Friday, November 10, 2017

The Packers Problems Are More Than Just Hundley and Bennett

There's a lot going on with the Green Bay Packers between QB Brett Hundley playing poorly, Colin Kaepernick questions swirling around, and TE Martellus Bennett quitting on them. But don't sleep on the fact that the defense got rolled by Matthew Stafford last Sunday and the wheels seem to be coming off.
I've been wondering what the heck the Packers' safeties have been doing this season (Morgan Burnett is playing well, when healthy, but he's been a linebacker/slot corner this season). I've rarely seen any of them with a big pass defense or turnover. They usually show up one or two seconds late after a big gain to get in on a tackle. Against a team built around a short passing game, like the Lions, I'd expect the safeties are playing a little deep but then ready to come crashing down on the short yardage play. They're kind of doing it but the crashing down is tentative and it's not blowing up any plays.
Again, there are reasons the coaches are running this hybrid combo coverage to try and confuse the quarterback (a questionable decision against a veteran like Stafford). But when the pass rush doesn't come anywhere near Stafford, he can wait a couple seconds until the cornerback releases the receiver into the massive void created between the corner and the deep, deep safety. Also, while Stafford isn't always accurate, he was really sharp last Sunday, though I don't know I'd scheme with the expectation that the quarterback isn't going to be accurate. I'm not sure why the safeties have to be so deep against a Lions team without much of a downfield passing threat. I don't know everything that's going on here, but the results on both of the above plays is that it made it way too easy for the Lions.

There were some good things that happened on defense. DT Kenny Clark played great and along with Mike Daniels they shut down the middle of the line against the run. DE Dean Lowry isn't much of a pass rusher but he's turned into a good early down lineman. And OLB Vince Biegel was good in his first action of the year, considering he's only played about a one week's worth of football in 2017, and he'll be a big upgrade in the rotation over Fackrell and Odom, once they let Biegel's snap count go up.
I don't know what to say of a rested defense coming off a bye week, at home against an opponent they know so well, who gets rolled like this. I'm thinking of a lot of things and some of them could be very bad for the rest of this season and cost a lot of coaches and players there jobs in the offseason. Maybe that's what needs to happen in January.
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment