Which veterans will not make final squad?

gbgary

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Gunter is trash. It amazes me how people think because he's "physical" the Packers should keep him around. Why the hell would you keep a slow "physical" corner around when you play zone 75% of the time? I could see if they played man a lot more...but even then he'd still have trouble running with people. He's NOT good people!
they need to play more man. zone gets you beat. the way the league lets CBs grab and hold (sherman) now, the Packers need to transition to that type of coverage team. gunter fits that mold. he can hold people up at the line of scrimmage (not letting them get into their route so fast) thus giving time for the pass rush to get the qb. he's not a starter but he's valuable to keep. i'll bet we see him a lot in these kinds of situations this year.
 

brandon2348

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Spot on. Another guy that falls into the TT good ol boys club, we will hang onto him for years to come, giving him unlimited chances to succeed to prove ted was right, oblivious to the fact his on the field production is poor. How many times do we need to see this scenario unfold?

I don't know. My fear is there gonna do the same thing with Frackrell at OLB as we all know Perry and Matthews won't play 16 games.
 

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I agree. As I mentioned in an earlier post give that fifth spot to Hawkins, Waters, or Dorleant. Unless Gunter just kills it in camp and the pre season which I highly doubt. For his sake I hope he spent the entire off season working on his speed!! Everyday!!
Gunter is big and physical. Which is what our outside CBs are going to be this year. Judging by the house signing, and the king/Jones picks. If they brought house here to play zone? Bad idea...
Also I remember Gunter having a couple great games, shutting down some top wrs. Then the playoffs came and he laid a couple eggs against elite wrs playing their best... if you are going to slam Gunter, you might as well add shields, Randall, and Rollins to the roast. Because at least Gunter played. The rest were injured...
And let's not forget , he is still on his rookie contract.

I like Gunter. I see him as the top backup outside if house or king go down...
Randall or Rollins should play nickel. And I'd like to see Jones in at ilb to help cover. Jones is aggressive and I think he should have some opportunity to break through the line and sack the qb...

Jones has excellent athletic ability. Reminds me of Montgomery ,on paper. He might be great as a ilb in coverage, and below average against the run. But if you throw his quickness into the pass rush, he might surprise us with some sacks.
 
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Where the hell was he in the 2015 Champ Game? Richard Sherman was out there playing with one arm and Clay was on the sideline stretching out his leg with the game in balance.

Then a bunch of mediocre production along with PED accusations. What has this guy done in recent memory that warrants 15 mill not to mention all his endorsement deals? It's a "fraud show". Maybe now that he is off the juice his "3 cone" just isn't up to snuff anymore. :eek:

There's no doubt Matthews hasn't performed up to his contract over the last three seasons but there's absolutely no reason to call him a fraud show.

So why keep Rollins then as he is slow and smaller and less physical?

Oh that's right cause he is a TT 2nd round draft pick.

Rollins is significantly more talented than Gunter. It doesn't make any sense that you continue to ignore that he had a pretty good rookie season.

I like Gunter. I see him as the top backup outside if house or king go down...
Randall or Rollins should play nickel.

While Gunter might be a decent player in specific situations the Packers could be in trouble if he's the primary backup on the boundary.
 

brandon2348

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There's no doubt Matthews hasn't performed up to his contract over the last three seasons but there's absolutely no reason to call him a fraud show.

Not so sure about that. NFL network recently had him as the 82nd best player in the league and I don't even have him as a top 10 OLB. If all of his good play back in the day was due to PED's then yes this is all "fraud".
 

brandon2348

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Rollins is significantly more talented than Gunter. It doesn't make any sense that you continue to ignore that he had a pretty good rookie season
If your looking for a basketball player I would agree. I'm done posting about Randall and Rollins until pre-season because frankly they just **** me off. If people wanna buy into the "pipe dream" that there gonna have this huge Adams like rebound then fine.
 
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Not so sure about that. NFL network recently had him as the 82nd best player in the league and I don't even have him as a top 10 OLB. If all of his good play back in the day was due to PED's then yes this is all "fraud".

There's no evidence to back up that claim though.
 
