What position are you worried about?

[RRyder]

To me, that's like the salesman who always has many qualified prospects on the line but can't seem to close. If you don't close, you don't get paid. The defense did not close the deal when it was put in their hands to do so, with substantial resources at their disposal in terms of the clock and the lead.

It's not revisionist history...it's my considered opinion.

The analogy you use here seems more applicable to the offense when referencing the NFCCG to me.

Not saying the D is great or even good but in an ironic way I can put more losses that we had last year on our offense then our Defense. Then again i give credit for most of our wins to our offense too so theres that.....

 

[Curly Calhoun]

To be fair, Shields had good coverage on the play. It was just a great 'catch'. Can debate all day on how it should have been ruled, but even if had gone the other way, sometimes you just get beat by a great play.

I agree Shields going out this year would have me very concerned. As it stands right now the biggest possibility for a weak link might still be at ILB, but it sounds like Matthews will take most of his snaps there. Should still be okay at WR as it stands right now.

Shields is a better-than-average corner. Bryant is one of the top two or three receivers in the NFL. I don't think we can dismiss Shields on the basis of not shutting down Dez Bryant. I'm not sure Revis or Sherman could do that.

If Shields did go down, it would accelerate the learning curve for our three rookie DBs. In the short term that might be bad, but in the long term it could be beneficial.

 

[Shawnsta3]

It was the defenses' game not to lose with a considerable amount of padding working in their favor. They blew it.

Yet as its been rehashed many times here already, even with their late game collapse, it was not all on the defense if not for a major special teams gaffe putting them back on a short field.

 

[Sunshinepacker]

A better defensive coordinator can make some of those players that are good play better. Capers constantly tries to get to damn fancy with his schemes and coverages, that's when you see players making mistakes. Yes, part of the blame is on the players. But what leader do we really have on defense? Last time the Packers defense was good, we had Charles Woodson and other great leaders on that side of the ball.

Sometimes keeping it simple and not trying to get all that fancy with these young guys on defense would work out better.

Expect the same this year. Right when Capers feels the pressure that his defense is looking awful, he will try something defense then get complacent all over again. They will continue to make mediocre QBs look like pro bowl players and show up maybe 2-3 times this season. Capers should've been gone at least 3 years ago.

I look at it this way, what defensive players have the Packers let go that went on to be good-to-great players elsewhere? If Capers is bad at developing players then those players should be able to do well in other places.

I know it's easier to imagine that just replacing ONE guy can fix the entire defense but the reality is that the Packers just don't have a lot of talent in the front seven and have decent depth but no impact players in the secondary. That's a far harder problem to fix.

 

[Half Empty]

TT should be drafting better players on the defensive side of the ball but he's always looking for that "diamond in the rough" that won't cost him much.

I think you actually address separate issues. No question, IMO, that the defensive draftees should be better. Allowing for Matthews/Daniels, who else on the D do other teams really fear or have to plan specifically for?

However, as far as 'cheap' choices, arbitrarily choosing 5th round and below as not costing much, the current roster has six 1st, three 2nd (really tempted to make it four for Worthy), two 3rd, and three 4th rounders.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

I developed an irreversible disdain for Capers' defense at some point early last season. I think it was after the 7 straight quarters without forcing a punt.

The defense intercepted four passes during that stretch and forced another four fumbles, recovering one of them. In addition the defense allowed a total of only 27 points in those two games.

Only taking forced punts into consideration doesn't result in an objective evaluation of the defense during these seven quarters.

 

[Ogsponge]

So, which player on the roster is better than Barrington? You say Capers should take him out, well then, complete the thought, you can't simply take a guy out, you have to replace him with someone.

Its not my job to know who is better, it is his and it was preseason, you can try any one of the guys on the roster and see if they do better. Seems pretty simple to me. I am not saying anyone would be better but Dom does not even try...

 

[Ogsponge]

The defense intercepted four passes during that stretch and forced another four fumbles, recovering one of them. In addition the defense allowed a total of only 27 points in those two games.

Only taking forced punts into consideration doesn't result in an objective evaluation of the defense during these seven quarters.

Is this the same defense that gave up 200+ yards and 3 touchdowns in the final 5 minutes? Compared to that what does 4 interceptions mean? The answer in case there is any confusion, is absolutely nothing.

For the record, I also believe the offense laid a giant in that game too so I don't blame the defense entirely but to act like the defense did not fail miserably because they had 4 interceptions is not an objective evaluation either.

 

[Curly Calhoun]

One position to worry about right now might be punter. It appears Masthay woke up one morning and forgot how to punt.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

Is this the same defense that gave up 200+ yards and 3 touchdowns in the final 5 minutes? Compared to that what does 4 interceptions mean? The answer in case there is any confusion, is absolutely nothing.

