#561 Packers Unscripted: What it'll take

might as well get right into it here. Offensively, defensively, I'll let you start where you want to. What do the Packers need to do to win this game? Well, they need to be able to protect the quarterback. And what I mean by that is Jacksonville only has eight sacks on the season. You're not anticipating a heavy pass rush. But for Green Bay, I really think that this game really boils down to is if Aaron Rodgers is time to work, the Packers likely are going to be able

to roll in this one. I just think that's where the tempo is gonna get said. I think that's where the tone is going to happen, and Jacksonville I mean it was so recently, Mike, they were saying, you know, Saxonville, there was so much energy and enthusiasm about that unit, and it just hasn't been there this season. Josh Allen, as I pointed out on Tuesday's show, you know, he does have two and a half sacks here in the last three games, but that's all he has this season.

You know, it's it's been kind of he had a slow start, then had an injury. You know, Miles Jack has had some stuff as well. So you know, you wrote a story on Packers dot Com looking at Davante Adams and and Aaron Jones both being back on the field now, not one or the other, both of them,

if you get that one to combination. Going again for Rogers, with what they've been doing offensively and especially the way they've started games this season, I just think if green Day imposes their will in those first couple of series, that could be enough to at least set the tone for the rest of that game. Yeah. I think a big part of this game, because as we know, this is a game the Packers should win if they play well,

they play their game. I think the start of the game is crucial here because you don't you don't want to let the Jacksonville Jaguars think they can hang around and and and make a game of this. Frankly, this is a game. This is a game that the Packers should be able to win comfortably. I'm not saying it's going to be some college blowout like to six, That's not what I'm saying. But in the NFL, you know what a comfortable win feels like. And that's really what

the Packers should do here. And I think if they I mean Packers have scored on their opening possession all eight games so far this year. Obviously, you want to keep that going, make it nine, get control of the game in the first quarter. Don't really let the Jaguars think that this rookie quarterback Jake Luton is going to come into lambeau Field and upset Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. And I think Green Bay will be in good shape,

you know. And the one thing that stands out to me too, And you look at Jacksonville this season, they've scored points in the first quarter over eight They're averaging three points a game in the first quarter. Now they've gotten better. I mean they put up sixty. In the second, they're still getting outscored their seventy one to sixty, but a sixty four to twenty four deficit out of the gate. I think that kind of speaks to the issues they've

had early on in games. So if Green Bay is able to again go out and be able to do some of the things they've done through their first eight games of the season, I just think it sets the dominoes up for the rest of the thing to go. How Matt Lafleur and Mike Petton would wish it to be, Yeah, I thought it was. It was interesting asking questions yesterday the story that you mentioned that I wrote about Aaron Jones and Davante Adams being on the field at the

same time together. You look at these first eight games, it's only happened three and a half games out of eight that the two of them have been on the field together, and only only for two games since Week two. So the Packers are hoping that they get into a stretch here where both of those guys are on the field together. And I thought Adams explained it from the challenge of the defense side of the ball. I thought he explained it really well. In terms of deciding what

to do with your safeties. If you're gonna play you know what they call cover two or too high, keeping both safeties back, that's how you take away the big play in the passing game. But it makes it a lot harder to clamp down on Aaron Jones because if he makes if he gets a hole and makes one linebacker miss, suddenly you know you can have an explosive

run of fIF yards the flip side. If you're only gonna play single high safety because you want that other safety down in the box to prevent those explosive runs by Aaron Jones, Suddenly, Davante Adams and Marquis Velde scant Link for that matter, can be big problems because you're gonna have a lot of harder time taking away the deep passing place. So when the Packers have and again I'm not taking anything away from Jamal Williams and what he did in the backfield and everything, but we know

we've heard it from the coaches and the players. When Aaron Jones is out there, he just brings a different element to this offense. And now that he and Davantae Adams are both healthy and hopefully we'll be playing together regularly. I think that's the sign that this offense can can you know, kick it up another name. You and I discussed it on Tuesday, but it bears repeating. I mean, when you look at Aaron Jones, you're not gonna look at his box score from the forty Niners game and

