Hi, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Packers Unscripted from Packers dot Com. I am Mike Spoffer, joined as always by my partner in crime, Weston Hodkowitz. We're coming to you here from different locations at lambeau Field and Wes. Yesterday we saw the first of two joint practices with the New England Patriots. The second one will take place shortly after we get done recording this episode, and then there will be the preseason game, obviously on Saturday night
at lambeau Field. So I'll just throw it out to you right off the jump here. What were your initial impressions of the joint workout on Nichki Field on Tuesday.
I'm actually gonna hide on Wednesday. On Wednesday, I'm getting them all next up to myself.
We don't know what day of the week it is around here.
It's funny. I have to tell this story quick. So we're coming up here to shoot the show this morning.
And I got into the elevator with Katie Hermson, our wonderful manager of public affairs, and she says to me, she goes, Wes, where are you going?
Like?
Where can I get you them? Like five?
She's like what's on five. I'm like me, for the last four months, me has been on five, and here we are once again. She also mentioned or I was trying to say goodbye to her, and I was like, have a terrific and then completely blanked on what day it was as well. So we're off to a great rip roar and start here this morning, Michael. But to your point too, of these practices, to everything associated with that, I'll be honest with you, Mike, I don't know how
you felt about it. We can probably talk discuss it in this platform. But that was to me one of the better, maybe the best joint practice I've seen the Packers conduct. I felt like in every phase for two hours and twenty seven minutes, there was a lot of great work that was being done. I really enjoyed watching Bill Belichick's team practice because one of the things I think gets taken for granted. Everybody's like, Okay, well, you
know you gotta do all this new age stuff. You gotta you know, have these, you know, incredible jugs, machines that can show you how Case Keenum throws a football.
You can do all these different things. Watching the first.
Team period when I was down with the defense going against the number one offense for the Patriots.
The Patriots just run.
The ball over and over and over again, and eventually they start passing too. But so much of it is old school football fundamentals, and it kind of reminds me a little bit of the way Rich Basacia coaches on special teams, where it's like you got to get the operation down before you get into the execution. And that's
what was one of my biggest takeaways from this. Now, if I can separate myself from the practice for a minute, as I wrote for one of our stories on Packers dot com, the historical significance of this is probably the
thing that hits home the most for me. The fact that you have Bill Belichick at seventy one years old, a surefire first ballot Hall of Famer whenever that day comes, probably at some point here gonna become the winningest coach NFL history, lead his New England Patriots to Green Bay for the first time for two joint practices, and the Green Bay Packers and them want to respect and admiration on this side of things. From Matt Forstaff, I thought
that was super cool too. There felt like a lot more connectivity in that joint practice than I think any of these other ones we've experienced over the last four years.
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of mutual respect going both directions. For obviously the history and tradition and everything that is associated with Lambelefield and the Packers in Green Bay. And then on the other side, what Bill Belichick and the Patriots have accomplished over the last you know, twenty years, twenty five years, it's been pretty pretty remarkable. And these teams will they squared off last season last year in the regular season, and you know, Belichick has always made
those comments whenever he walks into Lambelefield. He's a head coach with as much appreciation for the history of this game as anyone. And as much as he doesn't like to do press conferences and answer questions from the media, you start asking him about history and he will talk and talk and talk. He absolutely loves it, and.
He smiles like that was the first thing I thought was really cool when he kind of cracked a smile the first time he was asked about it was Dennis Crowsey that I believe asked him. And obviously Belichick's been around a long time forty nine consecutive years as a coach and NFL record in some capacity coaching in the league.
And he kind of smiled when he's like.