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If your looking for a basketball player I would agree. I'm done posting about Gunter and Rollins until pre-season because frankly they just **** me off. If people wanna buy into the "pipe dream" that there gonna have this huge Adams like rebound then fine.

I'm not convinced that Rollins will bounce back but there's no reason to ignore that he had a pretty good rookie season.
 

brandon2348

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There's no evidence to back up that claim though.

I'm the last person that wants to belive Clay Matthews took PED's but whether coincidence or not it's awfully suspicious how far his play has dropped off since the accusations came to light.
 
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I'm the last person that wants to belive Clay Matthews took PED's but whether coincidence or not it's awfully suspicious how far his play has dropped off since the accusations came to light.

You have to consider that he played at inside linebacker for 1 1/2 seasons after it as well though.
 

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they need to play more man. zone gets you beat. the way the league lets CBs grab and hold (sherman) now, the Packers need to transition to that type of coverage team. gunter fits that mold. he can hold people up at the line of scrimmage (not letting them get into their route so fast) thus giving time for the pass rush to get the qb. he's not a starter but he's valuable to keep. i'll bet we see him a lot in these kinds of situations this year.

Capers incorporates quite a bit of man into the defense already, regularly mixing coverages. The Seahawks are actually one of the heavier zone defense teams in the NFL.
 

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There's no doubt Matthews hasn't performed up to his contract over the last three seasons...
I'm in agreement that he did not play up to his contract the past three years but I also believe that there are plausible reasons for that decline in his play, one of which you have already addressed above. Pardon the redundancy below. But here's my assessment of his performance over the past three years:

As you mentioned earlier, Wimm, he played out of his normal position on the outside for one full season and part of another in the two years that preceded last season. Those should have been two of his prime years playing at OLB. The team had obtained Peppers and they took full advantage of his availability, freeing Matthews to play ILB full-time. He had never played ILB before in the NFL. The so-so results speak to that and also to the glaring weakness that ILB had become for the team -- so much so that they left themselves little option but to fill ILB with their best player on defense while still in hot pursuit of the Lombardi Trophy.

The latter has to be pinned squarely on Thompson since ILB does not seem to be one of his favored "core" positions. We all know that TT has shied away from free-agency for ILB and he has not used a top pick in the draft to fill it since the A.J. Hawk acquisition -- who may have been drafted while they were still playing a 4-3 defense if memory serves me correctly. The bottom line is that Matthews took one for the team. Yet he's held in contempt for a coaching decision and a GM personnel failure. TT didn't get his money's worth for the level of play that occurred at ILB but that's on him not on Matthews. We'll never know if Matthews would have produced more impact plays had he played on the outside instead of at ILB. My guess is that he would have. He is far better suited to play OLB and the results from 2014 and 2015 should have proved that beyond any doubt.

Last season he was injured. Anyone who has ever experienced a traumatic and significant shoulder injury should be able to empathize. It's not an exaggeration to say that a person may become one-armed and that the shoulder may not heal very quickly. With my own shoulder injury I was unable to lift my arm high enough to wash or comb my hair. It took several weeks for it to heal well enough that I could resume most of the routine everyday activities without pain and loss of motion that we all take for granted, like putting something on a shelf. But by then muscle atrophy was significant and lifting weight only aggravated it and set back my recovery even further. It was and still is a delicate balancing act. Any nine year old girl could have whipped me in an arm wrestling contest for weeks if not months.

Like Matthews, I did not have mine repaired surgically. In my case it was against doctor's advice. I'm impressed that Matthews was able to play at all with that shoulder considering the injury. And, of course, there was the chronic hamstring injury to deal with. That only exacerbated his mediocre play and it may have been aggravated by compensating/favoring one shoulder, perhaps limited to being a one-trick (one side) pass rusher and set-up as a tackler.

Again, if anyone has ever experienced a significant injury to a limb or back they may also have experienced problems that were related to compensating for their original injury. Sometimes more than one body part becomes affected. Personally, I give him the benefit of the doubt because of my own injury history and the secondary health issues that occurred as a result. My pay could have been increased by 1,000% and it would not have made my shoulder feel even slightly better or caused it to heal any faster.