be completely blown away. And he was fifteen carries, maybe fifty eight rushing yards. Not one of the ones that he's going to put up on his mantle. But the fact was just watching the way that San Francisco and Robert Sala had to defend them at the beginning of that game, as opposed to if they would have had a practice squad player like Dexter Williams back there, or you know, Tyler Irvin who hasn't played a traditional backfield running back role this season. The game changed with Jones

doing that. The other thing is to Mike, you mentioned it with the Cover two game that defensive coordinators have to play. If you give Aaron Jones a hole, Uh, the yardage that he takes out of that is just He's He's the type of running back that if you give him four, he's gonna find eight. And it's just his shifting nous, the way he can knife through the line in the biggest positive for Green Bay was coming

out of that game. Even there were questions about the calf going in, there were no questions about it coming out. He was a full participant on Wednesday. The Packers would hope that, you know, through the Thursday and Friday good

to go. In addition to the fact that Jamal Williams now is off the COVID list after being held there precautionarily and not being able to play against the forty, So all those things together, especially depending on what happens with Alan Lazar this week or whenever he's able to get back onto the field. It's been sort of this dark, hazy time for the Packers offense, but yet there's still a top ten unit and now they're getting all their weapons back. Yeah. Absolutely well on the defensive side of

the ball. For me, this game comes down to one thing that the Packers need to do in my mind, and it is eliminate the big plays. And I say that because when you have a rookie quarterback coming in here like Jake Luton, the last thing you want to do is let him do what he did at the beginning of the Houston game, which has hit a seventy yard touchdown pass right out of the gate, and that big play kept Jacksonville in that game the entire way, and they end end up, you know, losing a close

one there at the end. With a rookie quarterback, more than any other type of signal caller for the opposing offense, you want to make him have to put together a ten twelve third team play drive in order to get points because rookie quarterbacks are going to make mistakes. If you give up the big chunk plays and he can get points on a three or four play scoring drive, that makes his job a heck of a lot easier.

The more you can stretch him out and make him earn it all the way down the field, the greater chance that a mistake is going to happen, and then you hope for the Packers defense to pounce on a turnover. We'll look at that game against Houston, right, I mean, his one touchdown passes a seventy three yard bomb to DJ Sharks. So I mean, these are those type of plays that can really tell the football game if you

let them. The thing that I think we learned the most with this offense and with Luton in particular, is that you don't want to discount or discredit anybody. I kind of pose the question off of you know what I think you're gonna be reading this Saturday, UH to Jerry Gray, the Packers defensive backs coach, about what this process is like getting ready for a rookie quarterback. What kind of you know, what do you tell your guys as far as defending them or what kind of opportunities

would have been there? And he takes a very baseline approach at it. The way he kind of laid it out was well, at some point Tom Brady was a rookie sixth round pick two our first year, second year player too. There were defenses that undoubtedly took him for granted and he made them pay. You got to prepare like you're seeing the starting quarterback of an NFL team and not really care about what the rest of the you know, the box score says or the bio says.

They have to be ready because otherwise you're gonna get burned in Green Bay depending on if Gire Alexander plays in this game. As he's working his way through the concussion protocol right now you might be going in with Josh Jackson and Kadar Holman as you're starting boundary cornerbacks,

your perimeter cornerbacks. So the main focus has to be on what Green Bay is doing now so much about what Jacksonville is going to give them, because if you focus too much and you take for granted what Jacksonville is gonna throw at you because they're, you know, one in seven and they have all these things working against them,

that's where you get burned. Yeah. Absolutely, And you hope, obviously, as we talked about on our last show that the defense getting the two turnovers against the San Francisco forty nine last Thursday ups the season total of takeaways from four to six. You hope that maybe that's the start of some momentum here on defense too, to generating those takeaways that were such a big part of the defense's success in Now you're facing another rookie quarterback, not not

that Mullins was. Mullins was not a rookie, but was a backup quarterback. You're facing another backup quarterback here this week that certainly the Packers on the defensive side of the ball would like to generate a couple of more turnovers and and see if they can set a certain standard for how they're going to play and the ways in which they can take the football away and try to carry that through the second half of the season. Yeah,

and and this is where it has to start. We're in the third quarter now, this is where Green Bay is gonna have this game against Jacksonville and then everything ramps up. Indianapolis has the best defense in the NFL right now. Statistically, Chicago is no slouch either, even though they've had a couple of games going against them. Philadelphia always beats this plays this team tough and beat them the last time. That game was actually at lambeau Field.

