State of the Line Offensive Line Coach/Scheme/Players

[P-E-Z]

As Bob McGinn mentioned in his weekly rating, Lang is completely out of position at RT and it showed badly on Sunday. It would be better to move him back to RG and give Barclay a chance. MM needs to face up to the fact that as it is, the OL situation is not working and he needs to try something different. Being stubborn and conservative will not help at this time.

Also I agree with the way that McGinn cited Tramon as a growing liability. The guy shies away from tackling and his coverage has gone south. It will be nice when Sam Shields gets back. Shields, Burnett, Jennings, McMillan, Heyward, House. Sounds pretty good to me.

I agree Tramon as a growing liability and must be showing up on tape. Its why Manning hit him instead sliding after the first down.

 

[P-E-Z]

*Raises Hand* I've always been down on Newhouse, and Saturday's age worried me

Sorry but games are won and lost on the line on both offense & defense. A 7-4 record and great QB doesn't make you make you a contender, it makes you a possible playoff team. Is the one big lose fatal? No but we have serious issues on both sides of the ball. Even if the O line jells and some running going & improve the pass protection we to deal with weak defense. Mathews comes back maybe we can pull it together.

 

[HyponGrey]

Sorry but games are won and lost on the line on both offense & defense. A 7-4 record and great QB doesn't make you make you a contender, it makes you a possible playoff team. Is the one big lose LOSS fatal? No but we have serious issues on both sides of the ball. Even if the O line jells and some running going & improve the pass protection we to deal with weak defense. MatThews comes back maybe we can pull it together.

... ... ... ? Where did I say otherwise? I agree with most of your post. The guy said to raise your hand if going into the season you thought the OL would be a weakness. So I did, and explained why. Any receiver can get open for a throw if the QB has enough time, and any RB can gash a defense when the holes are big enough and the blocking is solid. OL more important IMO. And I knew Clay would get some push, so i wasn't as worried about the defense. As for DL, Neal underachieves, Worthy has nothing but a step that he almost never gets, Wilson was never impressive, Daniels gets gassed. At least Raji and Pickett can stop the run a little bit. Patriots D was just as bad as our last year and yet their offense carried them to the bowl. Another playoff team last year? Saints, who have a horrendous defense this year. Oh yeah, and our record breakingly bad defense last year took us to the playoffs. All because of great QBs. Defense doesn't score points often, and points win games.

 

[13 Times Champs]

*Raises Hand* I've always been down on Newhouse, and Saturday's age worried me

Second hand up.

 

[JBlood]

"As Bob McGinn mentioned in his weekly rating, Lang is completely out of position at RT and it showed badly on Sunday." McGinn just dismissed the value of an offensive line in a recent column. Is he now changing his mind?

 

[News Bot]

The Packers say they don’t want to make any rash decisions, or fiddle too much with their offensive line. That’s convenient, because they really can’t. Even after another leaky performance against the Giants Sunday night (five sacks, 10 points), the Packers aren’t expected to make any changes up front, primarily because they lack options. “As…

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Source: ProFootballTalk.com

 

[Grave]

Wow. Pretty sure I agreed or disagreed on every post in this thread. Lots of differing opinions. That's great. Here's my thoughts:

I agree a lot with what Trent Dilfer said. I thought he hit right on. TD may have not been a "great" quarterback in the NFL but he won a championship and he sure knows his stuff. But he kind of blends our lack of good o-line play in with us not being a championship caliber team this year. I think they can certainly get better before then and help drive us to the Super Bowl, and for that matter who, this time of the year doesn't have a weakness or two? Any 7-4 team with as good of a quarterback as us is championship caliber. Regardless of blocking.

The 2nd thing I want to address is the scheme.
"If the proof is in the pudding, where is the historical success of this scheme, coach, etc., when it comes to the Packers in 2012, since employed under McCarthy's watch and going forward!"
The historical success of the zone blocking scheme under the Packers and Mike McCarthy's discretion has been minimal. Whether that is due to the scheme itself, lack of prime talent at RB, or just minimal attention paid to the running game at all by Mike McCarthy, I'm not sure. My guess is it's more the last two then the first one.

However, the zone blocking scheme has worked very well elsewhere. You look around the league and 8 teams- Redskins, Colts, Raiders, Texans, Seahawks, Chiefs, Panthers and the Packers all base their entire offense off it. With a few other teams running different variations of it. Of those 8 teams-

3/8 are in the top 10 of total offense. 1/8 in the bottom 10.
5/8 in the top 10 of total rushing. 2/8 in the bottom 10.

