Broncos studs and duds

[David Ciembronowicz]

Studs and Duds: Green Bay Packers Offense, Defense, ST and coaching; A roller coaster throughout this game and too many others this year, no one saying they have to be perfect but this team is so up and down it is mind boggling. From the QB making amazing passes to his late and missed passes that are intercepted or knocked down. His judgement at times is questionable. An OL that is weak in spots where you have a $74M player and two relatively high draft picks that are worse than avg.. On Def. the DB's are questionable (how many int. this year?), making one good play while allowing a handful of missed tackles, losing WR's and allowing them to be open to LB's that are also on the roller coaster. The Coaching staff calls are in some case predictable and also mind numbing (yesterday, 9 pt lead, driving the ball, rushing decent and you decide to throw it up to do what, close out the game, seriously).
Yesterday suggested a 10-6-1 finish, after watching the Vikes beat Dallas, Ravens destroy their opponent, the Bears dismantle Cleveland (who beat GB).. This team may not win another game this year or they may win a couple, that is the roller coaster. Bottom line this team is not elite from the staff to the players yet too many outside of Parsons are getting paid like elite players and playing mediocre to often. Studs at times, Duds too often.

 

[Sanguine camper]

I struggle to type this because I love Gary, his heart and the leader he has become...but we are at a point where if you watch him only one of two things are true:

#1 - we are witnessing the cliff of ability unfold right before our eyes...and he just isn't the high level player he once was. Solid player, NFL caliber guy but at the point where he needs to be a rotational piece to be of best value...

#2 - he is playing through issues/injuries.

His legs just look way too slow for there to be a third option. I LOVE Gary, and if his heart can make plays for us with Parsons out I guarantee you it will...but folks that body ain't right - either naturally or due to injury.

Those are interesting points about Gary. I've been very critical of him because he's paid like a star but underperformed much too often.

I think there may be a third option. He has a pattern of tailing off in the second half of the season, especially in December and January. I wonder if he's not taking proper care of his body as the season progresses. You're right that he looks slower with heavy legs. That's been going on for several years already.

A competent strength and conditioning staff would normally be able to prevent that but I wouldn't assume that's true. Just look at the weekly injury report compared to most NFL teams.

Another option is that Gary is a slacker and takes games off. I don't think it's true. While it's possible, there's no evidence that anybody on the team is pointing to.

 

[tynimiller]

Those are interesting points about Gary. I've been very critical of him because he's paid like a star but underperformed much too often.

I think there may be a third option. He has a pattern of tailing off in the second half of the season, especially in December and January. I wonder if he's not taking proper care of his body as the season progresses. You're right that he looks slower with heavy legs. That's been going on for several years already.

A competent strength and conditioning staff would normally be able to prevent that but I wouldn't assume that's true. Just look at the weekly injury report compared to most NFL teams.

Another option is that Gary is a slacker and takes games off. I don't think it's true. While it's possible, there's no evidence that anybody on the team is pointing to.

I know enough people close to the team that I can unequivacally state that I have less than 1% belief that laziness could be Gary's issues. That dude's heart and desire to play out there is rivaled by very few and he works his tail off. I think his body is just slowing down faster than any hoped or something medically is wrong.

 

[Sanguine camper]

I know enough people close to the team that I can unequivacally state that I have less than 1% belief that laziness could be Gary's issues. That dude's heart and desire to play out there is rivaled by very few and he works his tail off. I think his body is just slowing down faster than any hoped or something medically is wrong.

It's not like Gary is 35. He's still a young man and shouldn't be wearing down so drastically. He's only 28 and should be in his prime. If he's not lazy which there's really no evidence for, then that points to insufficient care for his body as the season goes on. If I'm Gute and see the tailing off pattern, I'd be all over the conditioning and medical staff to come up with something different than they're doing because it's not working.

 

[Heyjoe4]

I will push back on the "every bit as fast" part. Watson moves and breaks in full pads better than anyone we have. Yes, put them both in a controlled environment, shorts and such and Golden might win some races...but Watson is a different breed of a WR - especially right now compared to Golden.

Golden had a very good game in Denver honestly and I expect we see his continued growth spurred on somewhat by the absences of now not just Kraft but Watson as well possibly for a time.

There's 40 yard-dash speed and then playing speed. Watson certainly "plays" fast, and his route running and catching have dramatically improved. I hope this is a short absence.