So yeah, you can't take anything, you know, just thinking that. Okay, well we're six and two now, we got a big win against the forty Niners. Now we'll just press forward. You have to build on what they did against the forty Niners offense, defense, and special teams, and it starts on Sunday against Jacksonville. All right, Well, quickly hear what's a little bit of sponsored business serious x M NFL Radio Channel eight is the only radio outlet dedicated to

the National Football League seven days a week. Sixty five days a year, and Packers fans be sure to gear up for game day. Open a Packers checking account from Associated Bank and score a fifty dollar Packers Pro Shop gift card. Learn more at Associated bank dot com. Backslash Packers All Rights. I want to get your thoughts here on a handful of other games this week in the NFL, because there are some interesting ones to discuss, and actually I want to start with the one that's going on

tonight as we tape this on Thursday morning. Thursday Night Football will be the Indianapolis Colts at the Tennessee Titans, a big matchup in the a f C South, the two top teams in the a f C South, both of whom are on the Packers schedule in the second half of the season, and next week the Colts being that opponent now they will be coming. They will be coming back to Lucas Oil Stadium, but off of the mini by with the weekend off, just like the Packers

are now after playing on a Thursday night. But this will be an interesting one here with as you said, top defense in the league as far as yardage goes, one of the top in terms of points allowed, with the Colts against a against the Titans team that certainly they they've had a couple of hiccups, but since uh, you know, last December and into January, this is a Titans team that has played with anybody and everybody, and they've they've established themselves as a real formidable force in

the a f C. Yeah, and I think over the last few years now, we've started to actually appreciate I think more and more Mike Vrabel isn't just an underrated coach anymore. He's quickly becoming one of the best coaches in the league, and especially on the defensive side of the ball with what they've implemented there the last few

seasons and some of the changes that they've made. This is a gut check game for Indianapolis, though, because while they sit at five and three and they haven't lost back to back games all season, it always seems like when they take one step forward, they just take another step back and they're still stuck in neutral Philip rivers this season ten touchdowns, seven interceptions only I think seven points six yards per pass yards per attempt this year,

so a little bit down in that regard. They also need to figure out what their running game is right now? Is it Jonathan Taylor, is it Jordan Wilkins Who's going to be the face of that in the second half of the season. So I think, much like how we've been learning more and more about the Bears, positive and negative, I think this is gonna be a real checkpoint on the cold season as well. And from the Titans perspective, it's a wide open top of that conference right now.

Everybody has a shot at that top seed and there's basically five teams that all that could arguably be the top seeds. So uh, it's a kind of a taking bit care of business sort of matchup for them and seeing if Derrick Henry can keep doing what he's been doing. Yeah. Well, as far as uh these a f C NFC matchups, which the Packers in Jacksonville is obviously one of those, the most interesting one on the schedule Buffalo traveling out

west to face Arizona. Now, last week Seattle traveled across the country to Buffalo to play the Bills and Buffalo chalked up a big victory there. Now Buffalo is the team that has to make the cross country trip, uh down to the Southwest to Arizona. To face the Cardinals from the NFC West. This is this is a really interesting one because there's a there's a lot of a lot of positive vibe, a lot of hype around the Bills and Josh Allen and rightly so, but also Kyler

