#349 Packers Unscripted: The emotional side

on Monday. It was a very emotional locker room. This was a team that put everything they had into this game. They expected to win the game. They felt they had an opportunity to win it at the end, which then they didn't get that opportunity obviously because of the fumble. Guys were upset, and uh, quite frankly, Mike McCarthy was okay with that, because the alternative means that guys don't care.

And so if there's emotions running hot back and forth and whatever, okay, you let hours go by and everybody gets over it. But but this is a tough one to get over. It is because again, the team played well and because of that, there's going to be frustration disappointment when you can't you know, achieve what is the biggest goal, which was walking out of there with a victory. So to some exset, I think that's what you expect. Now.

The important thing for the Packers is resetting this week and being able to set the focus on the Patriots, being able to set the focus on where they want this team to go here through the month of November, uh to you know, and you heard it in a lot of voices. Obviously we weren't in the locker room, but when players came out, most of them, if not all of them were uh you know, available and talking

to the media. And the biggest comment that came along with that, and what guys were echoing was that they played a game well enough to win. So now what do you do? How do you reset? You know, being able to calibrate yourself to now trying to beat you know, an even more difficult opponent in an even more hostile environment, against the veteran quarterback that's seen and done at all. That's where I think that you have to push this thing forward. Understanding the emotions that got into it, the

players and their their thoughts and feelings. It's all gonna come with it with a fifty three man roster, but can you get that back together and I'll go into Gillette Stadium looking for a really big victory. Yeah. We talked about back when the schedule came out how tough a stretch of schedule this was going to be. And you know the way that Rams game ended on Sunday, This is the type of week you'd really like to be coming back and playing a home game. I don't

care who the opponent is. And it's not just a going on the road to Gitette Stadium and facing Brady and the Patriots. And we'll talk later in the week about more specifically about the opponent, but the bottom line is the Packers are oh and three on the road and they just laid it all on the line on the road against the best team in football and they still came up short. You'd love to have a home game this week to circle the wagon, so to speak, get back above five. All of that kind of stuff.

That's not the reality. The reality is they have to go on the road again. They have to try to get their first road win of the season and get this thing turned around. And the task just doesn't get any tougher than what they're facing right now. They have

to bottle that energy. Kenny Clark was asked after the game too about you know this is you know, they played up to their competition with the Los Angeles Rams, and they also had some games there against Washington and Detroit that I mean, I believe they were favored to win those and not being able to come out on the winning end. So it's about continuing to have that consistency,

that level of sense of urgency every single week. I'm sure it's going to be there again against New England because of who the opponent is, but it's gonna have to be there against Seattle and Century like it's gonna have to be there when they go, you know, into Soldier Field, they have to be able in US Bank Stadium. I mean, those are opponents, especially down the line here, that are gonna really dictate where this season goes for

the Packers. The one thing that I thought was positive that did come out of it was the fact that they could see what they could do against one of the best, if not the best team in football. I don't think there'll be as much debate Mike. If the Packers could have had that performance against Washington, against Detroit, the way they protected the football for a majority of the game, the way they were able to string together series and defensive stops, they've come out victorious in those

other two road games. But again, the frustrating part that factors into it is that they just didn't against you know, the team that's right now the front runner in the NFC. Yeah. Well, the continuing discussion, uh, sticking point, I guess you want

to call it. What this game was, the way it ended with time Montgomery's fumble on the kickoff with two minutes to go kickoff return with two minutes to go, which prevented Aaron Rodgers from getting the one last possession down by two, only needing a field goal to win. Montgomery did not address the media after the game on Sunday. He did address the media in the Packers locker room on Monday. There's been a lot of stuff swirling around

in terms of his motivations and his decision. He came out and said, basically explained that he wasn't sure exactly where the ball was going to land, so he made a split second decision to just take it and run and not put the game in the officials hands. Um still questionable judgment and everything like that, but he expressed a lot of dismay at any suggestion as to his motives or his commitment to the team. And Mike McCarthy certainly didn't go down that road either and just said, hey,

he made a mistake. We've all been there. Nobody feel is worse than the guy who made a mistake. It's time for this team to move on. And that's really what the Packers have to do here. It's time to move on. Yeah, it is Mike, and now you look at I thought one of the more powerful things that came out of the Monday locker room. I was in a small group there with Truman Williams, and he mentioned that after the game in the l A. Colosseum visiting locker room, he actually went up to uh Time Montgomery,

a story that Montgomery collaborated on corroborated. Excuse me, um, instead, you know, just gave him some words, you know that that things are going to be okay. And and yeah, this is a low point right now, but we've all been there. Truman william said, he's been there, He's needed, you know, teammates to pick him up too, and Montgomery mentioned some of the conversations they had really hadn't some

of it had nothing to do with football. It was a bigger picture than that, and understanding that a mistake was made and you have to move on from it. I think the most the toughest thing for me listening to Montgomery discussed this was kind of talking about sort of the outside perception of this so unfortunate in the age of social media where things are are at in that regarding and it's it's not the Montgomery situation either.