So no one else seems to be having as big of a problem with it as us. Which makes me even more lead to believe it has something less to do with the scheme and more of something else.



EDS had no idea what the hell he was doing last night.
This men, is the main culprit to last nights troubles. Refer to 7thFloorRA's post for an in depth description of EDS's play yesterday.

And finally, those saying we lack talent/ aren't good enough/ bad drafting/ bad GM'ing by TT.

Raise your hand if you thought our offensive line was going to be a main problem this year. *No Movements*

That's right. There is 2 things this offensive line is. Young and injured. If you want to make generalizations that "Nobody on this team will be as good as Tauscher or Clifton" That's fine. Maybe they won't be. That's a pretty high bar. But also remember. We have 2 darn good young first round picks injured right now. And our offensive linemen as a whole read by age 23, 26, 25, 24, 26, 22, 23, 23 and Jeff Saturday being the outlier at 37. That's a damn young group. Just something to think about I feel a lot of people overlook.

Kind of unorganized. But this already took a half hour to write. So overlook my messiness please lol

 

[Grave]

"As Bob McGinn mentioned in his weekly rating, Lang is completely out of position at RT and it showed badly on Sunday." McGinn just dismissed the value of an offensive line in a recent column. Is he now changing his mind?

YES. McGinn and others like Silverstein have apparently taken note of national experts' observations that Rodgers is getting creamed because we have no O-line. Silverstein in his game blog *****ed about the miserable O-line play through the game. WHY his position does not show up in his columns is beyond me. Maybe Campen is a vampire? Maybe they don't like Rodgers and want him dead.

I expect MM will be devoting many hours to the O-line this week in practice. Maybe he'll have Cobb playing Jared Allen and Jordy playing kick-im-in-the nuts Robison.

BTW, I don't see Saturday being as bad as everyone is saying. The tackles are pathetic. Bulaga was pathetic too.

Interesting that we have guys we cut playing for other teams too.

 

[13 Times Champs]

Yup we stuck like Chuck.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/11/27/packers-cant-mix-up-leaky-line-if-they-wanted-to/

 

[Grave]

The first option is to figure out where they can run. The second is to have McCarthy take control of the O-line and drill them until they can run block.

Do that and we're 12-4.

 

[mradtke66]

I don't know if it would actually work, but I think we need to give Barclay a look at tackle and put Lang back at guard. He (Lang) coming into his own at guard and I doubt Newhouse, Lang, Saturday, Sitton, Barclay could be worse that what we have now.

Two bigger questions:

Would EDS at center be better than Saturday? Maybe. Perhaps it should be tried.

If the staff likes the idea of play Barclay at tackle, identify the weaker player between Barlcay and Newhouse and put him at LEFT tackle. Why? Because if you can only help one tackle, help the blind side guy.

This crazy idea came to me watching the Giants game. Newhouse needed more help than he got, but there's no shame in that. The Giants have a great front. However, because Lang is a bit out of position, he got the majority of the help (all?) from backs chipping out of the backfield. If the weakest guy was on the Left, we could dedicate the help to that side, the hope being that at least Rodgers would take as many blind-side hits. Rodgers' eyes would be the help on the Right side.

 

[rodell330]

The first option is to figure out where they can run. The second is to have McCarthy take control of the O-line and drill them until they can run block.

Do that and we're 12-4.

Yup. The tackles just plain suck...ppl talk about the injury to Bulaga but he wasn't very good this year either so it's not like we have fallen off. Newhouse is a stiff with lead feet and no upper body strength but the guy is at left tackle? that speaks volumes. Saturday? great with the hand signals and identifying the blitzer but that's about it. This team is good enough the make the playoffs but not good enough to beat San fran or New york imo. They physically dominated us on both sides of the ball and unless these guy's get tougher the same thing will happen in the playoffs. We have some guy's on offense like jennings coming back and Woodson will be back in about a week and hopefully Matthews this week so hopefully the team gets excited and surges.

 

[longtimefan]

Matthews still out

 

[rodell330]

Matthews still out

still? geeze, i wouldn't be shocked if the Vikings came in our place and beat us...i really wouldn't. No pass rush and no protection for Rodgers. Feels like another Colts game in the making.

 

[El Guapo]

I'm a big TT guy and have freely admitted it. Although in my book his doodoo smells like everyone elses, not like roses. That said...

