M Hi, everybody. Welcome to Packers Unscripted from Packers dot Com. I am Mike Spofford. He is the one and only West Hodkowitz. We're coming to here from our studios at lambeau Field West. It's our Wednesday show, our middle of the week show, and that means we start looking ahead at the Packers next opponent, the San Francisco forty Niners. It will be a seven pm Central Time kickoff on
Sunday Night Football from Levi Stadium in Santa Clara. This forty Niners team, they are currently the top team in the NFC and tied for the best record in all of football at nine and one. Um, let's take a dive here into the offense and defense for the forty Enners. On offense, Jimmy Garoppolo is the quarterback. Last year was supposed to be his first year as a starter as the guy in the spotlight that got cut short by
a knee injury. So this year he's the guy and he's had some ups and downs in terms of the statistics and whatnot. But at the end of the day, the forty nine are nine and one and they look to me at the quarterback position. Like they have a quarterback whose arrow is pointing out he's a winner. I mean, that's the biggest thing that stands out to me. He was a winner when he had to fill in, and with the New England Patriots, he's been a winner since
he's gotten to San Francisco. I don't know the exact stats. I want to say it's something like nineteen and two as a starter, and there is something to be said. I'm not one of those guys that subscribes the quarterback wins, but you can't also deny the fact that this guy's had a lot of success in a very short window of time with what he's being asked to do. And last week I thought was a very telling performance for him.
As I said on Monday's show, I mean, this is a situation where that running game, the second ranked run game in the NFL, it was there for him. Matt Breeda did not play in that game with the ankle. He needed to be able to carry the forty Niners, and as Kyle Shanahan said after the game, he did that. They won that game because of their quarterback. The thing that is interesting about him though, for this day and
age and in two thousand one. No one would have thought anything different to this, but he does, you know, put the ball in jeopardy at times. He has ten interceptions in ten games this season. That is a number that you know, you go back to again twenty years ago, sixteen interceptions for a season. No one would scoff at that, but now you know teams are putting such a premium on protecting the football. That is one slight window that
I think the Packers could potentially take advantage of. But at the end of the day, this is a guy that's going to probably end up throwing for well over four thousand yards. He's proven that he's a starting caliber quarterback in this league in credit to John Lynch, and you know, you look at the job that Kyle Shanahan's done being able to find him, develop him, and turn him into the quarterback that I think a lot of
people thought he could be. Well, you mentioned the way the Fortys won their last game, but for the bulk of the season, Kyle Shannon the hand has predicated this offense on the ground game and they have what a lot of people have referred to as a three headed monster on the ground. When everyone is healthy, Matt Brita, Tevin Coleman Raheem Mosterd. Now Brita is the guy who's been injured of late, and at this point we really don't know exactly what his status will be for Sunday
night against the Packers. But these three guys, if you if you take their numbers and combine them in terms of looking at it as though this running game had one feature running back. The production they've had on the
ground is considerable. As you said, they were ranked number two in the league in rushing offense going into the Arizona game, and really that their last two games the Seattle Seahawks, which they lost in overtime and then the comeback victory over Arizona, those are the only two games this year where they've really struggled from the football, struggled to get it going and had to put the game
on garoppolo shoulders. And you know, with where the Packers are with their run defense and some of the struggles they've had, especially over the last month against the run, you know Kyle Shanahan is coming into this game looking at getting that ground game cranked up again. Yeah, and it's funny you mentioned the three at a monster I'd even throw the fourth head in there too with Kyle us Check. He doesn't carry the ball like those guys do,
but he's a valid point out of the backfield. So it is kind of a happy accident how this all came together for San Francisco, though Jerick McKinnon was supposed to be the guy for them two years ago, and he's had a series of injuries that he's had to work through. Yeah, they paid him some pretty big money to come over from Minnesota as a as a free agent and and to be a key guy in the running game, but injuries have prevented him from really stepping
into the spotlight. Yeah, So Brita and most they became sort of the one two combo, and then you add Tevin Coleman into the mix, and and here you are with three different backs that all present different challenges. That's what stands out to me. It's really interesting though, because it seems like out of the three, none of them have really been playing their best ball at the same time.
Maybe one guy breaks out and then somebody else does, but it's not like it's just been one continual circle of guys just going in there and getting ten twenty yards of pop. I mean, they they just kind of wear you down. That's the way they approached this thing. They felt like they need to make a big move at the debt trading deadline. They went and got you know, Emmanuel Sanders. I mean, you've seen Deebo Samuel step up for them at receiver. George Kittle has missed a couple
of games here with knee and ankle injuries. But you know, if this team is going to be as successful as I think they feel they can be with the start that they're off to and and you know the identity they've established, it has to start on the ground and from the Packers perspective, that's where you have to stop them. You have to be able to do that. Now, that's not an automatic keat to victory. Just ask the Arizona Cardinals.