No, it's still cool, you know, especially with these these joint practices. And what I love about Belichick too, is there's so many guys. And he's talked about the Packers several times over the years, but including last year leading
up to the game at Lambeau. But they'll be like, Okay, Lombardi, Lambeau, Hudson, No, man, this guy's talking about Clark Kinkle, he's talking about cecil Isabel, He's talking about some of the greats in this team's you know, illustrious history, but maybe not the everyday names that a lot of fans know about, especially from the twenties and thirties and forties, the Cliff Crystal expertise sort
of era. He has a great appreciation for it, and I don't think for that fact it's a surprise that he's been as successful as he's.
Been for so long.
And you know, whatever, it was nineteen consecutive winning seasons and everything that the Patriots have accomplished in Matt Lafleur, speaking before practice on Wednesday mentioned too, He's like, you know, we originally pursued them with the idea of doing these joint practices, and really goes back to just having a
deep respect and admiration for what Belichick has done. And if you see a guy who's been this successful for this long and then obviously the way that the Patriots conduct their business, you want to be able to tap into that a little bit. And on Belichick's side of things, the ultimate competitor, he said, yeah, NFC, we don't see these guys very often. It's an uncommon opponent. There's really nothing to be gained or lost from that work against the Packers, so why don't we go for it. This
is becoming more and more prevalent right now in the NFL. Mike, I mean, you look any given day on Twitter, it seems like it's the Panthers and the Jets, and it's the Texans and the Dolphins, and more and more of these teams are doing it, and obviously there's a reason for that.
Yeah, this is becoming the way of the NFL preseason and getting to the practice itself. There's a lot of eleven on eleven work and just to give fans an idea of how this works. If you weren't in Green Bay, if you're not able to attend a joint practice, you have Nichkie Field all the way along the backside of the Dona Hudson Center. And when they go to eleven on eleven, at one end of the field is the
Patriots offense against the Packers defense. At the other end of the field is the Packers offense against the Patriots defense. So from our perspective, from a coverage side of things, we have to divide and conquer. So, as you said you were down watching the Packers defense, I was on the other end of the field watching the Packers offense, and a couple of things really stood out to me. One Bill Belichick really decided to challenge Jordan Love and
the Packers with his defensive scheme. He was bringing blitzes, he was just guising things, he was changing things up. He was challenging the Packers' running backs in terms of their blitz pick up and just everything with regards to the protection scheme. And in the early going the first couple of sequences of eleven on eleven with Jordan Love at quarterback, there were a lot of checkdowns Love wasn't finding anything open. They were trying to figure out things
with the protection. He was just taking what was there the outlet. The outlet receiver usually a running back. But then the Packers started to get their legs under them a little bit offensively, and when they moved into the red zone work I thought Jordan Love really started to cut it loose. He hit a really nice pass to Luke Musgrave kind of over the top on a seam route for a touchdown. Then he hit Romeo Dobbs over
by the pylon, the front pylon for a touchdown. Dobbs made a really really good catch against some pretty good coverage and got his feet in. The officials there's actually a true NFL officiating crew that is here and they'll be doing the game on Saturday night in lambeau Field. The officials had to talk about it for a while, and they're right over in front of all of the fans that are there at Nichki Field trying to convince them. No,
he had his feet and it was a touchdown. They talked about it and they gave Romeo Dobbs the touchdown, So that got a pretty good ovation. He also hit a nice pass in the back of the end zone to Jaden Reid. That would have been a touchdown except the New England defender made a really nice play and actually was able to shove Reid out of bounds as he went up in the air to make the catch, and he got shoved out of bounds before he could
get his feet back down. But I thought, for as much as Belichick's defense was challenging the Packers, giving them some really good work with the pass protection and the blitz pickup, I thought when they got in the red zone, I thought Jordan Love and the offense started to click a little bit.
Yeah.
And I'll be honest with you, Mike, he watched that touchdown pass he had to Dobbs. I mean the stunts in the corner blitz, the slot blitz they were throwing at him. There was a lot for the offensive line and Love to be able to count for on that, making sure that all the bodies and hats are covered for. What I like the most also is how Love built all of that up until the final two minute drill. Now, the Packers were unable to get the forty yard field goal.
