HarveysWBs

Pass rush just isn’t ready for prime time. I still think that’s going to end us. The Lions third string front plays better and harder than many of our starting front 7 defenders. That has to change.

I think road warrior makes about as much sense as playing at home in the playoffs, based on recent history (though I have to wonder if Jacobs is the key to unlocking our cold weather offense after so many playoff letdowns). As long as we’re close tonight, I won’t be disappointed. But I actually don’t think the Packers would need very many crazy wrinkles or tricks to win. No giveaways and limiting penalties should keep them right there the whole way. If the Lions make more mistakes, we can beat them by two scores. They can be had. But I wouldn’t mind beating them later after a 16-1 regular season. That’s cool, too.

Like I’ve said before, expecting this team to win is bad for my health, and I’m always much happier when I expect a loss and am pleasantly surprised. That being said, I’ve actually talked myself into expecting a win here, or at least a very narrow loss. The Lions have looked very mortal of late, and have an absolutely ridiculous 7 preferred defensive starters out/on IR. They are still deep and well-coached, they have excellent (if at times reckless) safeties, and no doubt Za’Darius Smith is motivated to stick it to us again if he can, but we should have advantages on that side of the ball. Pound them with Jacobs, see if he stays hot in the red zone, and then burn them with play action, and I think the offense hums. On the other side, I am a little worried this thing turns into a barn burner. I will say that I think our defense is playing well, and a repeat of last week’s strategy wouldn’t shock me. Ja is still out, so I could see Hafley building another shell to force the Lions to get all their yards underneath and over the middle. Goff, like Tagovailoa, gets the ball out quickly, but I heard on a podcast this week that Goff is throwing it about a quarter to a half second slower over the last month than the first part of the season. I think we’ll line Gary up over their backup left tackle and hope that split second makes a difference. If the Packers play it clean, I think they’re a coin toss at minimum, and win or lose, I’m fine with just knowing they can beat the Lions in Detroit, should it be relevant in January. If Goff gets pressured and has a couple turnovers, though, I wonder if the Packers win this thing comfortably. And then come the Bills into Detroit next week, and my how different the narrative starts to look then… But it has to start tonight.

Well, well, well. The 49ers are finally paying the piper on their incredibly hubristic deal for Christian McCaffrey. I’m never glad that someone gets hurt, so that isn’t my point. But an already injury-prone, not particularly robust running back who you make the centerpiece of your offense because you think you can get by with JAGs at QB was always such an incandescently ridiculous gamble that it’s immensely satisfying to see it blow up in Lynch’s face. Of course, it almost worked last year, which would have been insufferable. But no one needs to tell a Packers fan what almost gets you. Enjoy the offseason, San Francisco. Good riddance.

Can’t believe the Vikings got left off the hook again. Really kills me we didn’t take care of either them or Detroit at home. Can’t count on anyone else.

Nuke the whole site from orbit.

I agree on decision making. He needs to clean that up. I don’t watch enough other teams to get a feel for how unusual this is in today’s football. In the Favre era, it seemed like every qb just gave the other team two or three balls that can be picked. Seems like there are a fair number of picks league-wide, but haven’t compared numbers year over year or anything.

This was inevitable. The bar is so dang high after thirty years.

Love’s been inconsistent again, but it’s not like the 49ers are pushovers. Even without Bosa, this is a top-10 defense. And Watson wasn’t the only drop of the day. What’s weird is how his statistical line is poised on a knife edge between great and terrible. Receivers make a couple more catches, and one of Jacobs’ tds is a pass play and it’s an awesome day against a talented and desperate team that has been a franchise nemesis. On the flip side, if the Niners catch those two picks, it’s a pretty rough day at the office. I think he’s better than he’s been, but not as good as he can be.

Punch this in and finish it.

Put your best guy on their best guy, our guy won.

Just because Love threw deep every time doesn’t mean the play was designed for that every time. He threw into coverage after the drop, and I have to think there were other possibilities.

Thought we were over this. One of two things is going to torpedo this team if they don’t figure it out: drops or pass rush.

Bad time for that, Watson. Man…

This is well-deserved, I think. Just don’t look at the track record of recent NL managers of the year after they get the award. Woof.

I had that exact game in mind yesterday. I remember it well. Growing up in Illinois, nearly all my classmates were Bear fans. That week, we had current event reports to present to the class and one student just went on and on about how the ghost of Walter Payton blocked the field goal that would have made the Packers winners, looking my way half the time. Chicago fans are insufferable. Only a decade of baseball dominance and three decades of football ownership have finally started to cow them in my neck of the woods. About dang time, too.

Also, the Bears clearly made a concerted effort to sacrifice the vast majority of their playbook that involved downfield throws in exchange for quick hitters. This kept Williams clean until the 4th quarter, avoided the big mistake, and took advantage of a Packers defense that eschews man coverage, especially when Ja is out of the lineup (which is now all the time, apparently). Relatedly, this is why I was cool with the 4th down and goal to go attempt that resulted in a Love scramble to the 2. Maybe not a great play call (do we have any plays that work down there?), but the decision was fine. We made them have to drive the length of the field with their dink and dunk garbage, and all we needed was one mistake on first down to get them behind the sticks and we forced a punt. Ball possession offense is fine, but it's a lot of pressure to execute. A drop or a sack can gum up the works in a hurry. Our offense, by comparison, continues to hunt big plays and it won the day today. I still think they can execute better on the short to midrange stuff by the end of the season, there's too much ability on the field and in the coaching staff to write the offense off as entirely broken. The thing that worries me, however, is what a more competent team (next week's 49ers, for instance) will realize it can accomplish based on what the Bears (and Lions) just put on tape. I know they just lost today, but that matchup worries me.