You also need to keep tabs on Garoppolo. But that's what is the most dangerous about the fort They can just beat you in so many different ways, and over the course of season they've proven that and that is ultimately what has gotten them to nine and one. Well, you mentioned George Kittle, the tight end. He is the leading received or on this team with I believe it's five forty one receiving yards and he is still the leading receiver on this team, despite the fact that he
has missed the last two games. Now he's another guy that we aren't sure what his injury status will be come Sunday night. But when you look at this game from a matchup standpoint, the two things that have, you know, really bugged the Packers over the last four to six weeks have been the running game and have been handling big time tight ends. And uh, this is exactly what the forty Niners build their offense on if they can get George Kittle back. And that's taking nothing away from
um Raw. I believe it's Ross Dwelly. I was trying to remember the first name. Um He's obviously stepped in as the number two tight end in Kittle's absence, but George Kittle is a premier player in this league. You've been able to watch Kiddle much this year, only only a little. So I've watched I've watched San Francisco quite a bit because spoil alert checks notes he's on my fantasy team. But here's here's the thing is that you
can't replicate him. Either he plays or he doesn't and Dwell, he's made a couple of catches here, he has a couple of touchdowns. But kit will just add such a different to mention to this game. And it's not even the fact that I mean, as long as catch this here's forty five yards. It's the way he moves the chains. I mean, you want to look at a running game that wins down in distance and then you've got a guy like Kittle that can win third downs, third and manageables.
That's how they moved the football, That's how they've been a difference maker. He didn't really set the world on fire this year like he did last season when he sort of was just their go to for their entire offense. Yeah, his numbers were off the charts for a tight end, completely ridiculous, credible. So it's come down to earth. But it's funny when you have forty six catches for five and forty one yards and two touchdowns and you've missed two games and that's coming back down to earth in
Week twelve in the NFL. I mean, he's just he is a difference maker. He is a monster. If he plays, that is the number one focus. You have to shut him down. You cannot let him get loose, especially with some of these issues the Packers have had against tight ends as of late. If he doesn't play, though I'm not saying that's a position you can overlook dwell, he could step up. There's different guys that could become targets for Garoppolo in this offense, but there is no one
like George Kittle. And you can ask Robert Tyne and he trained with them during the offseason. They're good friends, they share an agent. This guy is just different. He is arguably the best tight end in the game right now, him and Travis Kelsey probably going back and forth for that distinction. And if he's out there, he's problems. Yeah, yeah,
And that's certainly an injury situation. We'll be watching all week long and it could be one of those things that we may not find out until ninety minutes before kickoff whether he's suiting up or not. Because, uh, the forty Niners, they understand how big this game is just
as much as the Packers do. When you have nine and one versus eight and two going at it in the NFC in Week twelve, and the forty Niners are going to give all these injured guys as much opportunity as possible to to get ready to take the field Sunday night. Yeah, I mean this is one thing too. They are so banged up right now, the four d
Niners are. And Kyle Shanahan, to his credit, he went to the podium on Monday and he went through kind of where they are with everything, and he admitted that as we talked about, there's a guy coming back from a concussion, one of their linebackers are open it back. The rest of it is kind of up in the air. Brita Kittle, Sanders working through the rib injury, even you know, Deebo Samuel having a shoulder coming out of that game. Yeah, Emmanuel Sanders had missed some time and then he was
back for the Arizona game. But it seems that his his status is not entirely certain moving forward, even though he came back and played last Sunday. Yeah, I'm actually I'm gonna look that up. I'm kind of curious how much he actually has played him in that game. Yeah, he only played thirty six snaps, So they were very smart with him. The hope was is that he's going to be able to you know, take another step this week.