Anders Carlson, you missed it from what the referees said down there, I didn't get a good look at it. But the fact is is that Love had three completions the Dobbs on that series. I believe it was two others to Watson. He really got humming that second half of the practice, and I thought that really showed up
as far as the Packers' defense was concerned. A very interesting day for them because, as it turns out, Devondre Campbell has an ankle injury misses practice, so that meant that Kway Walker had to become the mic going up against the Patriots offense. Now, Walker's done plenty of it. He's been in that role before. The Packers have purposely kept him in, usually an extra series in the preseason, to make sure that he gets those reps. DeAndre missed
four games last year. Walker handled a lot of that. But suddenly he's in the charge of the defense, working alongside Isaiah McDuffie. But one positive for Green Bay was they got jyr Alexander back for some of those team periods and the first playof I talked about this on three things. He's lining up at left cornerback. They try to throw a pass an out route to Kendrick Bourne and Jaieir is just sticky glue all over them, just
breaks that pass up in completion. Later on, they try to test him in the end zone coming across on kind of an over route, and it looked like the receiver, I don't have my notes in front of me, I can't remember who it was, but it looked like the receiver had it.
Jaiere battles and battles in battles.
And as the receivers going to the ground drops the ball, and the referees again, as you were talking about with earlier, some of the things that the Dobs play, the referees discussed it, and all the ball came out and packers defenders going nuts, and Jaiere's just being Jaiere because that's who he is. And I just felt like, defensively, this is such an important time right now for Green Bay because they're learning about who they are and what direction
they're going to be headed. And Rasull Douglass had a good day, although he lamented not being able to pick off mac Jones in the final two minute drive that would have ended that series.
I think Rasul Dougla gets upset every time, that's the way, and he doesn't intercept it. I mean, every ball that has thrown in his direction, he thinks it's his, He thinks it should be a pick and he yeah, and he gets he gets pretty fired up if he can't snag the iront No.
But I think it's cool though, because you look at it. You have Kenny clark Is out right now at the back injury. You have Devondra Campbell out right now with the ankle, at all these levels of the defense. The Packers are working through some stuff right now, but they still have young guys that are stepping up, and I think that's going to lead into these preseason games. I think that's going to lead into, you know, trying to
build that identity going into the season. The one thing that I think is going to be very different than past years. And again I don't think there's a right or wrong approach to how they've handled the preseason, but these are a lot of young guys that do need the work and certainly they're getting it.
Yeah. And a couple other things to point out too. I Mean when I talk about, you know, the challenges with the pass protection and the blitz pick up, these are the kinds of things you don't usually get in a preseason game because teams don't want to put yeah, all of those you know, different looks, exotic looks and different changeups that they throw at offenses. They don't like to put that on film for all of their opponents, you know, to look at and prepare for for the season.
So you get that in a joint practice that you don't necessarily get in a preseason game. I should say too, And you mentioned that Jordan Love kind of got things going in the two minute drill, had a good series there. I think also what helped set him up for that was, I guess what we would call the play of the day offensively, he was able to connect on a deep ball with Christian Watson for really what would have been a seventy five yard touchdown, and Love talked about it afterwards.
It was a route concept that they've they've worked on it, They've tried to hit it multiple times here during training camp so far, and they've never been able to connect on the deep shot. Either the deep shot goes incomplete or Love has to take the shorter throat to Romeo Dobbs because he's the other receiver in the two man
concept with Watson. Well, this time, you know, fired at downfield and it was right on target for Watson in stride behind a couple of defenders and he would have taken off and scored from there seventy five yards away. So that was that was pretty cool to see and got quite the ovation from the fans at in Itchgie Field very quickly.
Just to throw in here too, I was talking when we were talking about Russell Douglas after locker room afters I believe it was Pete Doherty that asked him about that play.
He's like, you know, how did you think your quarterback did?