I just feel like, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, all these things, and certainly there are certain aspects to it that are positive, but the idea that people can just sit behind an account and anonymously rip on people and it almost feels to me like and the way we are at right now in society, it's just that we're almost looking for reasons to rag on people and to

bring people down, and I think that's unfortunate. I think it needs to be about trying to bring people up and and understand people's perspectives on life and how they view things. I I just I sat down last night even when I was working on Insider Inbox and I was thinking about how I was going to approach the show today with some of these topics. And you know,

I'm a dad, now you're a dad. Uh Like, it's just a part of me that gets a little nervous about at for what our kids, my kid is, the world, the way this thing is going, because we're about ten years into this technological error right now, and I don't know, man, It's there's certain things of it that are really disappointing. It's a game Packers lost. Everyone feels terrible about it. But I don't know if you can call yourself a fan.

I don't know if you can call yourself a human um for some of the things that came out on social media after that game, I'm I'm I'm with you, I'm with you ad percent here West and I certainly share Montgomery's um despair at at the state of humanity.

And he's talking about obviously a portion of humanity, not not everyone, but UM, I personally don't understand um how it how it makes anybody feel better to throw something at somebody on social media, even whether it's a threat that you're actually never going to follow through on our But if that's what you have to do to feel better about your favorite team losing a game, I'm sorry.

I just I feel sorry for you. Then, I mean all of us, all of us are fans of one team or another or multiple teams, whatever it is, there are there are tough losses to deal with every single year. That's but but that's that's part of being a fan, and and everybody's going to have their own way of dealing with things, and to too, to take it out on other people just to try to feel better about it. I just I don't get it. It's really disappointing. Um

I get it. It's frustrating. It is disappointing. I wrote about it an inbox. You can feel all those emotions, but to convey that kind of message was disheartening to me because I just don't I don't get what. I don't quite understand what leads to someone feeling like that's right. But be that as it may. The packers have to

put that in the rearview right now. They need to, you know, get this locker room, you know, on the same page, Get them on the same page of the field, and to what Mike Daniel's original point was on Sunday afternoon, you have to tighten up what needs to be tightened up. It's all about the Patriots now. They got to put this behind them. They have to learn from it and try to once again kind of get on a run

here during a really difficult stretch of games. Yeah. Well, before we move on to some of those other topics, right here, West, it's time to enter the Cousins Subs Best Seats in the House promotion. You and a guest could win a chance to kick back on the fifty yard line in style. Two pairs of lucky Packers fans will be chosen prior to each home game for this v I P experience. Enter daily now through December sixteen

by completing the entry form and submitting. For complete rules and eligibility, go to Packers dot com slash Best Seats Cousin Subs. We believe in better. Okay, you look at this game against the Rams West. We talked about a little bit on yesterday's show, and it bears repeating. Mike McCarthy certainly emphasized as well that performance by rookie cornerback Ji year L Alexander. Wow, I mean what can you say this is and uh, you know, no offense to

the Buffalo Bills. But this wasn't against the Buffalo Bills. This was against the Los Angeles Rams and one of the top offenses in this league. And he took a speedy, big time playmaking wide receiver and Brandon Cooks eight targets, three catches now three for seventy four yards. Seventy four yards is pretty good. But Brandon Cooks, he didn't make any backbreaking plays in this game. And for him to have only three catches on eight targets, it's a huge

credit to Alexander. Yeah, it is. And he even mentioned during the week that he was this was he was getting up for this matchup. It was something that really excited him. He had a good idea that he'd be coming back from the hamstring injury. I love the comment that Kevin King made after the game when he was asked about it, like, I don't know what film they

were watching. I think that they were going to be able to throw on them the way that they You know, partly there isn't necessarily enough film on him because he missed a couple of games with injury. He hadn't played and then he obviously the pack has had the bye week, so they maybe they hadn't seen a whole lot of

of of what he had done. Although the interception against Minnesota that got overturned on the Clint Matthewston, you know, I mean this guy has this guy has made some plays in his limited time and then he made a bunch of them in l A. Talking with Tremont Williams to at his locker on Monday, he mentioned, like people look at him and they you know, they bring up the hype thing, but they don't really understand. Like he is a big guy, Like he actually has some weight