Golden still has to turn his 40-yard-dash speed into playing speed. He hasn't had many targets this season, up to now. His route running looks to be improving, and he catches just about every throw. Watson's height is certainly an advantage. If the Packers plan was to introduce Golden slowly, there is no longer a case for that.

So this gives Golden an unexpected opportunity to step up (assuming Watson misses time, and I hope that's not true).

I feel as bad as anyone on here about the injuries yesterday. There is still plenty of talent left to win the North, and Love's play (ok except for the 2H yesterday) is outstanding. From here, the offense will have to carry the team.

 

[tynimiller]

It's not like Gary is 35. He's still a young man and shouldn't be wearing down so drastically. He's only 28 and should be in his prime. If he's not lazy which there's really no evidence for, then that points to insufficient care for his body as the season goes on. If I'm Gute and see the tailing off pattern, I'd be all over the conditioning and medical staff to come up with something different than they're doing because it's not working.

You are aware trends are just that trends, yes he is still relatively young - but dude has played through some injuries many don't even know, and IMO never really fully came back from his BIG injury years ago.

There isn't conditioning or medical staff changes that can just magically stop the detioration of premiere athletes playing one of the most challenging games there is for the body.

Gary is nearing the medical magic number of 30 when we see tons of professional athletes truly decline either slowly or abruptly and swiftly.

 

[pacmaniac]

Overall if we had to swallow a 4th loss this was the best time to do it. It was a non division game.

It being a non-division/conf game would only matter if we ended up tied with another team. But since we have a tie in our record, it's very unlikely we'll end up tied with anyone else.

 

[chemist]

It being a non-division/conf game would only matter if we ended up tied with another team. But since we have a tie in our record, it's very unlikely we'll end up tied with anyone else.

Maybe so but one never knows what will happen in the future. Besides that in the heirarchy of tie breakers division record is #2 on the list so the more pristine our record is the less there is to worry about.

 

[Pugger]

Those are interesting points about Gary. I've been very critical of him because he's paid like a star but underperformed much too often.

I think there may be a third option. He has a pattern of tailing off in the second half of the season, especially in December and January. I wonder if he's not taking proper care of his body as the season progresses. You're right that he looks slower with heavy legs. That's been going on for several years already.

A competent strength and conditioning staff would normally be able to prevent that but I wouldn't assume that's true. Just look at the weekly injury report compared to most NFL teams.

Another option is that Gary is a slacker and takes games off. I don't think it's true. While it's possible, there's no evidence that anybody on the team is pointing to.

We fans have been questioning the competency of our strength and conditioning staff for years.

 

[gopkrs]

no Studs or Duds for me this week. Just some thoughts.
I feel the packers played their typical game. Offense hit their standard number of 25-30 ppg.
Looked like our Defense couldnt stop the broncos in the 2nd half but eventually they did come up with a number of stops that gave us a chance but we just had one of those games where we had some unlucky breaks. Thst 2nd INT was a tip and the ball goes into the defenders hands. Nothing you can do about that. Losing watson and parsons in the same game, cant get more unlucky than that. Even with all this and all the penalties that killed us we were still in the game till the end. That says something about the quality of this team.
Overall if we had to swallow a 4th loss this was the best time to do it. It was a non division game.
Now we have time to revaluate what we have going forward and come up with the proper game plan. We have 2 division games left so the ball in in our court to win the division. I like where we are at .

Agree. The disconcerting point you seem to make is that we regress in the 2nd half while our opponents get stronger. That needs to change. Conditioning? Just to be clear, I'm not talking weight lifting. I'm talking cardio vascular

 

[Magooch]

Well, hard to imagine a more deflating loss than that. But here we are, on we go.

Studs
Jordan Love
I think I pretty much said the same thing last week. I don't think he has much left to prove. It wasn't a perfect performance by any means (and unfortunately fell off in the second half) but for basically the whole first half he was essentially moving the ball at will against one of the best passing defenses in the league.

Josh Jacobs
Absolute iron-man. Guy's been banged up all season yet basically going out there each week and doing everything he can to will us forward. Wilson's been good in limited appearances but Jacobs is that dude who can put the whole team on his back when he needs to.

Brandon McManus
Hopefully it's just a matter of health with McManus as it seems like he's pretty well back to his best now.

Duds
CBs
Maybe I'm a hater, but I don't think Bo Nix is THAT good. On the whole he's been a decidedly average QB for the course of the season (18th in passer rating, 14th in QBR, 16th in EPA+CPOE) and of course we allow a career day. Just about every CB we have got completely abused at one point or another... and to be fair it's not like they were all just miles away the whole game, but FAR too many "could'ves, should'ves," "almost" type situations.