And you know he hasn't had a lot of those moments you know, during you know, practices so far or whatever. However Pete worded, I don't want to put words as well. But Rasseulle's answer to was, well, that was because he was going against us. I mean, yeah, he's from doing great. I mean that's the type of play that we expect him to make. But Brazil's side of things is like, yeah, no, we don't want to make in the plays against us, but yeah, he's fully capable of doing it against other defenses.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. One other note too, with regard to the Packers defense, is the search for a starting safety continues, because, as we talked about, it was Rudy Ford for a while, then it was Jonathan Owens through Family Night and the first season game. Now to various more free agents signing from back in the spring. Originally I believe a third round draft pick of the San Francisco forty nine ers a hand full of years ago.
He's now running with the ones alongside Darnell Savage at safety. So so just something to keep an eye on as these last couple of preseason games wrap up and the Packers get down to roster cutdown time.
Yeah, and if you ask for Soul Douglas, he's the starting safety too in this defense. So we'll have to keep an eye on that now. I'm just kidding. No, Hey, listen, they've run through this where they've been given all these guys opportunities.
You know.
Now it looks like Tarvarius Moore is the next guy up in that rotation. Dude had a lot of speed. I mean you talked to him back in the spring. I mean that was his calling card early on before I believe it was the achilles injury. Trying to remember it was it acla ending injury.
It was it was for more, it was an achilles and it was a kiss. Go it was an achilles.
My brain and memory isn't completely yet, No, But I mean guy had a lot of speed and he came back last year, didn't get a ton of opportunities defensively. But I mean the guy that's still always been where he's trending with this thing. He's a third round pick that feels like he can compete for a job at that spot.
Him Jonathan Owen's Rudy Ford.
Early in camp, they've kind of gone through this where they've given almost all these guys like a week or so to work back there. Daln Levitt's still available in his gains is injured right now. But you know, Anthony Johnson, I thought, has made a lot of big improvements here the last few weeks. It'll be very interesting to see what he could potentially provide in the last two preseason games.
Matt lafore complimented what he's done on special teams. Now I want to see it maybe translate a little bit more to the defensive side of the ball.
It's dude, you wrote it or I wrote it. You edited it.
This is as wide open as any position battle on the roster because the separation between what could be a starting safety and potentially not even being on this roster. It's tight because you're not gonna be able to keep everybody and only two guys are going to be able to start. Yeah.
Absolutely Well, I want to take a look ahead to the preseason game coming up on Saturday night, but I'll take care of a little sponsor business first. Serious XM NFL Radio delivers hard hitting analysis and up to the minute NFL news that true football fanatics need twenty four to seven, three sixty five. And at Cousin Subs, we have something for everyone like our Wisconsin Cheese curds, mac and cheese, golden fries, and creamy shakes, all paired with
your favorite sub or sub in a bowl. Cousin Subs fifty years of better. All right, Wes preseason Game number two Saturday night at lambeau Field. As far as I'm concerned, this is what I always look for when it comes to the second preseason game. I look at the guys who were the standouts, particularly young players who were the standouts in the first preseason game, and you ask the question can they do it again? Can they keep it going?
Now that's not to say Ken Emmanuel Wilson run for an eighty yard touchdown again, that's probably not going to happen. But can he do what he did the six carries one hundred and eleven yards, two to touchdowns. Can he build on that? Can he continue to show progress? Can Sean Clifford as the number two quarterback? Can he also show progress? Maybe protect the football a little bit better, but without losing that that aggressiveness and attack mentality that
allowed him to be so productive. And we talked about Carrington. Valentine Malie Heath is another one, the undrafted rookie receiver. He made a great catch in the two minute drive from Clifford against the Patriots in the first joint practice on Wednesday. Caught it right by the front pilon of the end zone. He thought he had a touchdown as he was crashing to the ground. They actually ruled him down kind of inside the one yard line. Would have
been one of those that goes to replay. Of course, we don't have.
