Welcome back to The Coach Clarahanson Show!!! A special thanks to those of our loyal readers who filled out the Readership = Friendship Survey last week, the response was tremendous and we really take your feedback to heart. Our research indicates that there is a 78.4% chance you have a just sat down on a toilet seat, so we are targeting the length of this week's Show to approximate the average time it takes for a middle-aged man to comfortably excrete a full dosage of feces. (Click on Link) You're welcome. And don’t forget to lava tus manos when you're finished, por favor. Enjoy the Show!... Coach snuck in his tape recorder while taking these photos with his Soldiers Fields access pass, and the players’ own words provide unique historical context for each of these shots. “Hi Boss, me and 24 are really gonna fuccup today. Ha ha ha – just kidding! But seriously, you’ll be pissed.” “Activate shoe thrusters!” “(cough, cough) Nah, man -- they PROVED it in Denver. Smoking weed ENHANCES your performance. I just smoked a LOT so I think I’m good for a couple of touchdowns today.” “Whatever you’re wiping up over there … uh, that wasn’t me.” “Can you guess how I’m carrying your quarter?” “Stay back… Linsley ripped one. NO ONE can breathe.” “I give up! I can’t cover anybody.” “Dude, I SAVED your ass.” Create a seam here - X's & O's about the game or a scheme Breaking it down for you, here’s what went well… for starters, we scored more points than the Bears and we won. We proved that they suck (yet again) and have now tied the overall series at 94-94-6. Mind boggling to think that over 194 games the average score is Pack 17.18 vs. Bears 17.17. We also held the ball for almost 33 minutes, had a positive turnover differential for the second week in a row and had 451 yards in total offense, including 226 yards on the ground. And this all against the Vic Fangio led Bears D. You may remember good ‘ole Vic from his days as D Coordinator in SF where he has been absolute kryptonite the last several years, so getting a win against his D was impressive. We had a +4 turnover differential in the game (1 strip/sack/fumble-recovery by Pepper, two “real INT’s” by Dix and an end-of-first-half-Hail-Mary-pick) and we turned those turnovers into 17 points. Although all the bandwagon media derelicts are swooning over Ty “Slash” Montgomery this week, Coach is calling out Jared “Tough Guy” Cook for a very nice – yet, largely unnoticed (by mainstay sports columnists), gameday performance. Chicken Head Cook had several key catches to keep the chains moving, made a few nice blocks to spring Monty free on the edge, and regularly had the attention of the D so that Jordy could work 1-on-1 against the inferior DB’s of Chicago. He played so well, you might not have noticed him playing through pain (as he usually does) after this discrete injury (Click on Link). Speaking of injuries, one might think we are on a 4-game winning streak because “the Packers are finally getting healthy.” But Coach reminds you that we are right in the middle of the league when it comes to the number and severity of injuries (see chart below). If you look at Dallas and New England, they have had almost as many injuries as the Packers -- so no injury excuse is accepted by Coach. For reference, at the end of the 2010 Season (Super Bowl XLV winning season) the Packers finished with the 6th most injured team and Pittsburg, our opponent in XLV, finished 22nd, or much “less injured” than we were. Wake up people! Packers injuries are not real; they are just a mixture of Dom Capers forcing rookies to get much-needed game experience and Ted Thompson limiting film footage of veterans who are in their contract year so we can re-sign them at bargain-bottom prices in the Spring. Pure genius, Harry. “So, Coach, all-in-all a great win and the path is easy to the Super Bowl, right?” Not so fast, Pipsqueak. The truth is that we were lucky to get out of Chicago with the win. At the risk of raining on the parade, let’s look at some of what needs improving if we are going to go anywhere over the next 6 games. The focus must be “Double D”, or Defense & Drops (ok, that WAS a little lame). Davante Adams single-handedly “lost” 2 touchdowns with his endzone drops. More on him later, but you know this had a major impact on the game, and moreover we were only 3/10 (30%) on 3rd down. If you compare that to the league average we would be dead last, but fortunately for the year we are 2nd at 46%. Close your eyes and think hard… do you recall that Randall Cobb had a severe case of the dropsies throughout last year in crucial conversion situations? Presumably both guys will get 10,000 catches on the jugs machine this week. Take care of the drops and we take care of 3rd downs. Take care of 3rd downs and we are back to being a 2010/2011 offensive juggernaut. Defense? What defense? The only thing Coach can think of to say that is nice is that Caper’s D worked like it is supposed to work. What Coach means by that is that the Legume