Packer Demise

For the past two weeks, the Green Bay Packers, were far more distant in play from the 1960's Packers than they are in years. I think there are a number of reasons for the demise of the Packers. However, in my opinion, part of the Packer miscues has to do with the lack of roster building due to the lack of coordination between the skills of the players selected and the schemes used. The total disconnect is a failure of the president of the organization who, in my opinion, should have been fired a long time ago. As mentioned in other posts, Mark Murphy is more interested in the Titletown District, not to mention that he has forgotten what gave the name to Titletown. Other than the University of Notre Dame, is there any other football team that adheres so much to past tradition to try and keep itself relative today? The demise of the team gets to a simple construct--roster building.

Jet player Sauce Gardner coopts a Cheese head
after the Packers humiliating defeat to the Jets at 
storied Lambeau Field

Let's begin with the offense. The offense has seen little in terms of number one draft picks, in the past several drafts, but the one time they did so the person, Jordan Love, has so far turned out to be a bust. The current old man at QB, since that pick, won two MVP awards, and a large contract. Of note, the Packers, since selecting Rodgers in 2015 have had 18 first round draft picks, three, including Jordan Love (with another wasted pick), were on offense, leaving 15 first round picks on defense. This is why the defense was supposed to shine this year. Like the offense it still suffers from misalignment of talent with scheme. The failures of the Packer organization were clear against the Jets. They spent so much money on a QB, they forgot about the offensive line. Their receiving corps is a mess, against the Jets they may have had more drops than catches. If there is a way NOT to build a football team, I think the Packers are it. The Packer's have two decent backs, but against good D-lines their offensive line failed. Either they never learned or they forgot to pick up stunts by the D-line, with the Jets now showing other teams how to pressure Green Bay.  The failure of the whole Packer organization can be summed up in one play. I can think of no better example. A wide open Christian Watson dropped his first sure TD pass, which would have been 75 yards. Since that easily catchable ball was dropped, long passes, over twenty yards in the air, have been almost non-existent for the team. The catch set the state for the dismal play we see after five more games. This is also a perfect metaphor for the way Brian Gutekunst drafts players--in other words, he (and Mark Murphy) dropped the ball, too. With a four time MVP at QB, one would think the organization would have enhanced their receiving corps over the years. Last year the Packers select some guy tall guy with the dropsies from a college in North Dakota as its top offensive pick, the 34th pick (round two) this past draft. That is the guy who dropped the 75 TD pass against the Vikings. You can tell Gutekunst learned from Ted Thompson, they both excelled at wasting high draft picks.

Running backs can be important in Green Bay weather, but the game, in part due to rule changes, has become the pass league. I should not fault the Packers, I guess I used their model, but based on a suggestion from a friend, to select running backs with my first two picks in my first ever fantasy league. One probably should have been a wide receiver. From what my friend said, I figured running backs must score better in the overall fantasy scheme than a wide receiver. I don't know, nor do I care to know the algorithm for the Yahoo Fantasy League. I trusted my friend's advice.

Brian Gutekunst, Packer GM

In my Fantasy league, I had a player injured and had to make some roster moves. I followed the scouting reports provided by Yahoo and of course my players sucked. So much for playing by the statistics. When you rely on certain stats and money ball, or mathematical procedures to select players, you miss the human aspect, and I think that is what happens with the Packers. Brian Gutekunst is not a Vince Lombardi. He learned under the Ted Thompson draft failure method of building a team--which was a fantasy expectation given their coaching staff makeup. 

Fantasy is what a lot of Packer fans have in mind for this season. While the team sits at 3 and 3, only key injuries on two of their opponent teams kept them from 1-4. Think of the New England Patriots who were down to their 3rd string QB, and Tampa Bay was missing their top receivers. Yet, both teams were in the game. They were in the game to the end thanks to a Packer offense that seems to not be able to make adjustments, or likes to coast on their laurels, and a defense that is just plain easy to beat. The defense falls apart in the second half. Regardless of the new scheme put in place for for the Jets, the defense failed, yet again, in the second half. Different team, different scheme, same result. 

Mark Murphy, Packer President

Misalignment also occurs on defense.  Their two first round picks this year went to a undersized linebacker, and a defensive tackle. Neither have made a good impact. When Dom Capers was the Packer D coordinator he ran a fairly complex scheme, in which they asked young players to master, not realizing it would take some time for the young defenders to comprehend the scheme. There were players drafted and dropped for not being able to handle the complexities of the scheme that, as one writer noted, became good players some where else--Casey Hayward and Micah Hyde. 