Discipline issues/Procedural penalties
I would love to see how many procedural type penalties we incur on offense. Stuff like holding, hands to the face, etc...it happens. But I feel like we are constantly getting dinged for false starts, illegal shifts, ineligible receiver, illegal formation, etc... Like I said, sometimes you unintentionally or instinctively hold a guy and get flagged for it and it just happens. But the procedural stuff is things that we SHOULD be expecting to "coach out" of this team and it just never happens. Week after week, year after year this team is extremely undisciplined. I said it in the game thread regarding special teams but really it's true to a similar extent of this team as a whole. I can't tell you how many press conferences we've heard about how we need to clean up this and that and be more disciplined and etc. After 6, 7 years, why should I have any confidence whatsoever that we will EVER have a disciplined team with LaFleur steering the ship? I've said it before, I like Matt and think he has a lot of strengths but I don't think he is EVER going to be able to run a tight and disciplined football team.

And relatedly, speaking of discipline... I just don't feel like we play very "sharp" football. This is another long-standing complaint of mine - we just generally don't put teams away or show any "killer instinct". It's entirely reasonable to say that if we'd played a bit cleaner we could've opened the game up 21-0. We just seem to shoot ourselves in the foot like nobody else can. As I've said before we can beat anyone when we're at our best but we have a very bad tendency to let teams hang around rather than kill them off as early as possible.

Special Teams
Rich Bisaccia continues to be one of the highest-paid ST coordinators in the league (if not THE highest, accounting for his assistant HC role) and yet continues to produce one of the worst special teams units in the league. This discrepancy is honestly fascinating to me. Can anyone think of an example where a PLAYER was amongst the highest-paid at his position yet was in the conversation for worst in the league at his position? Remarkable.

And of course, more than any of that, injuries the biggest dud on the day.
Honestly I don't know which is worse between Watson and Parsons.

On one hand, Parsons basically seemed to be papering over a LOT of cracks for us. I think we had all hoped that we would see a big step forward from the rest of our DL. Parsons would command TONS of attention and free up opportunities for Gary, Van Ness, Enagbare, etc...
WITH the presence of Parsons, Gary is 31st in pressures per game. Enagbare is 98th, and Van Ness is 114th. Gary is 18th in sacks per game; Enagbare 155th and Van Ness 210th. They've made *some* improvements but not nearly enough and that's WITH Parsons out there. If they didn't really step up WITH him on the field, unfortunately I don't expect them to do so without.

On the other hand, at times it's looked like our offense *could* in theory do enough to make up for shortcomings on defense (and I mean, we saw this for years lol). But our offense basically falls off a cliff without Watson right now. I posted elsewhere but having Watson on the field at all is like a 15-20pt swing in Love's PFF grade, he takes him from slightly above-average to ELITE. Thankfully we got Reed back at the right time but we will really need Golden or someone else to be able to step up fast.

 

[chemist]

Agree. The disconcerting point you seem to make is that we regress in the 2nd half while our opponents get stronger. That needs to change. Conditioning? Just to be clear, I'm not talking weight lifting. I'm talking cardio vascular

I hear you but its hard to put a price on a dropped pass , an untimely penalty, the loss of one of our stars and how any of those cam impact a game, impact momentum etc.
Other than that my concern going into the game was the altitude, and maybe that played a rule too?

 

[El Guapo]

Studs:

2. Edge Cooper made some really nice plays today. He showed that decisive, explosive move we fell in love with last year. Maybe his best all around game of the year at first glimpse.

Just adding on to this thought. When the team was dejected in the second half following all of the injuries, there was Cooper time and time again making a big play to stop the Broncos and get the ball back.

Did we take advantage of those to steal the win? No. However, when you want to win big games you need players like this. Now that we lost a few to injury, we need a few more Edgerin Coopers to step up and realize their dreams.

 

[GBkrzygrl]

no Studs or Duds for me this week. Just some thoughts.
I feel the packers played their typical game. Offense hit their standard number of 25-30 ppg.
Looked like our Defense couldnt stop the broncos in the 2nd half but eventually they did come up with a number of stops that gave us a chance but we just had one of those games where we had some unlucky breaks. Thst 2nd INT was a tip and the ball goes into the defenders hands. Nothing you can do about that. Losing watson and parsons in the same game, cant get more unlucky than that. Even with all this and all the penalties that killed us we were still in the game till the end. That says something about the quality of this team.
Overall if we had to swallow a 4th loss this was the best time to do it. It was a non division game.
Now we have time to revaluate what we have going forward and come up with the proper game plan. We have 2 division games left so the ball in in our court to win the division. I like where we are at .