For the record, I also believe the offense laid a giant in that game too so I don't blame the defense entirely but to act like the defense did not fail miserably because they had 4 interceptions is not an objective evaluation either.

There's no denying the defense completely messed up during the last five minutes and overtime of the NFCCG (I wasn't talking about that game though).

It's telling that while the unit's best player was on the field (for whatever reason he wasn't during the final two series is a whole different matter) the defense held the defending Super Bowl champion scoreless for 55 minutes, completely frustrating the Seahawks. I have a hard time believing Capers forgot how to coach a 3-4 defense at that point. It's more likely he doesn't have a ton of talent to begin with and with Matthews sidelined Seattle was abke to expose the Packers lack of talent on that side of the ball.

One of the posters (can't remember who it was) made a great point about defensive players leaving the Packers and their performance for the new team. If Capers is really such a terrible coordinator why aren't all these guys signing with another team way more succesful???

 

[Half Empty]

Quick technical/administrative question. Have seen posts before like the above and don't understand - HardRightEdge quotes captainWIMM, and that appears to be all. What am I missing?

 

[I asked LT to delete my acct]

Most

Quick technical/administrative question. Have seen posts before like the above and don't understand - HardRightEdge quotes captainWIMM, and that appears to be all. What am I missing?

Most of the time its a typing error. Don't worry.

 

[Sunshinepacker]

Its not my job to know who is better, it is his and it was preseason, you can try any one of the guys on the roster and see if they do better. Seems pretty simple to me. I am not saying anyone would be better but Dom does not even try...

So if you have a player that isn't good then the coaches should put in a player that doesn't play as well just because he'll be different? Your assumption is that there is a better player on the roster, an assumption that's very optimistic considering the recent poor draft history for the Packers at linebacker.

 

[RepStar15]

I see the dline and linebacker core's as a weak link. The secondary looks pretty good, but not a huge amount of depth.

 

[adambr2]

The secondary looks pretty good, but not a huge amount of depth.

Really? I think it looks the opposite. A ton of depth, but if there's going to be any problem it's because it's not top-heavy enough.

 

[Pokerbrat2000]

Lot's of promising youth in our secondary. As long as we don't have any injuries to the top tier, we should be fine. But no matter who you have back their, they need some help from the front 7 to put pressure on the QB.

 

[RepStar15]

Really? I think it looks the opposite. A ton of depth, but if there's going to be any problem it's because it's not top-heavy enough.

I see Dix and Morgan Burnett being amongst the best safeties in the league. Sam Shields is underrated and I think by what I have seen Damarious Randall will be the other starter by at least Week 3-4. With those 4, I feel our secondary is stacked. We have a lot of bodies and though (Hyde, Casey Hayward, Gunter) are not bad replacements by any means, I would not feel as confident in our secondary if we lost any of the starters.

 

[TJV]

I see Dix and Morgan Burnett being amongst the best safeties in the league. Sam Shields is underrated and I think by what I have seen Damarious Randall will be the other starter by at least Week 3-4. With those 4, I feel our secondary is stacked. We have a lot of bodies and though (Hyde, Casey Hayward, Gunter) are not bad replacements by any means, I would not feel as confident in our secondary if we lost any of the starters.

Did you forget Rollins? IMO he has a chance to be good or very good. Also, I read one evaluation of Goodson that his athleticism is (finally) being reflected in his play in the secondary. That's a wait and see IMO but he may make the 53 because of STs.

 

[Robert Mason]

With the injuries to Nelson and Cobb the wide receiver position worries me the most. It worried me last year also. The loss of Nelson or Cobb last year would have meant the other would get double coverage. Who would have been left ? Adams was a rookie still learning.....Boykin was a washout. The Packers used to be so deep at wide receiver.

 

[TJV]

Quick technical/administrative question. Have seen posts before like the above and don't understand - HardRightEdge quotes captainWIMM, and that appears to be all. What am I missing?

I don't see the post on this thread you are referring to, but I've seen that happen before. It could be just an error as buggybill mentioned (hit "Reply" and then "Post Reply" without typing anything). But more often I think it occurs when a poster hits reply and then types their reply after the other posters text but before the final [/quote] in the post they're replying to. That makes it look like one big quote. I think that's what you're referring to. Either that or HRE was so stunned by the brilliance of one of captainWIMM's posts, all he could do was quote it.

 

[Robert Mason]

True enough, and I don't want to derail my own thread by opening this whole 'Dez catch' can of worms

If that was a Packer it would have been ruled a catch....we bribe the ref's well. (Just like the Seahawks do).

 

[HardRightEdge]

Most of the time its a typing error. Don't worry.

Correct...I hit the reply key in error. Then I edited that post with a quite lengthy response, but then accidentally hit a key that caused that work-in-progress to disappear. I find it particularly exhausting to replicate lost work...so I won't.