This is not directed at you, Wimm, but the injury issue leads to the subject of Matthews sitting out at the end of the notorious NFCCG loss against the Seahawks. Lest we forget the team was only one first down or one stop away from going to the SB and nobody else delivered. Peppers thought it was over when he strangely motioned for his DB to take a knee after the interception. Many of us also believed that we were probably just a few short minutes away from victory or our hearts would not have been so broken. The players and coaches performed as though playing out the clock was a mere formality on their way to the SB.

Matthews was purported afterwards to have "tweaked" his knee sometime during that game. That seems to be conveniently overlooked. It is highly likely that the coaches sat him down so that he would not aggravate it further with the SB game on the line only a couple of weeks later. Good plan if virtually the entire team had not wet their pants over the last few minutes. Again, Matthews is being made a scapegoat by some for that loss. By my count there were at least 22 others who could also be made scapegoats. And if last year was not proof enough that Matthews will play through injuries then there's no convincing some fans. The difference between Matthews and Sherman in that NFCCG game is that the Seahawks and Sherman were still desperately trying to win the game by coming from behind. The Packers foolishly mailed it in thinking it was in the bag.

I'm hoping that Matthews has a monster of a 2017 season.
 
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We'll never know if Matthews would have produced more impact plays had he played on the outside instead of at ILB. My guess is that he would have. He is far better suited to play OLB and the results from 2014 and 2015 should have proved that beyond any doubt.

While it's true that we'll never know if Matthews would have performed at an elite level if he continued to play at outside linebacker for those 1 1/2 seasons you have to consider that Matthews struggled early in 2014 though, getting only 2.5 sacks over the first eight games while rushing from the edge.
 

gbgary

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Capers incorporates quite a bit of man into the defense already, regularly mixing coverages. The Seahawks are actually one of the heavier zone defense teams in the NFL.
but they seldom jam at the line, force guys off their route a bit. that messes up timing. they need to make that transition. i think they may have started that transition with king. someone said house plays that way (i don't really remember) and you have gunter. zone has it's time and place but when you need a stop...just sayin.
 

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but they seldom jam at the line, force guys off their route a bit. that messes up timing. they need to make that transition. i think they may have started that transition with king. someone said house plays that way (i don't really remember) and you have gunter. zone has it's time and place but when you need a stop...just sayin.

I tend to disagree. I'm not saying that their corners have been great at pressing, but Capers has his corners playing up at the line quite a bit.
 

brandon2348

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I'm in agreement that he did not play up to his contract the past three years but I also believe that there are plausible reasons for that decline in his play, one of which you have already addressed above. Pardon the redundancy below. But here's my assessment of his performance over the past three years:

As you mentioned earlier, Wimm, he played out of his normal position on the outside for one full season and part of another in the two years that preceded last season. Those should have been two of his prime years playing at OLB. The team had obtained Peppers and they took full advantage of his availability, freeing Matthews to play ILB full-time. He had never played ILB before in the NFL. The so-so results speak to that and also to the glaring weakness that ILB had become for the team -- so much so that they left themselves little option but to fill ILB with their best player on defense while still in hot pursuit of the Lombardi Trophy.

The latter has to be pinned squarely on Thompson since ILB does not seem to be one of his favored "core" positions. We all know that TT has shied away from free-agency for ILB and he has not used a top pick in the draft to fill it since the A.J. Hawk acquisition -- who may have been drafted while they were still playing a 4-3 defense if memory serves me correctly. The bottom line is that Matthews took one for the team. Yet he's held in contempt for a coaching decision and a GM personnel failure. TT didn't get his money's worth for the level of play that occurred at ILB but that's on him not on Matthews. We'll never know if Matthews would have produced more impact plays had he played on the outside instead of at ILB. My guess is that he would have. He is far better suited to play OLB and the results from 2014 and 2015 should have proved that beyond any doubt.

