What Now for the Packers?

Different narratives, same agonizing outcome. The Packers’ exits from the last two NFL playoffs—catastrophic collapse in Seattle, miracle-to-misery in Arizona—must leave fans wondering why the football gods enjoy tormenting them.

But the Fairly Detached Observers aren’t dwelling on the past. Next season starts now...

Frank: What has to change for things to be different a year from now?

Artie: How about a change in Eddie Lacy’s waistline? And I can help.

F: How so?

A: They should hire me as his personal chef. Other athletes have ’em, and the way I cook I can guarantee Eddie would surrender a lot of stuffing.

F: You’re joking, I think, but Mike McCarthy said he told Lacy that “he’s got a lot of work to do” this off-season.

A: And there’ll be a new running-backs coach, Ben Sirmans, to supervise it. 

F: Where else do you see a need for improvement?

A: Tight end for sure. Richard Rodgers can’t get open enough; he has great hands but just doesn’t have the speed. He’s not a game-breaker like Jermichael Finley was.

F: Before a spinal injury in 2013 ended Finley’s career. The weakness at tight end was especially exposed by Jordy Nelson’s season-long absence. 

A: And I’m convinced that Randall Cobb was never at 100%.

F: The passing attack declined by more than 700 yards in the regular season, to 3,503, which ranked 25th in the league. But assuming Nelson is back this fall to “stretch the field,” and Cobb returns to form, an upgrade at tight end should make the passing attack awesome again.

A: Wide receiver is one place they have depth, especially after what we saw from Jeff Janis in Arizona. But health is everything; in that game they were missing Nelson, Ty Montgomery and Davante Adams—and then Cobb got hurt early on!  

F: McCarthy also has changed his tight-ends coach, hiring Brian Angelichio, who helped develop a 1,000-yard guy, Gary Barnidge, at Cleveland this season.

A: That happened despite the Browns’ total mess at quarterback. No such problem here as long as Aaron Rodgers is vertical.

F: Though it’s true that Rodgers had a sub-par season by his standards. Got another spot that needs a change?

A: Inside linebacker. They’ve got to find a quality guy, through the draft or free agency, so they can move Clay Matthews back outside.

F: Which McCarthy said is one of his goals. And how about the offensive line? The Packers gave up 47 sacks in the regular season compared to 30 in 2014.

A: Key guys like Bryan Bulaga and David Bakhtiari not only missed games but had to play hurt at times. That can’t be good for your pass-blocking—when you have to “engage” longer than on running plays.

F: Also, in some games injuries caused the team to shift O-linemen to unfamiliar spots.

A: It sure can’t hurt to upgrade there. But I’d say that besides getting Lacy straightened out, Priorities One and Two are tight end and inside LB.

F: Now we come to the voluminous list of Packers becoming free agents.

A: Especially the unrestricted kind—14 of ’em! One good thing: The team is in good shape in terms of the salary cap.

F: So, who are the guys you think they absolutely need to re-sign?

A: Mason Crosby for sure. He had an excellent season.

F: Counting the playoffs he was 28 for 32 on field goals and made all 41 of the new, extra-long extra points.

A: I’d like to keep Mike Neal for the outside linebacking unit. Nick Perry also looked good when he was on the field, but he has a lot of trouble staying in one piece.

F: B.J. Raji stands to cash in somewhere after his comeback season on the defensive line.

A: He’d be good to re-sign, depending on how much dough he wants. Same with Casey Hayward, but he’s not essential because they had rookie cornerbacks—Damarious Randall, Quinten Rollins and LaDarius Gunter—who showed they can play.

F: How about James Starks?

A: That depends a little on Lacy’s status, but Starks provides a nice change of pace when he’s in the backfield.

F: He had almost 1,000 total yards this season.

A: I also want Ted Thompson to look more at the rest of the free agent market. He’s occasionally added a Charles Woodson or a Julius Peppers, but he usually focuses on the draft.

F: Often with good results.

A: True, Ted rarely has a terrible draft. But let’s try harder for some established guys.

F: Overall, it sounds like you’re not in the dumps over the 2015 Packers.

A: Considering the injuries, 11-7 ain’t too bad.

F: On the other hand, a “glass-half-empty” view would focus on a 3-5 post-season record since they last won the Super Bowl.

A: Hey, it’s pretty darn tough just to make the playoffs consistently. The only other team on a seven-year streak is the Patriots. 