led D goes into prevent-nothing mode when we get up by two or more scores and they try to get turnovers. In the process of doing that they let the other team run wild. Close your eyes and think hard… remember Seattle? This is the stuff that has caused Coach to buy new shoes because the old ones couldn’t be extracted from the TV screen. Yet, in one respect it actually worked; we did get turnovers. But the Bears got 449 yards in offense, 29 first downs to our 20, tied the game and almost won it (let’s be clear, we got lucky in the last two minutes to not lose the game). Early in the 2nd half, with the D-backs playing way off of the receivers at the line of scrimmage, their lack of press let the Bears run wide open up and down the field. The Matt Barkley-led average of 8.0 yards/pass attempt would be the 3rd best in the league if projected over the whole season. Yikes. Have no fear, though, as Mike McCarthy did mention on his Monday morning radio interview that they would look at the film and get that cleaned up. WTF – The Coach’s take on a bad ref call or a bad play call or the like Time to move on, people. The election is over. It's freaking embarrassing as a red blooded American to see how weenie celebs are pushing fecal matter out of their brains as if anyone cares what they have to say or would respond to their calls for action. Early episodes of M*A*S*H used to be a cool 40 years ago, in part, because 2 of the main characters were named "BJ" and "Hot Lips" ... Now these 2 are putting this crap out (Click on Link, but WARNING: Some of the images you are about to see may be offensive to sensitive viewers -- have a barf bag handy). Hot Lips? More like "Rotting Trout." Looks like Meg Ryan’s plastic surgeon has a new customer. Yeah, I'm gonna go with my instincts on this one and not trust Loretta Swit's judgement. But back to football. Hard to avoid including Dvante’s 2 (count ’em, TWO) WTF easy touchdown catches that he dropped on Sunday. Hey -- I get it, nobody's perfect. But twice, in the same game? I can't even count how many TD opportunities he’s dropped at this point in his short career, but it seems to be about a dozen. I’ll be nice and round it down to 10. And, as Charles Barkley would say, that is turrible. We settled for 2 field goals after his drops, so that’s 8 points (including automatic Crosby PAT’s) that Adams pulled off the board from us. Dvante needs to drop his case of the dropsies before Super Bowl 51 slips through our fingers and Mark Murphy doles out his annual “successful season” platitudes. Dvante, if you drop another sure touchdown, Coach will go CeeLo on you. (Click on Link) Believe it or not, though, I can forgive those physical mistakes (dropped passes) because he DID run the right route and he DID get open. I can’t forgive repetitive mental mistakes that jeopardize games, though… “Hear ye, hear ye, let it be known to all that Mike McCarthy has no fricken clue how to manage a football game.” I could not believe it when, despite the weekly chiding we give him to leave his dick ruler at home, MM once again ignored the sure 3 points early in the game and turned it over on downs (see also, just about every other Packer game this year). That 3 points would have come in handy late in the 4th quarter, negating the chance for da Bears to force overtime (which Eminem loses in -- every time, BTW). Need more proof from Sunday? …So Chicago pulls within 3 points with 6 minutes left in the game. The LAST thing you want to do is go 3 & Out when your D just gave up 2 TD’s in less than 8 minutes. You want to give those 9 of Ted’s last 14 draft picks (plus Julius and Letroy) a chance to catch their breath, and solve the 6th order Laplace transform-based differential equations drafted by Dom Capers so they know their responsibilities to contradict the reverse vector dynamism imparted by the Bears when our defensive play formation is called in. Good thing our RB is averaging 10 yards per carry … that will really come in handy at this point. But nooooooooo! (Click on Link) MM always does the exact opposite of what a head coach should do in critical game situations. His crappy play calling for this 3 & Out series was to start on 1st down with a very low % pass play (long pass down sideline from our own 20-yard line). 