Wolf did a much better job in the first rounds with OL:
1st Round Picks - Aaron Taylor (1992), John Michels (1996), Ross Verba (1997)
2nd Round Picks - Mike Wahle (1998), Chad Clifton (2000)
3rd Round Picks - Earl Dotson (1993), Mike Flanagan (1996)

That's quite impressive because of historical perspective. Taylor and Michels were good but didn't play with us long, and Flanagan was a medical unknown until he hit his prime. Ted Thompson's OL picks:
1st Round - Bryan Bulaga (2010), Derek Sherrod (2011)
2nd Round - Daryn Colledge (2006)
3rd Round - Jason Spitz (2006)

Wolf was in charge of 10 drafts to Thompson's 8 drafts thus far. Of all of their offensive linemen picks, the average round was 3.9 for Wolf and 4.27 for Thompson, meaning that Thompson hasn't used as many high picks on OL. In his first 8 drafts, Wolf drafted 14 offensive linemen and Thompson has drafted 15.

One could argue that Wolf placed a higher value on OL but it could also be that draft position and quality of linemen available at the Packers' pick play into the equation. The biggest issue from what I outlined above is that it appears TT hit on Bulaga, Sherrod is a medical uncertainty, and Spitz and Colledge never reached their potential....serviceable to average but not anchors of the OL by any stretch of the imagination. Most of Wolf's OL picks in the first three rounds were all studs.

 

[mradtke66]

One could argue that Wolf placed a higher value on OL but it could also be that draft position and quality of linemen available at the Packers' pick play into the equation. The biggest issue from what I outlined above is that it appears TT hit on Bulaga, Sherrod is a medical uncertainty, and Spitz and Colledge never reached their potential....serviceable to average but not anchors of the OL by any stretch of the imagination. Most of Wolf's OL picks in the first three rounds were all studs.

Thompson has made his money in the later rounds though. Not to pick on your analysis, because it is spot on, but Thompson has hit big in the 4th round with both Lang and Sitton. Newhouse was a 5th rounder and while linemen of his skill set are somewhat easy to replace, he's no worse than the 3rd tackle on most teams.

 

[13 Times Champs]

But where is the money tackle in all these years? What did Ron Wolf say about them when he drafted Clifton and Tauscher? It was words to the effect that you have to protect your franchise QB. Thompson has made several attempts most recently with Bulaga and Sherrod but so far they haven't reminded me of either Clifton or Tauscher. Bulaga graded out as slightly below average before he was hurt. Newhouse is barely servicable. Now I give TT credit for drafting a Bulaga and a Sherrod but we are still without a premier tackle. Some of this is just plain bad luck i.e. injuries and some is because we are drafting at the end of the first round. But we really , really need a tackle or we are going to see our QB carted off the field.

 

[FrankRizzo]

Great http://ProFootballFocus.com stat:
When Rodgers had 2.6 seconds or more, his QB rating was 125.9.
With 2.5 seconds or less, his rating: 25.9.

.....says T.J. Lang gave up 6 pressures and Marshall Newhouse 5:

Giants pressured Aaron Rodgers on 64% of his 33 dropbacks. Vikings' Christian Ponder was next closest at 46%.

 

[melvin dangerr]

We need 100 yard rusher to slow down the pass rush.... For that we need a line that can block.

And on 4th and inches get Raji's big A in the backfieldif if we can't make a field goal, at least with over 1500lbs of linemen plus Raji, we can get a first down...

 

[Grave]

still? geeze, i wouldn't be shocked if the Vikings came in our place and beat us...i really wouldn't. No pass rush and no protection for Rodgers. Feels like another Colts game in the making.

I'd be very surprised if that happens. For some reason, the Packers still go into games thinking they are better than they are. This is a team with horrible weakness on both lines. They are only going to beat teams like the Whiners and Midgets by overachieving when those teams are overachieving as the Midgets were Sunday. This was hammered home so forcefully Sunday that I think the players may have finally gotten it - they have to play their socks off against every team, on every play. The O-line especially seems to do through rashes of brain farts causing panic....indicating too much thinking in the place of drilled-in reflex. I think the linemen are big enough and tough enough, they're just too hesitant and out of place and disjunct. I can still see Darlye "Swinggate" Colledge eyeballing guys running right by him to thrash Rodgers. I guess he was wondering who he was supposed to reach?

So, I am confidant that now MM has seen enough of the beatings Rodgers has taken. He may even be having nightmares of a Harrell-led team by now (as most of us are). I am thinking that ala Joe Philbin, MM has stepped in to take control of the O-line. I am hoping he is ordering each of them to drop their doubts and just punch the guy in front of them. And keep punching them until the ball is out.