At least you're hopeful.

 

[chemist]

At least you're hopeful.

When all else appears lost the only thing left to grab onto is hope.

 

[coulomb]

In truth he came across my mind

Zararius burned a few bridges here, but he is def. a pass rushing stud. or was.

Doesnt seem like a gute move, but the parsons move didnt seem like a gute move either. so who knows.

 

[tynimiller]

Zararius burned a few bridges here, but he is def. a pass rushing stud. or was.

Doesnt seem like a gute move, but the parsons move didnt seem like a gute move either. so who knows.

What about the Parsons move to you wasn't Gute-esq?

 

[4Ever4Favre]

Beat the Bears next week and we have 2 seed again. Bears have 9ers and Lions while we have Ravens and Vikings. It is even possible to lose next week and still get the 2 seed.

I like our chances for a home playoff game vs Bears. Truth be told, it is very possible that the week 18 Lions v Bears match up is for a playoff spot.

Yeah, there is certainly some hope. We still have a very good offense and a very good defense (even without Parsons). We had a tough loss against one of the top teams in the NFL and people are acting like the Packers are magically a lost cause.

 

[chemist]

Well, hard to imagine a more deflating loss than that. But here we are, on we go.

Studs
Jordan Love
I think I pretty much said the same thing last week. I don't think he has much left to prove. It wasn't a perfect performance by any means (and unfortunately fell off in the second half) but for basically the whole first half he was essentially moving the ball at will against one of the best passing defenses in the league.

Josh Jacobs
Absolute iron-man. Guy's been banged up all season yet basically going out there each week and doing everything he can to will us forward. Wilson's been good in limited appearances but Jacobs is that dude who can put the whole team on his back when he needs to.

Brandon McManus
Hopefully it's just a matter of health with McManus as it seems like he's pretty well back to his best now.

Duds
CBs
Maybe I'm a hater, but I don't think Bo Nix is THAT good. On the whole he's been a decidedly average QB for the course of the season (18th in passer rating, 14th in QBR, 16th in EPA+CPOE) and of course we allow a career day. Just about every CB we have got completely abused at one point or another... and to be fair it's not like they were all just miles away the whole game, but FAR too many "could'ves, should'ves," "almost" type situations.

Discipline issues/Procedural penalties
I would love to see how many procedural type penalties we incur on offense. Stuff like holding, hands to the face, etc...it happens. But I feel like we are constantly getting dinged for false starts, illegal shifts, ineligible receiver, illegal formation, etc... Like I said, sometimes you unintentionally or instinctively hold a guy and get flagged for it and it just happens. But the procedural stuff is things that we SHOULD be expecting to "coach out" of this team and it just never happens. Week after week, year after year this team is extremely undisciplined. I said it in the game thread regarding special teams but really it's true to a similar extent of this team as a whole. I can't tell you how many press conferences we've heard about how we need to clean up this and that and be more disciplined and etc. After 6, 7 years, why should I have any confidence whatsoever that we will EVER have a disciplined team with LaFleur steering the ship? I've said it before, I like Matt and think he has a lot of strengths but I don't think he is EVER going to be able to run a tight and disciplined football team.

And relatedly, speaking of discipline... I just don't feel like we play very "sharp" football. This is another long-standing complaint of mine - we just generally don't put teams away or show any "killer instinct". It's entirely reasonable to say that if we'd played a bit cleaner we could've opened the game up 21-0. We just seem to shoot ourselves in the foot like nobody else can. As I've said before we can beat anyone when we're at our best but we have a very bad tendency to let teams hang around rather than kill them off as early as possible.

Special Teams
Rich Bisaccia continues to be one of the highest-paid ST coordinators in the league (if not THE highest, accounting for his assistant HC role) and yet continues to produce one of the worst special teams units in the league. This discrepancy is honestly fascinating to me. Can anyone think of an example where a PLAYER was amongst the highest-paid at his position yet was in the conversation for worst in the league at his position? Remarkable.

And of course, more than any of that, injuries the biggest dud on the day.
Honestly I don't know which is worse between Watson and Parsons.