2nd & 10 from deep in your own territory is no way to chew up yards and clock, son (Click on Link). You and I and the YMCA pee wee flag football league coach knows McCarthy should have chewed up yards and clock with high % short passes or runs to Monty. Instead of following the obvious roadmap to successfully arrive at an easy win, he stopped focus on giving Monty the ball after 10 minutes into the 3rd Q and then he had Rodgers repeatedly launch missiles into DeKalb county. And that’s why we barely won the game. WTF is McCarthy’s problem? Was he never taught how to locate the road to victory on a game map? (Click on Link). The Packers aren’t winning because of McCarthy, they are overcoming his gameday ineptitude and winning despite him. What else… oh, yeah: Only the NCAA… San Diego State Aztec RB Donnel Pumphrey supposedly broke Ron Dayne’s collegiate career rushing record last weekend. But, as an ESPN College Gameday host still suffering from a mild stroke would say while drooling a little bit out of the corner of his mouth, “Not so fast, my friend!” For some strange and inexplicable reason, Pumphrey's bowl game yards count in his college career total, but Ron Dayne's do not. If you do count the bowl game yards for both players, Dayne has 700 more yards. It would take Pumphrey almost an entire additional season to achieve that many yards. What’s next? Putting the 3rd place team from the Big Ten in the college playoffs in lieu of the top 2 teams that played in the conference championship game? Wait… The Bears Still Suck – the Coach has proof Thanks for sucking, Chicago. It’s nice of you to give us 2 automatic wins each year, propelling us into the playoffs at season’s end, and then failing to take advantage of your high draft pick position each subsequent Spring. After the game, Bears offensive guard Josh Sitton said “I wish I still played for the Packers. I already forgot what it feels like to be a winner … to have self-respect … to have a purpose. None of the guys in this locker room are winners. They are all losers here … and now I’ve become one, too.” I respect Josh for his honesty and the accuracy in his assessment. Lloyd Christmas said it best… (Click on Link) Here's a Tip: don't name your kid “Jay.” Ever notice that guys named Jay are real douche bags? Coach knows 2 guys named Jay and they are real dickwads. Well, 3 if you count Cutler, who I don't know personally, but is, of course, the Duke of Douchebaggedon. Coach looked it up in a Baby Names book; the name "Jay" originated in the middle ages as a derivative from the Latin word Geaspot (Jay-spoe), which literally means a derelict who licks white dog shit (Click on Link). That sounds about right. Udder stuff – commentary from the Badger Underground NCAA Makes it Official - Bowl Games are Optional Badger Underground December 21, 2016 In a landmark decision, today the NCAA announced that all bowls games are optional to play in and to coach. Much to the dismay of the powers that be, such as the venerable Tournament of Roses Committee, this pronouncement paves the way to an inevitable well-constructed and highly profitable end of year playoff with details yet to be announced. The proclamation follows some notable wussy-boy bowl copouts by NFL hopefuls Christian McCaffery and Leonard Fournette, but follows the lead of several coaches who bolted before the end of the season in past years. Brent Bile Enema and some other Badger coach who has since went into oblivion at Oregone State are notable ex-Badger coaches who fled before fulfilling their bowl obligations. This development is just another step toward a bona fide playoff system in division 1 football. Key boosters are already cancelling bowl trips in lieu of skiing and European winter vacations. The former great power brokers of the conferences and bowl committees can see the writing on the wall. As the draw of the big bowls like the Rose, Sugar, and Orange diminish, so do their arguments for maintaining status quo. No doubt, networks will see their ratings and advertising earnings drop as well. Bowl cities will support the games less. We will not divulge methods, but the Badger Underground confesses responsibility for this turn of events that we consider joyous while others are in despair. Just as we pulled the strings to get Wisconsin governor Tony Earl to sing on the David Letterman Show in 1986, we "made things happen" in this case through legal yet secret means. We look forward to when the next shoe drops in this progression and have confidence that our work will be done. We close by wishing mssrs. McCaffery and Fournette the best in their future careers with Jacksonvile and Cleveland. Once-Revered-But-Now-Irrelevant-Cotton Bowl prediction: Bucky 35 - Western Michigan 20 We’re gonna kick you’re a$$ - predictions for the next game “Sure, Coach, we’re on a roll, but can we really get there… can we really get the promised Lombardi trophy in 2016?” Why yes, Pippy, through the magic of mathematics we proved seven weeks ago that The Donald could be President and three weeks ago that the Packers were only 9 wins away from winning Lombardi Trophy LI -- and now that number is down six! According to the AlGoreRhythms of the New York Times political and playoffs scenarios calculator, you will find that as the Packers stand today at 8-6 they are in the 6th seed if the season ended today; only, it doesn’t end today. Let Coach make it easy for you: if we win out we will win the NFC North and 3rd or 4th seed, and if we split we still have good odds of making the playoffs. That said, Coach strongly recommends to Mike McCarthy that we win the remaining two regular season games. The Vikings are, well, the Vikings. Always shitty when they think