F: So for you the glass is half full?

A: You betcha! Staying relatively healthy is always the main thing, and there are no guarantees. But if they get Nelson and Lacy back approximately the way they were, plus make some good choices in the draft and free agency, there’s no reason the Pack won’t be Super Bowl contenders again this fall.

 

Oh Yeah, The Big Game

F: After seeing what Carolina did to the Cardinals in the NFC title game, I’m guessing the Panthers are your pick to win the Super Bowl.

A: Right. This just seems to be the season of Cam Newton. To see a guy the size of a linebacker who can fling the ball and run it the way he does—wow, he’s really something.

F: I’m glad Peyton Manning made it to the big game, but he kind of did it “on fumes.” And Carolina sure looked relentless.

A: They’re certainly a way-above-average team, but I also think they’re a great example of how important it is to stay relatively healthy for a whole season. Especially Newton, who manages to survive his own reckless abandon.

F: Something Robert Griffin III, for one, wasn’t able to do. The Super Bowl will certainly be a clash of QB styles—Manning the master of the pocket vs. the mega-mobile Newton. “Old School vs. New Age,” someone on TV said.

A: I really don’t have a preference between the teams, but the Panthers just look too strong.

F: Sentimentally I’m pulling for Manning, but I also like the idea of a team that’s been clearly dominant, like the 17-1 Panthers, finishing off the job. And hey, the way the Broncos were able to batter Tom Brady, often with just a three-man rush, if they can get Newton a little flustered that way, who knows?

A: Whatever happens, I hope this will be Manning’s last game for his own sake. He’s paid the physical price long enough.

 

And Back to the Pack…

F: For all the criticism of Lacy, the team rushing yardage for the regular season hardly dropped at all—1,850 yards compared to 1,917 in 2014.

A: Well, they didn’t rush all that much in either year. In some of those losses they were behind early and had to give up on the rushing.

F: But Lacy did have some good games, didn’t he?

A: I’d say he had some good halves. Because often they’d get behind and then give up on the rushing.

F: Still, their ranking in NFL rushing went only from 11th to 12th. On the passing side, another key statistic I found was yards per attempt, which is part of the constantly cited “passer rating” formula. In the regular season the Packers went from 8.3 yards per attempt in 2014, second-best in the league, to 6.7 this season, or 28th out of the 32 teams.

A: As you would say, “That comes as no surprise to this veteran scribe.”

F: I also looked at 20-plus yard passing plays, which weren’t all that different—55 in the regular season compared to 59 in 2014. But the 40-plus yardage plays went from 15 in 2014, again second in the league, to just six, which ranked 29th.

A: And one of those was the Hail Mary heave in Detroit. It all speaks to the idea that without Nelson they couldn’t “stretch the field” that much.

F: The whole season was such a roller-coaster. A 6-0 start and everything’s fine, but after the bye it’s three straight losses and everything’s bad. They stomp the Vikings and things look fine again, but then they lose at home to the Bears and need that miracle in Detroit. Then they beat Dallas and Oakland and things are OK, but then comes the disaster in Arizona and losing the division to the Vikings.

A: I know I got pretty dizzy watching it all.

F: And the same thing was going on with Rodgers, just the inconsistency—or maybe just not the same consistency as everyone would expect of the guy. 

A: But maybe as much consistency as the circumstances would allow—like the offensive line injuries.

 

The Coach’s Scorecard

F: I wanted to ask you about Gary D’Amato’s column in the Journal Sentinel raising the issue of whether McCarthy has gotten as much out of the team as he could. D’Amato’s final sentence was, “And you have to ask yourself: How many Super Bowls would Bill Belichick have won with this team over the last 10 years?”

A: It’s so hard to measure a coach’s overall impact, because it involves game-planning, game-adjustments, decisions about personnel, both players and assistant coaches, and all that amorphous stuff about attitude and spirit and “team personality.”

F: They have won 10 or more games seven times in 10 seasons under McCarthy.

A: And made the playoffs eight times, including the last seven years. How would we know whether he does or doesn’t do something in terms of setting the right tone?

F: A year ago, coming out of the Seattle mess, there was his big adjustment of giving up the play-calling. But he eventually decided that he shouldn’t have done that, and he went back to the play-calling. Who knows what went on behind closed doors to build up to that reversal?

A: Exactly.