Yeah, him figuring it out would be timely. Kraft is kind of disappearing out there after looking like he’s on a Kittle trajectory, and with everybody else not named Reed fighting themselves, it would be nice if the most gifted receiver on the roster showed up. Today is a start. They’ve still got problems. No Jaire and no pass rush so the secondary looks pretty mortal. And maybe we need to just pay Hackett whatever he wants to come be the red zone offense specialist. He had a good couple years designing the “gold zone” packages or whatever. But one of those things is going to doom this team in the clutch. I’m just trying to enjoy the ride until then. Maybe I just don’t watch them in the playoffs?

Finally got a Watson game, and they needed every yard of it. Still a long way to go, but it’s way better than an L. Eleven in a row against a divisional opponent is so tough. First time that’s ever happened in the storied rivalry. Unbelievable comeback and special teams miracle.

Hahahahahaha. Put that in the season in review.

Long post alert--skip this if you like your unvarnished opinions witty and concise. Bye weeks are nice for the players and coaches to sit and think about their problems for two weeks, and on the flip side, for me to take two weeks and not think about those players and coaches. This is a healthy development for all concerned, IMHO. But as we exit the break, here are my thoughts about looking back and looking ahead at the stretch run: On Love, I am more optimistic than I was in the aftermath of the Lions game. At the time, I thought what Love needed to do was regain his form from the second half last year. And while this is still true, it is true for a different reason than I expected: his issue last year was an unwillingness to cut it loose, resulting in sacks and an anemic offense. Now, he has all the aggression he needs to be special (and, not coincidentally, the Packers are generating explosive plays at a rate not seen since peak Rodgers/McCarthy 2011-2014), he just has to remember the time and place. Both problems are issues of playing "within the offense," but I think I'd rather have the problem of knowing a guy can make all the throws and needing some work on situational decision-making than the opposite problem. Many commentators and analysts have argued that the bulk of Love's interceptions are problems of good process but bad result: receiver could have flattened out a route here, or made a sharper cut there, or made a better effort or read on the ball, or a throw was slightly off-target. Love's occasionally horrendous decisions sometimes leading to pick-6, which has happened twice, have been very concerning, and game-altering in the Lions case, but still correctible. You can maybe break a stallion, but you can't make a donkey into a racehorse. So, on offense, the three problems, as we all know, are: Love's decisions, pre-snap penalties, and drops. The good news is all of those are within the Packers' control and they can be better. Fix one and they're good, two and they're great, all three--and they might be the best offense in football. For example, Wicks is getting open something like the 5th-most per route run among all receivers this year, but he's easily lower tenth percentile in catch rate. Receivers can fix concentration drops (see James Jones, and to a lesser extent, Adams, Cobb, and Nelson, who all had similar issues in their early years, if not quite to the same severity). If he does, he's a star. Add to that Reed and Kraft (who have their share of drops, too, but are already playmakers), plus Doubs as reliable possession receiver and a still-untapped Watson occupying the deep secondary, plus Jacobs leading a stable of backs as one of the best rushing attacks in the game? The offense is poised for a dominant stretch run. The defense, though? I'm skeptical. Not that I don't think the progress is real (they're better off as a whole in this system than Barry's, hands down) but their weaknesses are personnel-based and I suspect will undo them in the playoffs. If healthy, the secondary is about as good as you can hope for. But they will be picked apart by someone because the pass rush will fail against an accurate and sound QB when it counts. And, while the defense has surprisingly respectable statistics against the run, I think a determined rushing attack would also abuse our front, especially Walker. A front-seven overhaul along the lines of the safety room is needed, but not possible until the offseason. In all, I expect a floor of eleven wins, with an outside shot at twelve or even thirteen, and an all-too-familiar playoff letdown that we should see coming a mile away. Cue Bill Murray, because it's Groundhog Day...again.

Jordan Love’s bye week assignment needs to be rehab and watching the second half of last year’s game film where he can see himself playing within the confines of the system and what the defense gives him—the offense completely turned around after that and he got himself paid as a result. Since the end of the divisional round game last year, he’s been more of the early 2023 version of himself than late 2023. He lost the plot. If he found it once he can find it again, but it has to be right now. If he plays like he did today they can lose in Chicago, and will almost certainly lose at home against the 49ers. If that happens, they’re probably cooked.

And you didn’t think it would be?

I think teams make adjustments and clean things up in-game all the time. Just because a team played a certain way in a few series does not mean it had to continue. Our problems were all under our own control, so we could have performed better. And forgive me, but I’m not terribly convinced that in your heart of hearts you didn’t have any expectations either way before this game. I seem to be one of the more optimistic members of this chat tonight, and even I figured we’d lose. But ok, I’ll concede. You know your own mind.

I’m with OSS. They were right there in this thing. All the problems with penalties and drops and the like and this game was still one possession until the boneheaded pick 6. No one is arguing the packers deserved to win or were the better team. But this game was not unwinnable. Some people went into this game today with that mindset, and I get that. But it doesn’t fit what actually happened for 28 minutes.