to him. He has some size to him. It allowed him to be able to drop his shoulders and make a you know, an open field tackle on Cooks. For I think it was maybe a gain of one something like that. He's he was all over the place. And his ball skills, man, I mean, he just the way he's able to track the football. Uh. He he can press man the line of scrimmage. We saw him jam uh Cooks a couple of times. He can stay with

him on slants. He has long arms. He can you know, be able to get in on some of those past deflections five pp us in this game. Pp uses an interesting statistic. It's kind of hard to be able to find up last time win, so I really do know the last time we had a game where someone registered

that many. But I mean, we're in a league right now where if you can get fifteen in the season, I think that's pretty darn if you if you average one a week for an entire season, that that ends up being a pretty good number and close to the top of the league usually. Yeah, So for Alexander to do that coming out of the gate, being down for two and a half weeks, it was pretty impressive to me to see him put that stretch together. Dude. Here's

the thing about Alexander to the Packers need him. They they need that presence in this defense because you saw with that package that Penton was using. I don't know the name of it, so for the lack of a better turn, I'm gonna refer to it as a nitro package though, which was a term that Dom Capers used to describe as a safety in the box with the inside linebacker. In this case, it was mostly Jermine Whitehead.

So six defensive backs on the field. Truman Williams talked about it too, what they were able to do in terms of moving some of those personnel pieces. Williams worked in some of the slot. They were able to move those guys around because of their versatility. I think if this defense is going to be what they needed to be the second half of the season, your Alexander, his flexibility and his playmaking ability from that position is going to be paramount because as you need your pass rushers,

you need your boundary cornerbacks. But with the way that this league has gone, now, Mike, you need a playmaker in the slot of those nickel packages with how much you're playing it, the Packers look to have found one of those. Alexander. Yeah. Now there's a lot being made by some others with the fact that essentially Alexander was playing outside corner in this game against Cooks and Tremon

Williams moved into the slot. I'm not going to read into that too much in terms of it being some kind of a permanent change, because I think this was all about putting Alexander on Cooks. It was it was matching him because because of Cook's size and speed and shiftiness and big playability, they felt Alexander was the guy who he can make plays beyond Cooks. And then Patton essentially adjusted the rest of the defense from there, and you had Um, you had Kevin King primarily on Robert

Woods the other outside receiver. I think you know, we we talked about it last week, getting those top four cornerbacks ready or available, I should say, healthy and available to play. Seeing King and Alexander on the field together in coverage, I think that tandem is just what makes this defense look different. Because we saw King miss some some time earlier in the year, we saw Alexander miss sometime. Those two guys as your young up and coming cornerbacks.

You can call them both first round picks, even though technically Kevin King was the top pick in the second round, but essentially your top draft picks of the last two years at the same position. When those guys are on the field together, this defense looks different. Yeah, there, Ying

and Yang. When you look at their skill sets, their size, what they offered to the table, and another thing Trumont Williams said to when you the way that Alexander carries himself his voice fullness at only twenty one years old. UM Mike McCarthy said he walked through the door with a ton of complice and the play in this league.

But what I really like about it, Mike, and I've said this to you a number of times now, is that it does It's not just predicated on him having five pass breakups in a game or being able to match against a Pro Bowl type receiver like Cooks. The Packers lose a game, he still has that confidence. If he gets beat, he still has that confidence. It's not false, it's not synthesize that. He isn't something that he just walks into the mirror and really just gets himself all

riled up. It's just who he is. And he's twenty one years old. It's a twenty one year old rookie cornerback that they said, you know what, there's Brandon Cooks over there. You stay on him, you follow him. That's gonna be your responsibility. He's like, all right, cool, I'm ready for it. Williams said it one of the last

things he said. He hasn't really been around a rookie like this before, but he said, it's gonna make him a great player in this league, for this team for a long time, and it's gonna make him a great leader too, because he walks the walk. He talks to talk, and he's able to back it up and if something

goes wrong, he admits to it. You know, if something doesn't work out for him, he says he's gonna learn from it, and he has the short enough memory that it isn't gonna dictate how he plays the next play. Josh Jackson Jr. L Xander, Kevin King. That is the focal point right now for the secondary. They've invested the resources into it and they're starting to see some of

it paid dividends. Yeah. Maybe one of my favorite moments in this early stages here of Alexander's career was being asked about getting his first career interception taken away on the Clay Matthews thing, and he's just like, I'll get some more, you know, and he's he's it's it's not a line, it's just it's just those that response is in him. It comes naturally to him. He just he believes in his ability. I think he can be he can be a huge player in this defense, especially paired