I'll take a slightly different tack and emphasis this time so as not to bore myself.

Turnovers and passer-rating-against should arise organically. Those stats are quite important and should certainly be in the diagnostic toolbox. But when they become objectives around which a defense is built, that is a problem. We got early signs of the issue in 2011. McCarthy shares some complicity, citing passer-rating-against as priority in line with Capers' own comments as the Packers have become more data driven. We've seen DB draftee qualifications include their basketball and centerfield experience in recent years (or shortstop experience as Thompson incorrectly stated) as leading qualifications as the roster construction is driven by data. Ball skill potential has moved higher in the list of qualification priorities in a seeming doubling-down on interception potential as a guiding principal.

Don't be surprised if a guy like Gunter gets cut; he doesn't quite fit the template, just as the basketball playing Goodson survived last season's cut downs over a guy who outplayed him while also not fitting the template. Gunter survival would be a welcome sign of some change in thinking.

It strikes me as a low bar when the QB has a 106 career rating, and quite dangerous when you play a game (or a selected 5 minute span) without getting a pick.

McCarthy and Thompson share in the complicity. McCarthy has been largely hands-0ff with respect to the defense over the bulk of his time with the Packers. To what extent his hands have been tied, it is hard to say, but he's clearly come to the conclusion that time's a wasting as he proclaimed "less scheme, more rotation" and now "less scheme, more pre-snap adjustments" for two years running. So far, that's not seeped into the defensive approach. Thompson has been playing into the hand Capers has dealt him, eschewing creative destruction. Doing enough to stay in place without rocking the playoff-appearance-ship is a heavy weight.

Or we can just cut to the top line...one historic defensive playoff collapse can be viewed as a fluke. Working recent to oldest, two collapses, including an opposing QB breaking a rushing record without even having been touched, starts to look like a trend. And if we want to count Warner's evisceration of the defense in 2009, that would qualify as 3 strikes.

Why would someone be concerned about the 1st. team's play in preseason game? Perhaps because that 1st. half performance should give any careful observer a flashback to the way Arizona dismantled the defense in 2009, and in this recent case the QBs at work hardly carry Warner's resume.

 

[HardRightEdge]

One of the posters (can't remember who it was) made a great point about defensive players leaving the Packers and their performance for the new team. If Capers is really such a terrible coordinator why aren't all these guys signing with another team way more succesful???

I find that argument to be suspect, perhaps worthy of one "?", but not "???".

One cannot laud Thompson for (1) signing his own; (2) conserving cap in order to do so, (3) eschewing free agency acquisitions as risky and (4) cycling out the merely serviceable, the old and the injured in favor of youth, and then wonder why the departing Packer free agents have not seen particular success.

By the time Thompson's better defensive players are let go, they had aged or have experienced career-threatening or career-ending injuries.

Let's take the 2010 defense as an example, the most talented and effective group during the Capers era:

Raji - He's still around..."keep your own" perhaps beyond the sell-by date.

Pickett - He was let go after advanced age and knee issues in the season prior to his being let go...another "keep your own", also perhaps beyond the sell-by date.

Jenkins - That was one FA loss that looks like a mistake in retrospect. He went on to play well in a disfunctional Philly defense with no adequate replacement.

Hawk - He played his best in 2010 and got a nice contract. A good player in his prime, kept beyond the sell-by date.

Bishop - He was a quite welcome addition in 2010; a guy who played well and was rewarded with a nice contract; a guy who looked like he'd be a long term stalwart at Sam backer. He was let go after a career-threatening injury from which he has yet to recover.

Matthews - Still with us, of course. Paid to stay with the highest contract in history at the time for a 3-4 OLB, emblematic of "sign your own".

Walden/Zombo - Every defense has some serviceable players, and these guys are among the few in this unit that qualify. Walden got a nice contract from Indy, and he's been a starter for them. Did he play close enough to the value of that contract at the time? Perhaps not, but not so far off to isolate it as an example of the issue at hand.

Woodson - He got old, was no longer a cover corner, did not take immediately to the safety position and had a hefty cap hit left on his contract. Nobody would have expected him to have much left in the tank. And yet, he made the Pro Bowl as a safety last season.

Collins - Career ending injury.

Peprah - Really? He was a rent-a-player in the serviceable category when Burnett went down. So, when Thompson signs some vet FA wide receiver for this season and then lets him go a year or two later, are we going to call that a Thompson failure?

Shields - Came on late in 2010, and is still with us with a high price tag...another "keep your own".

