#442 Packers Unscripted: Difference-makers

Packers offense, Packers defense. What's it gonna take to win this one and get to four? And oh well, let's actually go off of what you wrote last night on Packers dot Com. As we're taping the show Wednesday. You wrote Tuesday night about this offense and Aaron Rodgers feeling like this is time, you know, to get the is clicking. You're getting to that fourth, that fourth game of the regular season, unmost at preseason that and you want to be able to finally get into a rhythm. They want

to get Davante Adams more opportunities. You've seen flashes of it. I think throughout these first three games, and I honestly think you've seen a lot of progress too, but finding momentum. And the reason I say that specifically with this game is because there does appear to be an opportunity with this Philadelphia passing defense right now. Ronald Darby has the hamstring injury. They are really beat up in the secondary.

So while they are very stout against the run, and you know the way their penetration works, it is going to be difficult to get things going that way. I think there is a real chance in this game for Aaron Rodgers in the passing game to get into some rhythm. Yeah. I don't like to declare a game on a short week is any kind of a barometer for anything, because these quick turnarounds and everything, you just never know what's

going to happen in a Thursday night game. But I agree with you that there is potentially an opera tunity here for the passing game. Because the Eagles are banged up on defense. Their defensive front only has two sacks thus far, they are ranked near the bottom of the league and passing yards allowed. If there's a game for this Packers offense to hit on some explosive plays in the passing game, and really try to generate some momentum

here with Aaron Rodgers and Matt Lafleur's offense. I think I think this is the one, even though I hesitate to say that because you just played a game a couple of days ago and you just physically it's always hard to say just where the players are going to be on a Thursday night game. Absolutely, and and not that you can never draw any parallels between three years ago and today. But one of my big guys for

this matchup, I think is Davante Adams. I mean, he had sort of his coming out party against the Eagles and during that run the table in two thousand sixteen where it's like, Okay, this guy that Monday night game in Philly that started that run, Yeah, this guy is going to be one of the league's elite. I mean, he's going to be a cut above. I mean, you go back to that game. Five catch is a hundred and thirteen yards, two touchdowns, and that was one of you know, that was a defense that was on the

precipice of being really special. Now they're a bit older now when you look at the Eagles, there was one stat I was looking at I think they have something like is it nine or ten guys that are above twenty nine years old or something like that on that defense, And you know there is something to be said for that. You can win with a veteran scheme, but you know

a lot of times that means a tick slower. So I just a lot has been made this past week in particular about Adams and his touches and his catches and all that, you know, targets. The realistic thing is is, you know last year he did have a hundred and eleven catches. I don't think you can always just be anticipating, anticipating a guy's gonna dominate that much offensively, because it is a chess game. I mean, there's going to be counters to that. We're seeing some that early this season.

That being said, I'm very intrigued what the Packers could do with him moving forward, how you move him around. We've seen him in the slot already, we saw him in the backfield once. I just think we're getting really close here to one of those big Davantae Adam breakout games. Even fifteen catches hud ninety yards, that's nothing to you know, bat your eye at. I mean that's still on pace for seventy or whatever it is for the season over

a thousand yards. But I just feel like that big Davantae Adams game is coming and this could be one that potentially him and Aaron Rodgers find it. Yeah. Well, I looked up some stats with regards to Adams. He does not have does does not have a touchdown yet this season, and the last time he had gone three straight games without a touchdown catch you have to go all the way back to when he was when he

was playing hurt. And actually the last time he's he had even gone back to back games without a touchdown catch, you have to go back to the first two games that Aaron Rodgers missed in after the broken collar bone for him to even go to straight games without a touchdown. So I agree with you, maybe we're on the verge of a breakout here because Davantae Adams is just that good and you can't keep a player that good down

for that long. The other thing I will say offensively with regards to this game is we had talked about in the Denver game, and Aaron Rodgers made a point of it, obviously about how well the offensive line played keeping him clean. He only took the one hit the whole game, no sacks all of that. As I mentioned before, this Philadelphia Eagles defensive front only has two sacks thus far.