The Packer defensive numbers, up to the Jets game, were actually pretty good, but factor in a game against the hapless Bears, and the stats could be a different story. The Packers are terrible against the run, and that is probably due to the defense playing light weight defensive lineman, they lack a man the capabilities of the Gilbert "The Gravedigger" Brown upfront. Their one-gap system places importance on the linebackers, but the large contract receiving D'Vonte Campbell has been a no-show in his play this year. And the rookie may well turn out to be another unsuccessful draft choice. The first round pick linebacker goes for the edge and fails to fill the hole up the middle, which allowed the Jets to score. The Packers select corners that are better at man-to-man coverage, but play zone, leaving them the worst in the league in yards against crossing routes. Matt LaFleur in hiring Joe Barry apparently did not realize what defense he would play, or did not realize the capabilities of his players. Why does that not surprise me? Joe Barry failed at his other D coordinator posts, why did Matt LaFailure select him? I think it is because La Failure did not wish to be upstaged by the D-coordinator, like what occurred with Fangio in Chicago, Buddy Ryan years earlier, to name two examples. A less than middling, one can say failed, d-coordinator would never upstage Matt LaFleur. 

Matt LaFleur

The coming Packers schedule have them playing three away games in a row. The announcers referred to the Jet victory as a signature win at Lambeau. Like many, the announcers were thinking of the old Packers. I mean, how could any one looking at the Packer play this year think they are a formidable team? From the Jets game to the end of the season, I had picked the Packers to go 6-6, I was wrong, they lost to the Jets. The thing is Mark Murphy does not care as along as the seats are filled. LaFailure will, as is his wont, blame himself, but the blame goes all the way to the top of the organization. Quite frankly, LaFailure's shtick of blaming himself for bad coaching is getting old. That old mantra, "I need to be better prepared, we need to execute better." When I ask, will that start to happen? He hasn't and he should be fired faster than you can say Paul Chryst. The Packers were, I heard, two touchdown favorites over the Giants in London. The last time they lost to a team when they were favored by that much was to Arizona, in the year Mike McCarthy was fired during the season. The whole team looks worse than the 2018 Packers--they play without heart, like it is owed to them, and more importantly they lack toughness--mental and physical. They just got plain beat up on the line of scrimmage.

The Packer organization and team have showed how quickly a team can turn to mediocrity. ESPN orders the NFL teams every week. The Packers fell from 8th to 14th after week 6. Their take on the Packers:

Oh, if there were only one thing. On offense, the Packers have the lowest six-game point total in any six games of Aaron Rodgers' career. Even without Davante Adams, this was not the expectation because of guys like Aaron Jonesand AJ Dillon. The defense, loaded with first-round picks and high-priced free agents that had everyone projecting them as a top-tier defense, still can't stop the run. And even the special teams that looked vastly improved reverted Sunday and had both a field goal and a punt blocked. That's how an overwhelming division favorite can recede to mediocrity so quickly. -- Rob Demovsky On ESPN

I don't think Matt Lafou has the answers, and neither do the clueless Mark Murphy and Brian Gutekunst who share a great deal of the blame. The Packers played so poorly on Sunday it became comical. I was laughing at how bad a team they are. Some say they now know how a Bear fan feels, but with the Bears there are few expectations, the Packers hyped themselves up to have many expectations, and they have failed so far--thus Packer fans are in a worse predicament than Bear fans. 

The way the Packers are playing, and being coached
I think this guy, Lafou, is the head coach
Both he and LaFleur are clueless

We Packer fans are like farmers. Farmers always think the following year will be better--better weather, good crop prices, lower fuel costs. Packer fans are always waiting for another championship. Yet, that next year for farmers and Packer fans never materializes. Packer fans have seen failure after failure. To say that the Packer organization has squandered opportunity with two good QB's over the past thirty years is a massive understatement. Matt LaFleur and the Packer organization are no Vince Lombardi. Vince Lombardi lost just one playoff game out of ten played. LaFleur is 2-3. The way the Packers are playing, I don't think we can expect a playoff game this year. The organization needs to be on the same page and they are not. It is time for regime change from the top down. It could also be that Aaron Rodgers, who is paid way too much, either took to much ayahuasca, or he needs more. The Packer demise has been predicted in this blog post before.

Source: https://zonecoverage.com/2022/packers/the-sum-of-roster-building-errors-left-the-packers-with-an-underwhelming-team/