Williams - He hit the +30 mark with room to spare and he's not been the same player since he had the shoulder nerve damage. The book is open here. We'll see how he does in Cleveland relative to what they are paying him.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

I see Dix and Morgan Burnett being amongst the best safeties in the league. Sam Shields is underrated and I think by what I have seen Damarious Randall will be the other starter by at least Week 3-4. With those 4, I feel our secondary is stacked. We have a lot of bodies and though (Hyde, Casey Hayward, Gunter) are not bad replacements by any means, I would not feel as confident in our secondary if we lost any of the starters.

Burnett is one of the best run stopping safeties in the league but not an elite one overall. Clinton-Dix had a nice rookie season but he hasn't done anything deserving if being named a top safety so far. Shields didn't have a great season in 2014 and the rest of our corners still have to prove they're capable of playing at a high level in the NFL.

McCarthy and Thompson share in the complicity. McCarthy has been largely hands-0ff with respect to the defense over the bulk of his time with the Packers. To what extent his hands have been tied, it is hard to say, but he's clearly come to the conclusion that time's a wasting as he proclaimed "less scheme, more rotationl" and now "less scheme, more pre-snap adjustments" for two years running. So far, that's not seeped into the defensive approach. Thompson has been playing into the hand Capers has dealt him, eschewing creative destruction. Doing enough to stay in place without rocking the playoff-appearance-ship is a heavy weight.

I don't get super excited by McCarthy being more involved with the defense. He has never coached any defensive position and the quad defense he introduced last year failed miserably and was scrapped after only a couple games.

I remember reading an article in the Journal Sentinel last year that Thompson finally decided it's time to draft players best suited for Capers' system. I wondered why that wasn't done before and if true than Capers has been forced to play the hands he was dealt by the GM.

Or we can just cut to the top line...one historic defensive playoff collapse can be viewed as a fluke. Working recent to oldest, two collapses, including an opposing QB breaking a rushing record without even having been touched, starts to look like a trend. And if we want to count Warner's evisceration of the defense in 2009, that would qualify as 3 strikes.

Why would someone be concerned about the 1st. team's play in preseason game? Perhaps because that 1st. half performance should give any careful observer a flashback to the way Arizona dismantled the defense in 2009, and in this recent case the QBs at work hardly carry Warner's resume.

There's no denying these playoff performances are inexcuseable. But aside of the loss to the Niners in which Kaepernick was running wild I mostly blame the players.

 

[Deleted member 6794]

I find that argument to be suspect, perhaps worthy of one "?", but not "???".

One cannot laud Thompson for (1) signing his own; (2) conserving cap in order to do so, (3) eschewing free agency acquisitions as risky and (4) cycling out the merely serviceable, the old and the injured in favor of youth, and then wonder why the departing Packer free agents have not seen particular success.

By the time Thompson's better defensive players are let go, they had aged or have experienced career-threatening or career-ending injuries.

Let's take the 2010 defense as an example, the most talented and effective group during the Capers era:

Raji - He's still around..."keep your own" perhaps beyond the sell-by date.

Pickett - He was let go after advanced age and knee issues in the season prior to his being let go...another "keep your own", also perhaps beyond the sell-by date.

Jenkins - That was one FA loss that looks like a mistake in retrospect. He went on to play well in a disfunctional Philly defense with no adequate replacement.

Hawk - He played his best in 2010 and got a nice contract. A good player in his prime, kept beyond the sell-by date.

Bishop - He was a quite welcome addition in 2010; a guy who played well and was rewarded with a nice contract; a guy who looked like he'd be a long term stalwart at Sam backer. He was let go after a career-threatening injury from which he has yet to recover.

Matthews - Still with us, of course. Paid to stay with the highest contract in history at the time for a 3-4 OLB, emblematic of "sign your own".

Walden/Zombo - Every defense has some serviceable players, and these guys are among the few in this unit that qualify. Walden got a nice contract from Indy, and he's been a starter for them. Did he play close enough to the value of that contract at the time? Perhaps not, but not so far off to isolate it as an example of the issue at hand.

Woodson - He got old, was no longer a cover corner, did not take immediately to the safety position and had a hefty cap hit left on his contract. Nobody would have expected him to have much left in the tank. And yet, he made the Pro Bowl as a safety last season.

Collins - Career ending injury.

Peprah - Really? He was a rent-a-player in the serviceable category when Burnett went down. So, when Thompson signs some vet FA wide receiver for this season and then lets him go a year or two later, are we going to call that a Thompson failure?

Shields - Came on late in 2010, and is still with us with a high price tag...another "keep your own".

Williams - He hit the +30 mark with room to spare and he's not been the same player since he had the shoulder nerve damage. The book is open here. We'll see how he does in Cleveland relative to what they are paying him.

I didn't criticize Thompson in my previous post (although it's pretty obvious he has more success drafting offensive players) but wondering why none of the guys that left the Packers in free agency were more successful while not having to suffer playing for a Capers coordinated defense. You didn't address that point at all.