Jim Schwartz their defensive coordinator. If there is a guy with a reputation as a gambler as a defensive coordinator, it's Jim Schwartz. And you combine that mentality with the fact that the Eagles are coming into lambeau Field at one and two, desperate almost in a sense, to at least get to the five mark at the quarter pole this season. To win this game and get to two

and two. Jim Schwartz might be taking some chances in this game, and that puts a big premium on the Packers offensive line to figure out where the blitzer are coming from, to pick things up, and to have as solid a game in front of Aaron Rodgers as they

had last week. It's an excellent point, Mike, because what's the number one thing A lot of defensive coordinators are prone to do when they're beat up in the second are or maybe they don't have the depth that they want their start throwing more of the kitchen sinks at offensive fronts. This could definitely be that type of thing, especially, I mean it is sort of a chicken and an egg, and it is a dangerous proposition, you know, to be going with five, six and even occasionally a seven man

blitz front. You can't live in those packages, but they can give you problems in the interim. So and with as much as the package have struggled on third downs that you know Jim Schwartz might be looking at third down says, Hey, these are the opportunities not just to get stops, but to make the plays that can change the game. I just think he might be coming into this game with that type of mental Yeah. And it's interesting too because that type of mentality, there is a

CounterPunch to that as well. Right you start sending more guys, maybe that frees up Davantie Adams in one on one. You can see what Marquez Velde, Scantling and two of these first three games can do downfield when he gets one on one coverage and gets behind a secondary, he gets behind a safety. Uh. Danny Vitality I talked about it in on our Three Things video with John and Larry.

I felt like that twenty seven yard wheel route We all laughed about the fact that it was a couple inches shy the end zone, but I thought that was really important to put on film because now inside linebackers and safeties have to be cognizant of where he is when he's trickling out of the backfield. You had Jamal

Williams coming underneath. I get what the stats are with the Packers offense right now, but I just I do like that they've shown these different facets of it, and these are all the things that when Schwartz devises his game plan that he's going to have to take into account for exactly how he wants to attack this offense. YEA, all right, Well, before we move on to the Packers defense, a little bit of sponsor business. Select Cousin Subs locations

are now offering delivery. Whether you're ordering catering or your favorite sub, They're delivering right to you when you order online at Cousin Subs dot Com. Cousin Subs. We believe in better okay, defensively here for the Packers west um eight takeaways twelve sacks in the first three games by Mike Patton's crew. If you can keep up that kind of a pace. And that's saying a lot. But if you can keep up that kind of a pace, boy, that that goes a long way to chalking up victors. Yeah.

You know, if you end up leading the league and takeaways and your second and sacks and in third and points allow, our second points allowed, that is going to go a long way and winning ball games. But this is what is really important there. They're two big components to this. For the defense, they have to stay healthy. It has to stay healthy. I mean, the way that they're performing right now, this has a real opportunity for to be a special unit. I mean I wrote about

it earlier this week. We didn't really have a chance to talk about it because it didn't really come up. But you know, I put in my my locker room report on Sunday about you know, everything just has gone right for these guys, right, and everybody's so happy. But

it wasn't always that way, right. I Mean you heard a lot of things that Aaron Rodgers said throughout the preseason in training camp, and then they go into Baltimore and Lamar Jackson and the Ravens kind of run over them a little bit, and the veterans on that team not one particular player, Basically a veteran from each group

pulled those guys together. They flew back from Baltimore at three o'clock in the morning, sat down here at Lambeu Field and reviewed the film the twenty two snaps that they played because they all wanted to communicate what each other was thinking when they missed the tackle or Mr Reid.

There's just so much synergy with this defense right now that you know, you heard the story about Zadarius taking out the starting the entire defense for dinner last week, and it wasn't just about going and hey, I'm a captain, I gotta lead. It was you know, we're gonna go talk football, We're gonna put up a projector and watch Thursday night football. We're gonna just, you know, try to get to know each other better. If you keep those pieces healthy, Mike, I just think that you're gonna have

ebbs and flows to a season. But the most impressive thing to me right now, when I see Zadarius Smith, when I see Preston Smith, when I see Adrian Name is these guys aren't looking for stats to validate contracts. It doesn't matter if they get a sack. Or not. Doesn't matter if they getting interception or not. The way that they're performing is making the defense better. Now the

stats are the end product of that. But I just when I see these guys playing, thought that, oh they need to go get a sack to to do It's what they're doing every single play to affect the play. If you keep those eleven guys you know on the field together, watch out. Yeah. Well, here's here's my question right now with regards to the Packers defense. And I'm not sure. I just don't know that much about Philadelphia's offense and where they are right now because of the

injuries they've had at wide receiver and everything else. But the last two opponents the Packers have faced have run the ball pretty well. We saw Dalvin Cook with the seventy five yard touched on right and had about a hundred and fifty yard game. Philip Lindsay and Royce Freeman combined for about a hundred and sixty yards rushing. Now, they didn't have any explosives. They ran the ball I think it was thirty six thirty eight times something like that.

