It’s been about 16 hours since the Packers were bounced out of the playoffs by the Arizona Cardinals (or is it kicked? Let’s ask Aaron Rodgers about that one). And I’m not bumming about this loss because of the fateful Rodgers fumble that decided it–although from watching numerous replays, it sure looked like his tuck rule-negating kick was more a poorly-conceived desperation chance to redirect the ball than an inadvertent contact.
No, the thing that upsets me most about this loss is the fact that it fulfilled almost all of the worries I raised about this matchup three weeks ago. We knew the Packers were going to have problems with multiple receiver sets; they did. We knew good quarterbacks could pick them apart if the Packers didn’t get any pressure on the quarterback; they didn’t. I posited back then that the Packers looked like a one-and-done team; they are.
And now, it’s clear you can’t just go into the offseason, tinker with the offensive line, crow about your championship-caliber defense needing little work and call it good. Yesterday proved, once again, the Packers have more ground to make up than that.
I get that part of the problem was caused by a lack of depth in the secondary, and Al Harris might have made a difference yesterday. But even if he’s in the lineup, would the Packers have had enough capable bodies to play the zone coverages that defensive coordinator Dom Capers seemed ready to die with? I don’t see it. Tramon Williams has made great strides, but he’s still far from being an elite corner. Jarrett Bush needs to go; that’s been said many times. Josh Bell, Brandon Underwood–not getting it done. And how much different would things have been with Pat Lee and Will Blackmon? Do you honestly know what you have in either player?
The safeties aren’t much different; Atari Bigby didn’t get burned deep, but he also was a step late to those 15-yard passes too many times. And where was Nick Collins? I’ve thought for a while that it’s possible the Packers have made their minds up on the safety, and while he’s become a Pro Bowl player by keying a lot of turnovers, he’s far from being an elite, game-changing safety on the order of Ed Reed or Troy Polamalu. Doesn’t he want to be paid like one?
And the thing that’s still missing in the front seven–to me, the thing that’s been missing ever since the Super Bowl victory–is a nasty edge, the kind that says a team simply refuses to be beaten when it counts. We’ve seen that from Clay Matthews and Brad Jones, but they’re rookies. B.J. Raji and Cullen Jenkins show that from time to time, but they still disappear too much. If the Packers were going to sit back in zone all day, it meant they didn’t have extra rushers to send after Warner and would have to rush him with their front seven. Matthews and Jones did that, but the line never got a push up the middle.
We heard a lot about the Packers’ statistical rankings on defense, but here’s the reality: They built most of those numbers against bad teams (the Browns, the Lions, the Bears, the Seahawks, etc.). Against good ones, particularly good ones with good quarterbacks, they fell apart. They faced Carson Palmer once, Brett Favre twice, Ben Roethlisberger once and Warner once (in a full game, anyway). Not only did they lose all of those games, they gave up more than 30 points in all of them. They had one nice win against an elite team with a top-end quarterback–the game against Dallas. Otherwise? They beat bad teams and got shredded by good ones.
That’s how one-and-done teams operate, and it’s why I never bought into the thinking this team was a championship-caliber unit. The 7-1 run to finish the regular season was nice, but it came mostly against bad teams or teams that were struggling at the time. And now they go into an offseason where, statistically, it’d be very easy to sit back and proclaim contentment. But that isn’t going to work–not when there are important decisions to be made on Collins, Harris, Aaron Kampman and possibly Hawk, not when there’s an uncapped year looming that could alter the free agent landscape for the Packers’ good or ill, and not when there’s a work stoppage looming in 2011 that could derail the chance of a very good offensive nucleus to win a championship.
Sunday’s loss exposed all of those problems long before Rodgers fumbled, kicked and threw his helmet in disgust. It’s sickening to lose this many playoff games in gut-wrenching fashion (Owens!Owens!Owens!(fumble), Vick in Lambeau, 4th and 26, Vikings in Lambeau, NFC Championship Game and now Sunday). It’s more sickening to lose them all when, in each one of them–and in almost every game for the last 18 seasons–the Packers entered the game believing their elite-level quarterback could get them through. Yet in the playoffs, they’ve continued to come up short. That’s a huge problem, and one that Rodgers should have more opportunities to fix.
But it’s most sickening that, given all the offensive talent that’s been brought to 1265 Lombardi Avenue over the last 18 seasons, often through ingenious drafting and shrewd acquisitions, the Packers have not assembled a defensive corps to match that level of talent since Reggie White raced into the corner of the Superdome to thrust the Lombardi Trophy skyward.
That includes the 2009 Packers. It better not include the 2010 Packers.
–Gene Bosling
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