Murray and uh and the Arizona Cardinals. They're trying to they're trying to, you know, stake their claim to some territory here in a really tough NFC West division, and this this one, there aren't there probably isn't a lot of the country that's going to get to watch this one in terms of the way the network stuff is uh, you know, shaking out for this week. But this is a really interesting matchup. It's great and it's funny. I just got done talking about you know, he had sort

of an underrated coach in Mike Frabel. Then you've got Sean McDermott with the Bills, and I mean he might be the most underrated of all and the best might be more impressed over the last handful of years, like what he has done with with that with that Buffalo Bill, especially during some years where the didn't have really a set quarterback and yet they still found ways to win well. Now they probably by all intensive purposes. In my opinion, I think they got the best quarterback of that draft

class right now. I mean, Josh Allen is looking dynamic. He can throw, he can pass, he can run, he can basically do whatever they need him to do at any given moment to win a football all game. Now, you're gonna be going up against an Arizona defense and has had some questions to answer. But Cliff Kingsbury's offense with Kyler Murray at the controls, they can play with

anybody in the National Football League. And you look at Murray, I think last week he was an up for NFL Ground Player the Week with what he did with his feet. When I mentioned Alan and being so multifaceted, Murray is of that same bilk and even more importantly, that conference or that division. I should say, you have to win every game that's in front of you. The Bills are a massive test to being able to do that. Yeah, that one's going to be going to be a good

one to follow. Another one to mention here within the NFC West, that tough division we've been talking about. Seattle is at the l A. Rams and as I mentioned on our last show. The Rams are five and three at the midway point, but four of their remaining eight games they have two with the Seahawks and two with the Cardinals. They have a lot in front of them that they can if they can get on a run here, they can take command of things. Seattle six and two tied for the top record in the NFC right now

with the Packers in the Saints. But the Seahawks have lost two of their last three after a five and oh start, and they have a defense that statistically is among the bottom of the of the league. They've got problems defensively. This is a really really important one in the NFC West because if Seattle wins this and gets two games up on the Rams, you know, seven and two versus five and four, things look really really different

for the Rams. But if the Rams get the win six and three, they even themselves up with the Seahawks at six and three. Whatever happens with Arizona against Buffalo, that NFC, that NFC West starts to get even more complicated, and Aaron Donald against that Seattle front too, and seeing, you know what, what's the number one way to really attack Russell Wilson collapse the pocket. He does it better than anybody in the National Football League, So that aspect

of it is really intriguing. But you know, throw this out there too. You also got to look at that game between San Francisco now having to go to New Orleans, so you know, we'll see how that works out for the four Niners, They're still gonna be missing a lot

of people. This is a massive opportunity for either the Rams of the Seahawks to really gain some traction with the Cardinals having a tough competition with the Bills and the Forts having to take care of arguably now the hottest team in the NFL in the Saints, who I think many left for dead as recently as three weeks ago. So that just sort of tells you where this season has gone. And yet for the for the Rams perspective, this is what they were wanting to do after missing

the playoffs last year. Has come back and make a statement, show that Jared Goff is still our quarterback, showed that this offense can be successful in the post Todd Gurley era. And they've done all that, I mean, and along with the defense that's really difficult to sometimes solve. Yeah, no doubt well, last one to get your thoughts on, and this is the one that is the most pertinent as

far as the Green Bay Packers are concerned. Monday Night football, the Minnesota Vikings will be at Soldier Field to take on the Chicago Bears. And I've gone back and forth a little bit with the with the readers and inbox about this one. Because the Bears are five and four the Vikings are three and five. So when you get those records, you go, oh, well, you want Minnesota to beat Chicago. But I'm not so sure. Because the Bears were five and one, they have lost three in a row.

They have not solved any of their issues on offense. That offense is still really struggling and trying to find its footing. Meanwhile, the Vikings, after their one in five start, they now have two straight wins over division opponents, beating the Packers and the Lions in back to back weeks. Dalvin Cook looks as unstoppable as any running back in the league, similar to what Derrick Henry for the Titans was doing late last season. And here's the thing, Wes.