F: One thing I was perceiving—how accurately I’m not sure—was an oblique give-and-take between McCarthy and Rodgers about the offensive problems. From time to time Rodgers would use the word “scheme” and McCarthy would use word “execution.”

A: Code words, you reckon?

F: That’s the inference I drew. It was like, “Why don’t you give me better plays to run?” And in reply, “Why don’t you run the plays I give you better?”

A: And we don’t know how often Rodgers changes the plays at the line. It seems to me that toward the end of the season I heard Josh Sitton, as a guest on some radio show, say something about the O-line, or him at least, wanting to run the ball more often, partly because it’s less taxing on the linemen. And I got the feeling that this was some hint that the plays were getting changed to pass when they were supposed to be runs. 

F: But we’ll never know—until they all write their autobiographies. Rodgers says, “Green-nineTEEN!” just about every play, but who knows whether it means anything? It’s like Peyton Manning’s “O-ma-HA!”

 

The Perils of Longevity?

A: Another aspect about coaching: The cliché is that by the time a coach gets close to, or at 10 years, the players start tuning him out.

F: But most of the players are young and haven’t been around McCarthy that long.

A: I looked at the average age of NFL teams this season. We always hear that the Pack is the youngest or one of the youngest teams in the league. This year they were listed as an average age of 26.0. Then I found that the Vikings were 26.1, the Bears 26.2, Detroit 26.7. And even New England, with a 38-year-old QB, was at 26.0. So I’m not sure those numbers mean all that much.

F: There sure ain’t gonna be any pro football team with an average of 30-plus. Hardly anyone lasts that long!

A: But in every cliché there is a kernel of truth.

F: Well, Rodgers has been with McCarthy all this time. Matthews has been with him his whole pro career.

A: Let’s see... Sitton eight years now, Bulaga six years, Lang seven years—so there are veteran players who’ve been around Mike for quite a while.

F: Just breathing the same air as anyone for a long time, no matter what type of work you’re doing, you get to know someone’s good points and also what you see as their bad points.

A: Wasn’t Tom Coughlin with the Giants for 10 years?

F: Twelve, actually, and even though he won two Super Bowls he had only six winning records in the regular season.

A: And when he resigned this month just about everyone was saying that it was high time for it.

F: But in the NFL, there are so many assistant coaches, how much direct contact does a player get with the head coach? They’re certainly with their position coaches a lot more than with the head guy.

A: But the position coaches are chosen by the head coach, so presumably the overall outlook and attitude is the same.

 

What’s the Bottom Line?

F: Let’s wrap up with another look at, “Is the glass half-full or half-empty?” Another buddy of mine went back to the Brett Favre era, saying, “For 20 years or so they’ve had a Hall of Fame quarterback running things, and all they have to show for it is two Super Bowl wins and three appearances.” Does that speak to underachievement?

A: No, it speaks to how tough it is just to get to that final game.

F: And my buddy also lamented how many ways the Packers and/or the football gods have figured out to lose these big games.

A: And especially on the last plays!

F: Five of McCarthy’s seven playoff losses have been on the last play—the Giants’ overtime field goal in Favre’s last game as a Packer; Arizona’s fumble-return in overtime six years ago; San Francisco’s field goal; and of course the last two years.

A: Thanks for those reminders.

F: People may forget that the first time they lost in the playoffs at Arizona, THEY had the ball first, and on the first play from scrimmage Rodgers had Greg Jennings wide open about 50 yards down the field and overthrew him. And two plays later he gets blitzed, loses the ball and manages to kick it to one of the Cardinals for the easy score.

A: Sooner or later it’s got to average out.

F: But then think about the Hail Marys this season—three of ’em if you count both of the bombs to Jeff Janis in the final seconds of regulation at Arizona. There’s a certain amount of skill in those plays, but also luck, and it’s possible Rodgers has used up his luck there for a while.

A: He may have one more, if you only count the TDs as Hail Mary throws.

F: They come in threes, you’re saying?

A: And more than that for me! I remember back at Our Lady In Pain Because You Kids Are Going Straight to Hell But Not Soon Enough—someone was always ordering me to say a ton of Hail Marys. I’d get like 50 at a time at those Saturday confession sessions.

F: So if you can’t get on McCarthy’s staff as Eddie Lacy’s chef, you’d be the perfect hire as the Hail Mary assistant.

A: All part of the grand plan, ain’a?

Frank Clines covered sports for The Milwaukee Journal and the Journal Sentinel. Art Kumbalek is always available as a free agent.