Yet the pylon.
Yeah, I thought it was a touchdown. I thought it was a touchdown.
But if you would have fumbled a turnover though.
Yeah, yeah, story for another day. Yeah, but it was something that would have gone to replay regardless. There was no dispute that he caught the ball, beautiful catch and it was a great catch on a nice throw from Sean Clifford against some pretty tight coverage. So Ken maleiek Heath, who's an undrafted rookie for Ole Miss, you know, fighting
for a roster spot in this receiving corps. Can he build on what he's done and then show something under the lights at lamb befill Those are the kinds of things that we'll be watching for in this second preseason game.
Yeah, and for me, I think one of my biggest keys to this thing and what I'm going to be keeping an eye on is these guys that are playing to trying to play catch up right now. You know, when you look at Jake Hansen, was out for a couple of weeks with the elbow injury. Well now he's back, He's running as the number two center again. The Packers are looking for guys to step up in that interior offensive line. Could Jake Hanson be a potential solution for them?
Grant Dubo's you mentioned you know a guy like Millie Keith who's been balling out. Well, here's Grant coming back after missing months with that back injury. Well, he's making plays in practice. Now he's trying to make a bid for a roster spot after missing so much time. I actually think I've been really surprised at how well he's looked after really never having an NFL practice before until training camp.
I mean, that's remarkable.
It wasn't even a part, wasn't even participating in the rookie mini camp, right and here he is now, you know, trying to make a run like that. It stinks that Bo Melton went down with the hamstring injury. You hope that's not too serious for him and he can get back here before the end of camp, because I thought he was putting together some good snaps. One of the questions I asked, going back to what evidently is just going to be the Rusull Douglas show, was asking sewell
about all these young guys who have stepped up. Yes, we talked about Carrington Valentine, but you know what has that done to bring out more out of you know, Schamar John Charles and William Hooper, who had three pass deflections last week after Corey Ballentine went out. These young guys I think have really taken that push in that that little jolt of hey, if this guy's raising his level of his game, I have to do likewise in
this pursuit of a fifty three man roster spot. We are two weeks away from having to worry about an active roster right now, Mike. But I am telling you, in my time covering this team, there's been some years where it's been pretty okay getting down to sixty fifty three players. There are so many guys on both sides of the ball, and on Rich Pasaccia's special teams where it's like, man, where do you cut the fat here?
There's been a lot of young guys who have stepped up, and that's probably the thing I'm looking to see.
What separates these guys.
Who makes a play on special teams, who makes the big catch, Who is the next Emmanuel Wilson that bus free for an eightyr touchdown? All those answers are coming on Saturday night.
Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to those roster decisions, the personnel department, they look at the entire package, right, They look at all of the work that's done in practices, they look at the work that's done in the preseason games. It's not about just flashing here and there. It's about the entire body of work and what you've been able
to show, and then those difficult decisions are made. But, as you said, a couple weeks away until we get to that point, still two more preseason games, and that's a lot of snaps for a lot of young players to show what they've got.
And I'm a date our show a little bit because we haven't talked to Matt Lafleur yet, but very interested to see too the number one offense.
What does it look like? Who plays?
Does Jordan Love get a chance to get some snaps inside Lambefield?
We don't know.
I doubt they're actually going to say that outright, But the fact of the matter is is that I thought that was really beneficial work last week two series. They didn't overdo it. They gave them a chance to run that offense down the field. I have to imagine that Jordan Love came out of that feeling pretty good in Cincinnati. Do you try to extend that now into Green Bay?
Yeah, And we'll just have to see what they decide in that regard, but with that we will call it a rap on this edition of Packers' Own Script. You'd be sure to follow all of our coverage of the team training camp, joint practice is the preseason game coming up on Saturday night at Lambeufield. We will have it all for you on packers dot com for Wes, I am Mike. Thank you for tuning in everybody. We will see you next time.