On one hand, Parsons basically seemed to be papering over a LOT of cracks for us. I think we had all hoped that we would see a big step forward from the rest of our DL. Parsons would command TONS of attention and free up opportunities for Gary, Van Ness, Enagbare, etc...
WITH the presence of Parsons, Gary is 31st in pressures per game. Enagbare is 98th, and Van Ness is 114th. Gary is 18th in sacks per game; Enagbare 155th and Van Ness 210th. They've made *some* improvements but not nearly enough and that's WITH Parsons out there. If they didn't really step up WITH him on the field, unfortunately I don't expect them to do so without.

On the other hand, at times it's looked like our offense *could* in theory do enough to make up for shortcomings on defense (and I mean, we saw this for years lol). But our offense basically falls off a cliff without Watson right now. I posted elsewhere but having Watson on the field at all is like a 15-20pt swing in Love's PFF grade, he takes him from slightly above-average to ELITE. Thankfully we got Reed back at the right time but we will really need Golden or someone else to be able to step up fast.

Agree on nix.....As someone posted in the pregame thread a list of denver's games this year where they barely got by very poor teams several times, nix has been wildly inconsistent. Sometimes he kills you, sometimes he is terrible. We happened to catch him on one of his best days this season so keep in mind that with all the issues and bad breaks we had vs denver we were still in the game to the very end, meaning if this is best they have , the next time we meet may be a different story.

 

[adambr2]

Zadarius walked away from the Eagles in October. If he decided to return I highly doubt this would be where he would want to come. Even if he did, the Eagles own his rights and they would have to release him.

Not a possibility.

 

[gopkrs]

We have another QB that loves to roll out. Nix was able to do it all game long

 

[Magooch]

Zadarius walked away from the Eagles in October. If he decided to return I highly doubt this would be where he would want to come. Even if he did, the Eagles own his rights and they would have to release him.

Not a possibility.

Yeah and unless I'm remembering it wrong it sure seemed like he didn't depart on particularly good terms lol

 

[OldSchool101]

I’m going to add one Stud

Luke Musgrave. Luke was 4/6 for 52 yards and just recorded his season high. The other 2 passes? Love threw into sticky coverage at shoulder level with a Defender in front of Luke. If he puts that ball 2-3 feet higher imo Musgrave catches it and becomes by far the leading Packer receiver in Denver. On another later game pass, Jordan did just the opposite throwing to his right, he led Musgrave just a foot too much high and outside. Both misses were more on Love or good D coverage than Luke. Even with both passes thrown poorly, Musgrave finished 3rd in yards (52) and was outside of 1st place by 4 yards. He did this against a pretty stout Defense in a tougher environment. IMO He’s gradually showing improvement and once Kraft gets back GB will have a legit 1-2 punch at TE.

This was Luke’s 2nd best Receiving game of his career and his 5th time to crack 49+ yards. I’m fully expecting him to have a shot breaking his career high (64 yards) before the season ends.

 

[OldSchool101]

I like our chances for a home playoff game vs Bears. Truth be told, it is very possible that the week 18 Lions v Bears match up is for a playoff spot.

Yeah, there is certainly some hope. We still have a very good offense and a very good defense (even without Parsons). We had a tough loss against one of the top teams in the NFL and people are acting like the Packers are magically a lost cause.

Amen. One thing that was very apparent is we looked gassed by end of the 3rd quarter area.
It’s emotional enough lose, yet do it with key players dropping like flies. That just exasperated this Loss. That said without Parsons in 2024 ranked 6th in points and 5th in yards. Nearly everyone returned except TJ and Eric Wilson. Wooden is very close to covering Slaton. Of course we did lose Wyatt also and this was Lukas entry game after missing lots of time. He played good, but he’s a little rusty imo. Our Run D is better with him out there imo.

Agree on nix.....As someone posted in the pregame thread a list of denver's games this year where they barely got by very poor teams several times, nix has been wildly inconsistent. Sometimes he kills you, sometimes he is terrible. We happened to catch him on one of his best days this season

I agree. Our D just held Denver to a paltry 2.9 per Carry. Essentially forcing Denver to go heavier passing the ball. Just when our D “closer” went down. Imo both our Chicago game and Denver game both QB’s “over performed” their more usual standard. I don’t need to go into too much detail we just witnessed it. Bo Nix played really good. As in A- grade on a “C” scale. I think they said this was near a career best in key aspects.

 

[adambr2]

Clark is gone, Wyatt is gone. We had Jaire for half of 2024 and he’s gone. Wilson is gone. Slaton, Stokes, Ballentine. We added Hobbs but he has been a disaster.

I get the glass half full approach comparing to the 2024 season without Parsons but this just isn’t the same defense.