It didn't sound like there's any setbacks. And if you follow the forty niners at all, Sanders has been a great addition for them. They felt like they were a veteran receiver away from really being able to fill that offense out. And in his short time here, the three weeks or whatever it's been, he's been a big target
for Jimmy probably yeah, alright. Well, shifting gears to the defensive side of the ball, the forty nine ers, their rankings, their statistics just as impressive on the defensive side as the offensive side. You don't get to eight no halfway through a season and to nine and one after ten games. About putting up some pretty good numbers this defense. The biggest thing that sticks out to me the thirty nine sacks that they have. They actually have a plus twenty
differential in sacks. They have thirty nine sacks as the defense, they've only allowed nineteen on offense. That's a pretty big split. This defense also has twenty two takeaways, which is third in the league. Now, there turnover margin for the season is only plus five and that's partly due to the those interceptions of Garoppolos that you mentioned earlier, but twenty two takeaways is number three in the league. This defense, this defense gets after it west and the pass rush
in particular. Four different guys in the defensive front have five or more sack in the season. You have Eric Armstead with eight, Nick Bosa, the rookie number two overall draft pick with seven, d Ford with six and a half. Branson is a Brentson Buckner. Sorry, that's going back with yeah, sorry, DeForest Buckner with five. Now Ford is a guy another one of these guys on the injury list that they're
not sure, they're not sure what's going on there. But still you've got you've got four guys on that defensive front with five or more sacks on the year. You can't just say, okay, well, we need to we need to shut down Nick Bosa. It doesn't it doesn't work that way with these guys. Yeah, And it's just incredible
to see how how they've rebuilt that defense. You know, from the units that you and I remember from two thousand eleven through and you know, there's so many talented players and you had you had that group of Justin Smith and Navarro, Bowman and and um Um the number fifty two. Patrick Weller, the guy in the middle. I was trying to remember I had some pretty good dbs to go with the group. Slowly but surely, they've built this thing back right and made you. Look at Jimmy Ward.
They drafted him a number of years ago out of Northern Illinois. Fred Warner, who's leading them in tackles right now. He was one of those auxiliary pieces when all the Dominos fell from that trade that they made with the Bears. They ended up with him on one of those extra trades. But let's you know, Mike Spofford, let's be real here. Nick Bosa is incredible, much like his brother. Someone asked us an insider inbox this week, is there any other
team that's had to face both boases this here? Pittsburgh actually had to do it. But it's not an easy task. He's going to be a guy to keep an eye on. I just I love so many things about it. Eric Armstead as a really consistent player. You know, you go back and look at this Mike a number of years ago, Solomon Thomas, he was supposed to be like their big
pass rusher. He's a rotational guy. The third or overall pick from two years ago, three years ago, they was that was the guy that that was the guy they took at number three when they gave up that pick to the Bears. When the Bears took Trabisky at two, then they took they took the Stanford defensive I'm in there at number three anyway, I digress, But yeah, I mean Kwan, Alexander, Richard Sherman. They just they've drafted well,
they've signed well. D Ford was one of the biggest acquisitions of the off season, and they've found a way with Robert Sala, who goes back a long way with Matt Lafleur, and they both were quality control assistants with the Houston Texans to building this group up. Because Mike, let's look at this for a second. You were talking about the turnover differential. Here's a couple other numbers for you here. Fourteen points per game difference as opposed to
their opponents. They're averaging fourteen points more game than their opponents, a league best fifteen point five points per game, an average difference per game, and total yardage of a hundred and thirty three point six. They are second right now in total yardage as far as the defense one hundred and fifty three and they are the best in the game right now against the past Mike a hundred and
forty two point five passing yards allowed this season incredible. Well, when you look at this team was absolutely dominant through the first seven eight games of the season, if you want to look at some things are changing though, because through the first eight, sorry, through the first seven games of the season, this Forts defense gave up more than seventeen points only once in seven games. But in the last three games they've given up twenty five points per game.
They've given up twenty five in a victory, twenty uh seven in a loss in overtime, and then I'm sorry, they've given up twenty six per game because it's gone and twenty six. So and yes, there have been some injuries involved Kwon Alexander, who you mentioned, a linebacker in the middle of everything. He's out for the rest of the year. He's been placed on injured reserve. So that's
been a big loss for them. They have and we mentioned d Ford is banged up, so they're dealing with some things and their statistics are starting to regress at least a little bit towards the mean, because they're early in the season. Nobody could even do anything against these guys. And now over the last three games, there have been some you know, some chinks in the arm or so to speak, and teams have been able to put up twenty plus points and give them give themselves a chance.