Last season he was injured. Anyone who has ever experienced a traumatic and significant shoulder injury should be able to empathize. It's not an exaggeration to say that a person may become one-armed and that the shoulder may not heal very quickly. With my own shoulder injury I was unable to lift my arm high enough to wash or comb my hair. It took several weeks for it to heal well enough that I could resume most of the routine everyday activities without pain and loss of motion that we all take for granted, like putting something on a shelf. But by then muscle atrophy was significant and lifting weight only aggravated it and set back my recovery even further. It was and still is a delicate balancing act. Any nine year old girl could have whipped me in an arm wrestling contest for weeks if not months.

Like Matthews, I did not have mine repaired surgically. In my case it was against doctor's advice. I'm impressed that Matthews was able to play at all with that shoulder considering the injury. And, of course, there was the chronic hamstring injury to deal with. That only exacerbated his mediocre play and it may have been aggravated by compensating/favoring one shoulder, perhaps limited to being a one-trick (one side) pass rusher and set-up as a tackler.

Again, if anyone has ever experienced a significant injury to a limb or back they may also have experienced problems that were related to compensating for their original injury. Sometimes more than one body part becomes affected. Personally, I give him the benefit of the doubt because of my own injury history and the secondary health issues that occurred as a result. My pay could have been increased by 1,000% and it would not have made my shoulder feel even slightly better or caused it to heal any faster.

This is not directed at you, Wimm, but the injury issue leads to the subject of Matthews sitting out at the end of the notorious NFCCG loss against the Seahawks. Lest we forget the team was only one first down or one stop away from going to the SB and nobody else delivered. Peppers thought it was over when he strangely motioned for his DB to take a knee after the interception. Many of us also believed that we were probably just a few short minutes away from victory or our hearts would not have been so broken. The players and coaches performed as though playing out the clock was a mere formality on their way to the SB.

Matthews was purported afterwards to have "tweaked" his knee sometime during that game. That seems to be conveniently overlooked. It is highly likely that the coaches sat him down so that he would not aggravate it further with the SB game on the line only a couple of weeks later. Good plan if virtually the entire team had not wet their pants over the last few minutes. Again, Matthews is being made a scapegoat by some for that loss. By my count there were at least 22 others who could also be made scapegoats. And if last year was not proof enough that Matthews will play through injuries then there's no convincing some fans. The difference between Matthews and Sherman in that NFCCG game is that the Seahawks and Sherman were still desperately trying to win the game by coming from behind. The Packers foolishly mailed it in thinking it was in the bag.

I'm hoping that Matthews has a monster of a 2017 season.

I love the optimisim but what are you gonna say when he is on the sideline stretching out his hamstrings as he gets paid almost a million dollars a game while his commercials run on every TV timeout because that's more realistic.
 

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I love the optimisim but what are you gonna say when he is on the sideline stretching out his hamstrings as he gets paid almost a million dollars a game while his commercials run on every TV timeout because that's more realistic.
Personally, I prefer to be optimistic about Matthews. I've tried the other way of looking at a season and individual players before and I simply did not enjoy starting the seasons nearly as much when I kicked them off with pessimism. I'm not telling you how to do it, just sharing how and why I do it this way. That won't stop me from being critical of the team or its players if they deserve it, but only after the fact.

For example, I thought that Randall and Rollins were a huge disappointment last season. That does not stop me from hoping for the best for both of them this season. I guess you could best call that guarded optimism.

With Matthews hamstring history his stretching them is one of the few things that I do expect out of him every game, every season. It's beneficial to his health. However, his salary does not correlate medically to his hamstrings. Neither do his commercials. Paying a player more or less is not any known as Rx for tight hamstrings that I am aware. ;)
 

brandon2348

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Personally, I prefer to be optimistic about Matthews. I've tried the other way of looking at a season and individual players before and I simply did not enjoy starting the seasons nearly as much when I kicked them off with pessimism. I'm not telling you how to do it, just sharing how and why I do it this way. That won't stop me from being critical of the team or its players if they deserve it, but only after the fact.

For example, I thought that Randall and Rollins were a huge disappointment last season. That does not stop me from hoping for the best for both of them this season. I guess you could best call that guarded optimism.

With Matthews hamstring history his stretching them is one of the few things that I do expect out of him every game, every season. It's beneficial to his health. However, his salary does not correlate medically to his hamstrings. Neither do his commercials. Paying a player more or less is not any known as Rx for tight hamstrings that I am aware. ;)

If I wasn't optimistic I wouldn't be going to the season opener which I decided to do. Mainly because I think Bennett and Kendricks are gonna help take this offense to a new level.