they’re good. True to form with our other NFC Norris Division foes, it appears Minnesota is falling apart at crunch time (see also, 0-4 in Super Bowls, which they participated in most recently when M*A*S*H was a popular new sit com on TV). Instead of ascending, they are spiraling out of the playoff picture and will be heading to their hometown domiciles in 2 weeks where they will have more time to beat up their wives, torture their children, and party with hookers on houseboats. After an abbreviated training camp, it appears Sam Bradford has already quickly assumed the demeanor of the Vikings way (Click on Link). Coach has been pretty tough this week (yet factual, as always) pointing out Dvante Adams failures in the last game. That said, Dvante’s “golden birthday” is this Saturday, so hopefully that will motivate him to play well against Minnesota’s purple peter eater defense. For extra credit, can you guess how old Dvante will be? Oooh, sorry, 17 is incorrect. It’s 24 – the correct answer is twenty-four. There weren’t many sightings on Sunday of the crispy-rice Fackrell bar, or the 3-olive Martinez, or even Lowry's seasoning salt. Dom Capers has apparently abandoned his Munchausen By Proxy (look it up) strategy to get his rookies some valuable OJT experience. The big Legume is no longer exaggerating the injuries of his starters so that they can now get in just enough playing time to shake off their rust for the push to Houston. Suspicious of Capers' scheme, Vikings owner Zygi Wilf (above) petitioned the NFL to provide dissociated doctors for verifying the health condition of Packers players on the team injury report, as was documented by this “independent” medical exam of Clay Matthews in the week leading up to the Christmas Eve contest (Click on Link). The difference in the 17-14 game in Week 2 when these teams played last was the ignored field goal opportunity by Mike McCarthy in the 3rd quarter when he chose to forego the automatic 3 points and tie score for the sake of unjustified bravado (sound familiar?). The Bears reminded McCarthy (just in time) on Sunday that he’s an idiot to ignore 3 points early in the game -- so in the 2nd-to-last game, he will send Crosby out there twice instead of going for it on 4th and 2 in chip shot FG range, and we win in a 13-10 squeaker, setting up a showdown in Motown. JB – Packer greats you forgot about, but stories you’ll remember about them Five years ago, a guy who lived in Little Falls, Minnesota past away while lifting weights. Gale Herbert Gillingham was born February 3, 1944 in Madison, WI. His family lived on a farm in Stoughton, WI until 1958, when they moved to Tomah, WI. At the age of 16, Gale's family moved to Little Falls, MN and he eventually attended the University of Minnesota, where he was a classmate of the future Kansas City Chiefs defensive end, Aaron Brown, whom he faced in Super Bowl I. Yep, in 1966, Gale was drafted in the 1st round (13th overall) and played ten seasons with the Green Bay Packers. Gillingham (6-foot-3 and, for that time, a whopping 290 pounds) was a Super Bowl I and II World Champion, five time NFL All Pro and NFL Lineman of the Year in 1971. He was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 1982 (when Greg Koch was wearing #68), and Coach thinks he should posthumously be inducted into the Hall in Canton as well. During the 1967 season, Gale became the full-time starter at left guard (beating out Fuzzy Thurston), opposite perennial All-Pro Jerry Kramer (don’t even get me started on JK being snubbed for Canton). Gillingham started in the Ice Bowl and Super Bowl II, which also happened to be Vince Lombardi's final games after nine seasons with the team. He played for three other coaches in Green Bay besides Lombardi including Phil Bengtson, Dan Devine and Bart Starr. In 1972, under Devine, he moved to defensive line but injured his knee and played just two games that season. He retired after the 1974 season, but returned to play one more year in 1976 under Bart Starr. That sort of loyalty has evaporated from the NFL these days.
Famous for his brute strength, Gillingham was one of the first players in the NFL to use weight training to stay in playing shape during the offseason. That sort of training is mandatory in the NFL these days. His 3 sons are all renowned weight lifters, with 2 being professional strongmen (yes, that’s a job) and the third is a world champion powerlifter. Not too shabby. So this week we honor the memory of Gale Gillingham, a native Sconnie and a classic Packer...sa-lute!
1 Comment
Amy Gillingham
8/6/2019 07:12:09 pm
Thanks for the nice write-up!
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Author"Coach" is the insightful collective brain and funny bone of a few legendary Packer fans who provide everything you need to know (and what Packers beat writers often plagiarize) about the Green & Gold, plus a weekly guest appearance by The Badger Underground. Archives
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