So they just kept grinding away at you know, four or five yards a crack what does the Packers defense need to do to not let the opposing team's ground game, you know, dictate things, maybe quite so much as what we've seen the last two You have to win up front and in the trenches. And I think this is the one thing that's been sort of the drawback here for Green Bay is that three man rush and dime

packages has been exceptional. They're getting more pressure out of that package than any other time than I can remember. When they go four man rush. They can win with even fronts. You've seen some of the you know, the Saber metric kind of you know, next gen stats talking about how much the Packers are winning without having to send the blitzer. But the other thing, the other component about this is gap integrity, in making sure that you hold up, you know, your edges, and in not allowing

guys to seep through. That was I thought, honestly against Minnesota, I thought they played pretty well. They gave up the seventy five yard but for the most part, I felt like they contained it. The one thing that was tough about that game against the Broncos is whether it was Freeman or whether it was Lindsay, they just were able to extend runs a yard or two more than you wanted them to. They didn't get those tackles for loss as much as they need to. They didn't get as

many of those second and nine situations. Just always seem like they're sitting in second and six, third and five, and that makes it a little bit more difficult in terms of trying to stop them on third down. I think the key is being able to close that up. Now They've had some moving parts. You had b J. Goodson jumping in there now after he got you know,

traded to Green Bay at the beginning of September. Uh. Certainly, you know Raven Green who I thought played exceptional in that game against Chicago, while he's out of the equation now for at least the next eight weeks depending on how that plays out for his ankle injury. So I just think if you get back to playing the run that these the way that they feel that they can play it, there is an opportunity here because Miles Sanders and Jordan Howard are off to a slow start too. Yeah,

it was interesting. I went through the defensive film against the Denver Broncos and it reinforced for me how much of a team effort run defense is in this league because when the Broncos were getting some I won't won't say explosive runs, but when they were getting those seven and eight yard runs, the ones you were talking about, they're going to move the chains, run yeah, the yard or too you know, farther than you want. It was

it was just one guy. You know. It was one play where Dean Lowry maybe gets shoved out of his gap a little bit too far. There's one play where Kenny Clark gets double team and kind of gets spun around and then the running back runs right past him. You know, another play, maybe it's you know, maybe it's Blake Martinez or b J Goodson, you know, getting getting caught up in the wash, so to speak, in the

middle of things. All it takes is one guy being not quite in the right position and then Lindsay and Freeman were taking advantage of that. They had the vision to see where it was and then boom they hit it and and you know they get an eight or a nine yard run or something like that. It just goes. It just goes to show how much of a collective

effort run defense is. And you have that, you have that one little breakdown and suddenly another team can start to move the chains and control the tempo with the ground game. The other part of it, of course, is that because the Packers offense hasn't quite found its footing. If the Packers offense is doing what you're hoping that they can do through the second and third quarters of that game, then maybe the Broncos can't stick with the run quite as long to stay to stay in the game.

I was sort of surprised how they did stick with it, though they did. They stuck with it the two scores in the fourth quarter. I was like, Okay, well now they're gonna they kept and they kept running it. But yeah, but the score is to ten in the third quarter, and they put together the long drive, they got the touchdown on the fourth and goal. They were still using

the running game at that point. If you know, if the Packers offense does one more thing prior to that and maybe makes it a three score game in the second half, if you're up by seventeen instead of by fourteen, then that changes how the opposing offensive coordinator looks at things as well. So all all of this stuff goes hand in hand. But uh um, but really it just seemed like against the Broncos, if there was one guy who got shoved out of a gap or something, boom

like that's where they hit it. And uh, um Packer. It's it's just every guy has to really be on top of his game when you're facing these good running Yeah, and I tipped my cab to you know, Tyler Lancaster and Fidel Brown and obviously the rotation they had going in with that bass. But I mean they did lose Montrevias Adams for that game with the shoulder. You're probably

not going to get him back for this one. He's been estimated as a d MP this week, I think, and Trevius has played really well and I like him in that role because he's sort of a clog, you know, he's he clogged stuff. But yet either's some athleticism there too. Uh that that's I feel like very subtly, that's that's been a little bit of a loss there. So you're

gonna need guys to step up in those moments. And the other thing is too, I mean, just get back to your fundamentals, right, I mean, it's the game tackling. It's not allowing guys to you know, break it along the sidelines when a guy gets out. Um. That was one of the things I did think that Denver did really well. It wasn't just the between the tackle stuff. They got guys open in space and made people miss.