I have optimism too that some of Thompson's picks on defense will finally pan out but in regards to Matthews being 31 and how limited and non effective he has been my optimism has ran out on him. He is "damaged goods" and the team should of moved on. They could of gotten Barwin and Dumervil and still ate the dead money and be fine. 2 is better then 1.
 

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A couple of people have mentioned the affect that moving to ILB had on Matthews. Personally, before he moved I was seeing him get beat a lot when he was playing OLB. He try to swing past the LT and would get stymied quite often.

When he moved to ILB and began moving around he seemed to be doing better. I also thought that outside of the significant shoulder injury that he did not have as many hammy issues when he moved around vs playing just on the outside. JMO
 

gbgary

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A couple of people have mentioned the affect that moving to ILB had on Matthews. Personally, before he moved I was seeing him get beat a lot when he was playing OLB. He try to swing past the LT and would get stymied quite often.

When he moved to ILB and began moving around he seemed to be doing better. I also thought that outside of the significant shoulder injury that he did not have as many hammy issues when he moved around vs playing just on the outside. JMO
agreed. edge rushers get beat, or run off the qb, quite often. i like him at ilb too. he'll eventually end up there permanently i believe. and yes...his hammy issues have been greatly exaggerated. they'll keep moving him around. he's still a good player and won't be going anywhere for awhile.
 

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If I wasn't optimistic I wouldn't be going to the season opener which I decided to do. Mainly because I think Bennett and Kendricks are gonna help take this offense to a new level.

I have optimism too that some of Thompson's picks on defense will finally pan out but in regards to Matthews being 31 and how limited and non effective he has been my optimism has ran out on him. He is "damaged goods" and the team should of moved on. They could of gotten Barwin and Dumervil and still ate the dead money and be fine. 2 is better then 1.

I am definitely with you regarding your overall optimism. But I'm just not as down on Matthews as some other posters have been, at least not yet and, hopefully, never. This season should be telling though. He played out of position at an age when his career as an OLB should have been peaking. He was unselfish about it. He has also played hurt.

He has been the epitome of a team player and I've never heard anything at all about him uttering a bad word against the team or its fans. Just the opposite, per his first cousin, a fellow LV local whom I've had the pleasure of conversing with at length. I have a hard time understanding the logic of those wanting him to get cut and especially those who spew vitriol his way. Personally, I have a mountain of respect for Matthews.

A couple of people have mentioned the affect that moving to ILB had on Matthews. Personally, before he moved I was seeing him get beat a lot when he was playing OLB. He try to swing past the LT and would get stymied quite often.

When he moved to ILB and began moving around he seemed to be doing better. I also thought that outside of the significant shoulder injury that he did not have as many hammy issues when he moved around vs playing just on the outside. JMO
Even the best pass-rushers get stopped or slowed down on most of the snaps they play. Matthews recorded a fair amount of sacks from the ILB position, that's true. But he was not equally effective versus the run or in coverage inside, with only the occasional splash play here and there outside of those sacks. Despite that he still outplayed any of the JAGs that had been playing at the position before him. He made a difference.

Personally, I'll give him an asterisk last season due to his injuries. And that half-season as an OLB in 2014 deserves an incomplete for that specific position, only. He sure seemed to be double-teamed aplenty at OLB after 2010. Last season it was not necessary to double team him due to his bum shoulder.

His numbers have not been quite as spectacular since that stellar 2010 season -- the year he came within a whisker of winning DPOY. His performance that season was very uncommon and it would be difficult for any player to come close to that level of play consistently season after season, let alone to match it. But if that's the kind of performance that some fans are still expecting out of him then they're bound to be disappointed. Here's hoping he's got another freakishly good season still left in him, or at least a season or two that's reasonably close.
 
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Personally, I'll give him an asterisk last season due to his injuries. Last season it was not necessary to double team him due to his bum shoulder.

You have to consider that Matthews injured his shoulder in week 12 of last season though.
 

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