Collingsworth did us all a favor Sunday night when he said that no matter how many times you throw the ball, etc., football is still blocking and tackling. Sunday, expect some basic kickazz Packer football.

I expect us to go 12-4.

Packers 113, Queens 3.

 

[Grave]

Can an O-line coach make a difference? I think so:
http://www.spoke.com/info/p6SVbeZ/LarryBeightol

 

[rodell330]

Yes the o-line isn't very good we all know this...but so does everybody on our schedule. As a unit i'd be embarassed that we are considered a weak link, and that the other teams coaching staff has the nerve to not even blitz his lb's because they feel they can win consistently with their guy versus the guy across from him. We should never run another play without at least having a rb stay in the backfield to help...ever.

Go back to throwing slants and those quick hitch passes to the wr's so that teams have to play more man. Those are high percentage passes and they keep the down and distance in our favor versus trying to go deep and getting sacked. It's hard to make first downs and sustain drives when it's third and eight or third and six on a consistent basis. With Jared Allen coming to town i'll go out on a "limb" and say he has at least 3 sacks sunday.

 

[TJV]

Regarding the OP, has anyone on this board defended the ZBS or advocated sticking with it going forward? As to Campen, as I've posted before I don't blame him for the ZBS being implemented or continued since he was as new to it in 2006 as anyone else in Green Bay save Jeff Jagodzinski. How would Campen do in a traditional scheme? If it's not his fault they use the ZBS (and it's not IMO) how much blame should he bear?

Also regarding the OP: Like it or not it has to be said that the "historical success of this scheme, coach, etc." resides in a Super Bowl victory and prolific offensive production over McCarthy's term.

One big difference between Thompson and Wolf is the ZBS IMO. Part of the reason to go to the ZBS was it didn't require the talent (or expense of talent acquisition) "normal" run blocking schemes require. My guess is McCarthy is more responsible for the ZBS than Thompson so I put more of the responsibility for the implementation of that scheme on McCarthy. Also as I've posted before I think they've gone away from the scheme and we've seen Thompson spend first round picks on OTs and drafted players like Sitton who fit the traditional schemes more than the ZBS IMO. BTW, although he plays OG, IMO Sitton is the caliber of Tauscher and Clifton.

I was worried about Newhouse at LT and about the depth of the OL before the season started. I was/am very surprised at the sub-par play of Bulaga before he went on IR. I still think his injury and loss is a big deal because we've seen him perform very well at RT - perhaps he could have turned it around. And because his loss exposes the depth on the OL.

McGinn's column talked about NFL OLs not being as important in today's game as they were in years past. He also wrote if you have a crap OL you're in trouble. I think we all agree the OL was crap vs. the Giants.

The biggest problem the Packers had was having to help both OTs. Having to help one is a relatively easy adjustment IMO, but having to help two means only 3 guys out in coverage and if four or five rush the QB, all three can be doubled. I like the idea of giving Barclay a try at RT - as much as possible I prefer when one OL goes down that position gets replaced rather than changing two spots but I understand sometimes that's not preferable because of the talent available. But if Lang goes back to LG, that's at least four spots "OK", except against very good DLs like the Giants.

Anyone thinking something radical can be done this season to correct this is going to be very disappointed. IMO the OL struggles are due mostly to lack of talent and lack of talented depth and that can't be corrected in-season.

 

[billysofly]

yeah I think it just an talent issues and when they play giants all the escape holes was cover by a lb

 

[12theTruth]

I find interesting that Mike McCarthy said that his biggest regret was to spread the field against the Giants. Huh? We were already down by 2+ scores and our running game was sure not going to bridge that gap. We weren't getting enough pressure on Eli, we gave up big plays on defense, and run, run, pass is not going to fool a good coaching staff like the Giants have.

So basically Mike McCarthy is saying he should NOT play to his only offensive strength to attempt to get back in the game. I still think it is a bach handed slam at Ted Thompson and the lack of "talent" on the offensive line. I say mostly hogwash. Campen has been here what 6 years now or so. In that time, our running game has been far from formidable, and most of the time barely servicable. Ted Thompson DID short change the OL this off season, but the results indicate that even with 5 starters in the line at their regular positions our O-line still sucked that is a reflection on the position coach and a lesser extent Mike McCarthy. We can argue about talent vs coaching all day long but the most immediate change for improvement on the line is coupling a top notch position coach and the teaching of fundamentals which includes aggression and knocking the guy across from you on the line of scrimmage off his feet and on his butt. The Packers do not have that and NEED it!

If the Packers were to go one and done again look for this coaching change in off season.