Now there's a guy on Philadelphia side that's thirty six years old and he's been doing this for a long time in Darren Sprawls that the Packers are well familiar with. And that's another player in this game I think they're gonna have to be cognizant of. I think you look at zach Ertz, he's off to a slower start than he was last year. But that's a big wind condition there for for Carson Wentz. So well, you're probably not going to see de Shan Jackson and el Shan Jeffrey

is gonna be coming back. Um, so there will be that component to it. There are a lot of players that I feel I can still be dangerous for this Eagles offense, and with Carson Wentz behind the controls, you can overlook it. Yeah, all right, Well, before we go here, West, anybody who's kind of your behind the scenes potential unsung hero, the guy nobody's talking about in this matchup that maybe shows up and makes a big player does something big

on Thursday night. I think Robert Tanian's right there, and we're gonna see exactly what happens with Jimmy Graham. He's dealing with a growing in a quad injury right now. Was estimated as a non participate Monday, was then upgraded to limited, so we'll see exactly where he is at. But man, I just think the narrative changes a hundred You know, if you're able to catch that forty three yard or there, Tanian doesn't kind of you know, press the break a little bit and then close to the

after looking for it. If you're able to keep that in stride, I think that would have been a really explosive play, not only for the offense, but for that tight end position group tany and there. I think there's gonna be opportunities for him in this game. I think the way that the defense is constructed with Schwartz, you can win in the middle of the field. So I guess if I had to pick one, I'm not saying

he's gonna have a hundred yards. You don't need a hundred yards, but I mean you get that twenty eight yard catch like he did a couple of weeks ago that can open up a drive that can make all the difference. Yeah, the guy I'm going to keep an eye on, and this one I think is Tremont Williams. And I say that for mainly this reason. Adrian am has had the pick in week one, Kevin King had the pick in week two, Darnell Savage has a pick in week three, and Jr. Alexander has the strip fumble recovery.

So which guy who's playing a lot of snaps in the secondary? Whose turn is it? Right? It's Tremont Williams, So go, I'll go. I'll go with him. He's a he's a guy that, uh you know, he's such a glue guy in sense for for the secondary, and we haven't seen him make any big plays yet, and I just think, you know, maybe it's time for number thirty

eight to show up. I do have to slightly disagree with I mean, the play against Allen Robinson was pretty, but it wasn't a takeaway, right, it wasn't a turn overplay. But yes, you're right, that play, that play in week one down the sideline against Chicago, that was a big time play by the veteran, not to correct you, but yeah, in terms of takeaways, he's still looking for that. The other thing I gotta just touch on really quickly here, Zach Ertz is a problem. And you know, not just

for the Packers, for the NFL. You saw that last season. The guy, the guy's a matchup issue that needs to stay up on him. You know, Blake Martinez was talking. He saw plenty of him in college. So whether it's Martinez, whether it's Tremon, whether it's Adrian Amos or maybe even Josh Jackson as he's rotated in in the kind of a safety type role in the dime, whoever comes across his coverage has to stay up on their keys because it just he can hurt you in so many different ways.

That was such a safety blanket, not only for Nick Foles and and Wentz, but you know, you just see how this offense flows when he's going. He cannot let him get his wind in his sales there to uh, you know, make a difference. Yeah, I agree with you. That's one of the matchups in this game that I'm I'm really interested to see just how Mike Petton decides to play that with Earth's who does he want to

have primary responsibility on him. Is he going to keep changing it up in terms of whether it's a linebacker or safety or or how is he going to go about that there? Because that is that is one guy.

Sprowls is obviously another one, But Art's is a guy who's who's one of those chess piece type of players in in the xs and ohs that that you got to find a You got to find an answer for him, even if it's not the same answer on every snap, you got to find an answer for With all due respect to Kyle Rudolph, Um, you know, they really haven't The Packers haven't seen like an elite type tight end

yet they missed Trey Burton in week one. Rudolph is at that point in his career where he's not quite as explosive as a guy like Earth's and then you know Denver's working through the issues that they have at that spot. So I just think this is a new element, it's a new wrinkle, and I'm just curious to see how the Packers contend with it. Yeah, all right, Well, with that, we'll call it a wrap on this edition

of Packers on Scripted. Be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team and of Thursday night's big game from lambeau Field on Packers dot com. Subscribe to us, like us on iTunes and other podcast services if you will. On Twitter, he's at west hot I'm at Mike Spofford at Packers for the team account. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We'll see you next time. Ye