After this Monday night game at Chicago, Minnesota's next three games, Cowboys Panthers, Jaguars, three sub five hundred teams. Cowboys obviously have have been, you know, playing the quarterback carousel with with their issues Carolina. There's still questions about Christian McCaffrey and his health, and obviously Jacksonville we've been talking about

them this week. If minnesot To wins this game on Monday night and gets to four and five, they very very easily could be seven and five three more weeks from now, and all of a sudden, everybody's saying nobody wants to play the Vics, right, I mean that that's where this could be headed. Yeah, And the rumors of Mike Zimmer's demise I've been greatly exaggerated, absolutely absolutely, you know, and I've said it a million times on the show

over the last four and a half years. I have so much respect for him because, yeah, you're right about Delvin Cook. I'm not going to disagree with any of that. But statistically, I don't know how this is gonna end up going down from Mike Zimmer's defense wise, but it very well could end up being the best coaching job he's done in Minnesota truly. I mean, with what they've made work here, the last few weeks and now you've seen sort of role players develop into more defined roles

in this defense. And I think it really comes back to if you have a strong back end, if you have linebackers that you're confident in, you can make the other stuff work if you're flexible enough with it. So, uh, it's a really interesting game in you have the Vikings at three and five and the Bears at five and four, and it almost feels like you could flip the records just based on how the last three weeks it fell.

And for the Bears, I mean, this is this is the moment They're going to be going into the by here soon they have the Packers coming up on the you know very quickly as well. You've got to be able to get a win when you desperately need when you're taking on a Vikings team that's really streaking here into this third point of the season. Well, this will be interesting with regard to Dalvin Cook because we've seen him run rough shot over the Packers and the Lions

and back to back weeks. But this Bears defense, that's another outfit entirely the and this will be on the national stage on Monday night um, not on the you know, not on the fast track of of an artificial surface, but obviously that the grass surface didn't slow down Dalvin Cook here at lambeau Field a couple of weeks ago. My question to you then is, as I said, going back and forth with Packers fans the readers in inbox, as a Packers fan, which team do you root for

Monday Night? Who do you want to win this game? Yeah? I think it's probably the Vikings still, because I go back to what I said a number of weeks ago. I think it was at the San Francisco game before the Packers played. I forget which one it was, which example I use, but Green Bays at six and two, if you take care of business against Jacksonville, you're seven and three. The Packers don't have to see the Vikings again this season, unless it ends up being in the playoffs.

That is, that is the one factor here. The Packers have to play the Bears twice, no games left against the Vikings. If the Green Bay takes care of business here and the Bears fall back to five and five, you're now looking at a two game advantage here in the NFC North with seven games to go, for green Bay, I just I focus on what's in front of me, not what's behind me. I totally get what you're saying, though you know the Vikings end up coming back up

in this race. You never know what could happen in December. But Chicago is the clear and present danger right now. They're the team they're going to see at the end of the month. They're the team that's closest to them in the division. If you can knock them down another peg, I'd like Green Bay's chances to be able to close this division out. Maybe the best way to look at it from a Packers fans perspective is that the Bear and the Vikings can't both win. Somebody's got to lose

unless there's a tie. But we're not going to talk about we won't get into that. But yeah, I mean, I'm glad this game is on Monday night because we'll we'll work, you know, cover the game on Sunday. We'll put in our day after the game, work on Monday, and then it's like, Okay, go home and pop the popcorn and get ready to watch. Is a good old fashioned NFC North battle from Soldier Field. So no, it'll

be it'll be fun to watch. And again, I am interested to see how Dalvin Cook responds to this getting back onto that type of turf. And honestly, Mike, what's the only thing that's held him back to this point in his career injuries? If he stays healthy here and they keep feeding him a big workload, I mean, I said it on Tuesday's show, I'll say it one more time. He is in the running then suddenly for the best

running back title in the NFL. Yeah so, and I think he I think mentally he's going to be saying hey on Monday night football national television against the defense, I can state my case. I can state my case for for that type of recognition, and the Packers will be watching. They don't have to be a part of it, absolutely will be with that. We'll call it a wrap on this edition of Packers Unscripted. Be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team and everything with

Sunday's game against Jacksonville. It'll all be for you on Packers dot Com for West, I'm Mike. Thank you for tuning in, everybody. We'll see you next time.