes of the hapless Lions, coming off an 0-16 season, and Bears at the time. They beat Arizona by like 30 the week before the Wild Card in a game Arizona treated like a bye. It was actually pretty similar to this year where they took care of business against who they should, but never showed up against anybody good (they actually did yesterday for the most part). Major difference being that this team had to play the top 3 teams five times during the regular season. They gave up at least 30 points in every game they lost that year.

Huge difference though is they had the DPOY and Clay Matthews.

 

[adambr2]

24 minutes ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

Funny to debate a 16 year old team, but it's the offseason - they really weren't though. Their secondary in particular was shredded at will against any top offense they played that season. Favre twice, they could not get him off the field for the life of themselves, the Cardinals, and they padded stats against the likes of the hapless Lions, coming off an 0-16 season, and Bears at the time. They beat Arizona by like 30 the week before the Wild Card in a game Arizona treated like a bye. It was actually pretty similar to this year where they took care of business against who they should, but never showed up against anybody good (they actually did yesterday for the most part). Major difference being that this team had to play the top 3 teams five times during the regular season. They gave up at least 30 points in every game they lost that year.

Huge difference though is they had the DPOY and Clay Matthews.

 

Keep in mind it was the first transitional year to Capers’ 3-4 from the 4-3 of Bob Sanders. Guys like Aaron Kampman were playing out of role and position. I thought for the first year it went well though I agree that they no-showed in some big games.

They built on this to win the Super Bowl the following year. The troubling thing is that they somehow reverted to complete dumpster fire in their 3rd year in 2011 and we’ve never had anything that I would honestly classify as a top end defense since.