with Kevin King for for a long time. And it's neat because I think there is a really thin line between confidence and arrogance. But if you can straddle that, if you can stay on the side of confidence, he straddles it about as well as anybody. But you know it, Mike, the best cornerbacks that have ever played this game no that line. They edge near that line, and they stay on that line. And I think that's the thing that's impressive about Alexander. He just has a mentality that he's

just going to dominate no matter what happens. You get him once, he'll be right back in your face the next play. And I like the fact he talks to uh. There was a couple of times throughout that game you could see him jibber jabbering with Cooks and being able to you know, sort of sort I don't want to say, you know, you don't know what's said in those settings, but you can just see that whatever he was saying, he believed it. So I just think that um, as

I said on yesterday's show, there was there. It's a tough game. It's a frustrating game, and it's tough to to be able to put it behind you and move forward. But it was one of the positives I drew from it is that if this kid stays healthy. If everything works out with the soft tissue injuries he's been playing through earlier this year, he has the chance to be

a really big playmaker in this defense. Yeah, one other thing I want to get to before we go today West, and that's shifting things to the offensive side of the ball. We saw, uh the offense kind of go through some fits and starts again. Now, the Los Angeles Rams is an undefeated team with a very good defense. They had a lot to do with that, and this wasn't to me. It didn't feel like the same sort of fits and starts we've seen against other teams where you're questioning, you know,

the quality of the defense that you're facing. But that being said, if there's one bugaboo here still with this Packers offense, it's on third down. Sorry bugaboo, you don't like that one. I like it, but but we talked about it yesterday too. For nine on third down, you still put up twenty seven points against one of the best teams in the league. If you convert a couple more third downs, who knows where you are in this

game now. The two third down conversions were the big passes to Davante Adams, but all week long the Packers had talked about and through the bye week talked about staying out of third and longs. They've been in way too many of the third and eleven plus is. I think they only had one of those third and eleven pluses in this game. There were a lot of manageable third down, some third and twos and third in fives,

and they just still couldn't convert that. That's the that to me, that's the one last step for this offense to get to where it needs to be to try to make a run here is when you're in third and five, when you're in third and three, you've got to convert. It's the bug. Yeah, I mean no, I like that word. I'll be saying that one now for the next four shows. Um it is. It's exactly where it's at. And I think one thing that can really help them is, Okay, randall cops back. Now, you have

jern Will Allison back. You're using a lot more receivers, you're rotating guys, you're using a lot of different packages. I do think that's gonna help it. I think that's gonna be big, and they just got to learn from it. I mean there's just I go back to something. Jordy Nelson always said, uh, And it wasn't like this, this really attractive answer that ended up in the headline of everybody's story the next day. But when things like this would happen, Jordi would stand at his locker after games.

He said, we just got to get back to work. We have to get worked in practice, we have to get to work in the meeting room. Everybody wanted some high salutant term that I was just going to solve everything. Yeah, magic being. I mean, just just some some rhetoric that's like, okay, well now now we're good. It's everything is good now. He said this, it's everything's gonna change. It doesn't matter what you say. It matters what's going on in the

meeting room twelve hours a day during the week. And I always thought Nelson was very perceptive when he said that stuff the packers are going to fix, the third down thing has to happen in practice. It has to happen in the meeting room. You have to break down the film and figure out where the lapses are and correct them, and then you know what, when it gets corrected.

The following Sunday, if something goes well, if you actually start succeeding in that area, people will be looking for the same rhetoric about, oh, what amazing thing happened this week that you guys changed it you studied. Yeah it's not. It's not hey, somebody wore a special hatter and not this outfit or or something like that that oh well, that that just changed the tide and everything. No, it's literally sitting down figuring out what you didn't do well

and you know what, Mike, do it better. Yeah, Yeah, it's getting to work. I I the Packers showed so much progress on Sunday in Los Angeles. There's more progress to come at third down on offense is just one example. There's other things on special teams and other other issues we'll talk about. There's more progress to come. Mike McCarthy sees it. He they're studying the film. They're gonna see you. Even in the best game they've played so far this year,

They're going to see where they can be better. That's what the focus is this week. Totally into not dem you know, diminished the original point. You can't You're not going to get a forty yard Davante Adams play every time to bail you out of those situations, you have to convert on them, you have to improve on exactly. It's just that the reality of it is it all starts here, what happens out there. Yeah, I agree with

you with that. We're going to call it a wrap on this edition of Packers on Script and be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team on Packers dot com on Twitter. You can still find him at west hot I'm at Mike Spofford at Packers for the team account. Thanks for tuning in, everybody, See you next time.