And certainly the Arizona Cardinals had opportunities to beat them twice and uh and the Seattle Seahawks pulled out that overtime game. Well, this is where the real test is gonna come for San Francisco, because, yeah, you do look at the first half of the season, the Bengals still have struggled to find themselves. Pittsburgh was working through some stuff. The Browns offense was not a good place. The Rams
have been struggling. Washington's Washington Carolina had a backup quarterback. Well, now you go and you face Cliff Kingsbury's offense and what they do in Arizona. You see them twice in three weeks Seattle, and you play the extra quarter in that game. Now you got Green Bay. Now you have Baltimore, the top ranked offense in the league. That you have New Orleans, whom I think is three an offense in the league. They got some real challenges coming up, and
this is the beginning half of it. And I think, you know, talking to this week and hearing Matt Lafleur speak, they understand the challenge that is in front of them and they embrace it. I think there's a part of Matt Lafloor, with all the ties that he has to both Shanahan and Sala, that he's eager to be able to kind of match wits a little bit, because honestly, who doesn't like playing chess with their friends every once in a while, right, I mean, they want to be
able to have that challenge. This this battle though, it's just incredible, and you and I are going to talk about it all week long. But the implications of this, what this is gonna mean, not only for green Bay. So much is put on green Bay right now, trying to be in a tie for the league, for the number one seed right now in the NFC, trying to
maintain that advantage in the NFC North. But you've got to look at it from San Francisco's perspective to their nine and one, and they still don't have that much breathing room in their own division. I even laid out the scenario that it's possible that they could be fourteen and two and still end up being a wild card if they win out, but then they lose the Seattle again.
I mean, these are all the different, you know, mastinations of this playoff race that has to be taken into account because while there are six or seven teams that have kind of removed themselves from the pack, at this point, those six and seven teams are so tightly knit together that you know, the stake's going to be higher. And that is why they're putting this thing on Sunday Night football and you and I are flying in at five in the morning on Monday morning. That's right, well, and
that you said it. The thing that is really interesting about this matchup is it's not just eight and two and nine and one, two of the teams that are at the top of the NFC, but it's what's going on in both of the divisions. Because the Niners are nine and one, but the Seahawks are eight and two right behind them, The Packers are eight in two, the Vikings who are on there by this week, they're eight
and three right behind Green Bay. So and and then it's not just these four teams involved, but you have New Orleans there as well, and then you wonder, you wonder, Okay, you know, are the Rams suddenly going to maybe make a run because they get another shot at the Forts here? And uh and who knows what else might happen in that division. So it's really interesting all the things that are going on and the impact that this game could
have on the bigger picture. But that being said, even after this game, there's still five more weeks of the regular season. As as these top teams are going to go head to head a bunch, we would be remiss if we didn't mention when we're talking about all these injuries with the San Francisco forty Niners. Just to back up a second, their kicker, Robbie Gold has been injured and their backup kicker whose name is escaping me at
the moment. He's the young rookie from he McLaughlin. He he hit the big forty seven yard or whatever it was to send the Seattle game that Monday night game into overtime. But then he just completely duck hooked and a winning opportunity in overtime that then gave the Seahawks new life and Seattle ended up pulling that game out.
So another key injury there, because Robbie Gold, as we all know, veteran guy, extremely reliable, not quite sure actually, uh where the forts are with McLoughlin and whether Robbie Gold will be back this week or not. So that's another injury situation to keep an eye. Yeah, and Gold is having a weird year two man. I mean, after all that conversation in the off season about if he wanted to go back to San Francisco or not, or
if you want to get back to the Midwest. Well, now he's suddenly thirteen of twenty on the year, and that is coming after making thirty three of thirty four last year and thirty forty one the year before that. So it wasn't really like Gold before this whole soft tissue injury popped up was really lighting the world on fire. San Francisco is trying to find some answers for that position in and above that injury. But yeah, McLoughlin made such a clutch kick and then you know, put the
next one in the tunnel. That's just the way it goes for kickers at times. Kind of just a whole home game last week made a field goal, made three three or four extra points and and got out of there. So, um, yeah, we're as Santahan also included with that, you know, kind of conversation he had on Monday morning, another guy that's gonna be going through the process and they'll see if he's available comes Sunday. Yeah. Well, as I've been saying, we will be watching the injury situation on the flip
side of things the Packers right now. We'll see what happens as the week goes along in practice. But the Packers coming out of the bye week, all players on the fifty three man roster, we're going through practice to at least some extent on Monday. We'll see how that goes through the week. But but it looks like the Packers from an injury standpoint, are in about as good a shape as you could hope for for mid November. Yea. And from a personal perspective, it was really good to
see Trey Smith actually on the field. To now we don't know for a fact where he stands in the concussion protocol. Sometimes guys practice and that's part of them passing through that, but it was kind of a scary incident. He had with that tackle. That was quite a collision. Obviously, he's right now the only guy lists on the depth chart as a kickoff returner and a punt returner for Green Bay. But you know, just to see him back
out there appearing to be okay was really positive sign. Yeah. Well, we will follow what goes on in practice and with locker room interviews over the next couple of days, but for now we will sign off on this edition of Packers Unscripted. Be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team leading up to this big Sunday night football game on Packers dot com. You can subscribe us, subscribe to us, like us on iTunes and other podcast services. You can find him on Twitter at west Hod I'm
at Mike Spofford at Packers for the team account. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We'll see you next time, ye