Welcome back to The Coach Clarahanson Show!!! In Coach’s Humble Opinion: there are only a handful of guys that the NFL owes its longevity to... The Jumbo Perch bite is amazing in Green Bay this week so Coach doesn’t have too much free time to opine ad nauseum on the computer, but I would like to pay my respects posthumously to John Madden. When I think of guys who’ve passed, leaving a legacy of a truly rare, lasting impact on the NFL, only a few names come to mind: long time commissioner Pete Rozelle (creator of the Super Bowl), Papa Bear Halas (Bears founder and coach, financed the League during the lean years prior to television -- including keeping the Packers afloat), Vince Lombardi (creator of the first true NFL dynasty, and broke down racial stereotypes to a degree none before him was willing to do), and John Madden. Coach doesn’t play Madden NFL video games, but I realize how impactful they are to Gen Y & Z. Coach barely remembers the rotund figure marching up and down the Raiders sidelines, but I recall vividly that I realized as a young boy John Madden was a larger than life icon. True fact: I have a grill that John Madden grilled brats on! In the early 80’s when CBS did NFC games, and John Madden did TV analysis with Pat Summerall, they covered a Packers game at Lambeau and the pregame CBS show was sponsored by Weber grills. It was the first year/model that Weber (famous for their iconic charcoal kettle) ever made a gas grill, and so they had John and Pat fry some brats in front of the TV at a tailgate party in the parking lot before the game. Long story short, that grill got auctioned off and it was handed down to me. But I digress… It is obvious to everyone that John Madden’s players loved playing for him, NFL fans loved to watch Madden manage games, and the TV audience loved to hear him being himself talking about the game he was covering. He was kinda like Knute Rockne, John Candy, and Ozzy Osbourne all rolled into one. Rest in peace, John. You are an NFL legend. …at least, in Coach’s humble opinion. Create A Seam Here – X’s & O’s about the game or a scheme OK, let’s get all the happy stuff out of the way first: 1. We beat the winningest Division in the NFC 2. We beat the presumptive best Division in the AFC 3. We held serve for the No. 1 Seed in the NFC post-season tournament. 4. Davante Adams and Aaron Rodgers set the Packers Franchise Record for QB-Receiver Passing TD’s (67 and counting, passing Rodgers & Jordy Nelson’s 65) 5. Matt LaFleur tied George Siefert at 38 Wins in his first 3-years coaching, and the first ever to win 12 games in each of his first 3 Seasons. (Siefert went 14-2, 14-2 & 10-6 in the 1990-92 Seasons. He inherited a loaded roster and a Super Bowl winning team from Bill Walsh that was QB’d by Joe Montana in ’90 and then Steve Young ’91 & ’92; not exactly the disaster that LaFleur inherited. LaFleur is also a best-ever 21-2 at home.) 6. Aaron Rodgers broke Brett Favre’s Packers record of 442 Passing TD’s. As the scoreboard showed “443” chants of MVP rang through the Stadium as Rodger’s acknowledged assembled throng. Later he expressed joy that the pass pattern was a stick-route, a staple of the Joe-Walsh-Hotel-California-Offense that he learned as a rookie. Congratulations poured in from around Inter-Web. Brett Favre filmed a short message for Rodgers, which played at Lambeau following the touchdown pass. “Hey 12. Congratulations, man, on passing my touchdown record,” Favre said. “I have one request: Go get us another Super Bowl. Congrats.” Favre was of course a much better football player than Rodgers, albeit not as good a thrower-of-the-ball as Erin. What made Coach happy is that Favre has obviously come all the way back home, he wants “US” to get another Lombardi Trophy. Most of the usual suspects supplicated Rodgers with sycophantic dribble, but Coach really got a kick out of the Tweet from Tramon Williams. Williams was of course a teammate of Sam Shields, who famously … well just read this: Ok, now that all the sunshine and lollipops are out of the way, “What the hell is going on out there?” For the first time in many weeks, we don’t have to complain about Special Teams. While not perfect, there were no egregious errors. On the robust data set of one game, let’s call them “not a liability”, and cross your fingers that they can continue. Coach will get to the Defense in a minute, but what is going on with the Offense? As your eyeballs have already told you, we start slowly in the 1st Quarter (likely due to “No Practice Covid Toe” making mistakes) and then we explode in the 2nd Quarter. The 3rd Quarter isn’t bad and then in the 4th Quarter we experience George Costanza type “shrinkage” (I was in the pool, Jerry!). The Browns game mirrored the Ravens game last week, we had a 21-12 Halftime lead and seemed poised to bury them in a blowout. Head-banging ensued, and we were outscored 10-3 in the 2nd-Half and barely hung-on for the 24-22 Win. While 24 points is not great, it’s close to our 25.5 average for the year and only a few points below what we have averaged in the Playoffs in the Rogers Era. The big concern is what happened to the Defense over the last few games? We have slipped from a Top-5 scoring Defense to 12th best, and only rank 11th in Point Differential and all of the stats are heading in the wrong direction. The Brownies game turned-on interceptions. We had four in total, and a plus-4 overall Turnover-Differential. Savage and Sullivan each had one pick and Rasul Douglas had two, with his second snuffing out the Brownies chance at a game-winning FG. (Note, at plus-4, the NFL average outcome is a 17-point victory.) The interceptions were great, but we should have had five. Mayfield threw a bit behind Stokes, or he surely would have caught this one. Mayfield had The Covid and flew into GB on Christmas morning. The interceptions were fantastic, but that’s not to say that we played all that well on Pass Defense. The third Browns TD that pulled them to within 22-24 was a disaster of confusion. LaFleur had this to say: “I thought about calling timeout in that situation. I was hoping that we would communicate a little bit better, a little quicker and get the call in a get our guys aligned because you never want to see that. They didn’t throw it to the guy that was uncovered, which I was a little bit shocked at, but those are very frustrating because those are self-inflicted wounds that tend to get you beat.” W and T and F … Really? What has Coach even more worried is that the run Defense has all but disappeared. We have regressed to No. 31 in yards allowed per rush attempt at 4.8 yards/attempt for the year and the trend is in the wrong direction. Stiff Chub penetrates slippery perimeter Chubby did quite a number on our Defense, particularly on the outside zone runs, and he average 7.4 yards/carry on the day. You know, the part of the Defense that Pettine encourages to run inside and sack the QB!?! The Browns overall averaged 8.8 yards per rush (vs. our 4.5) and 4.6 yards per pass (vs. our 5.9). WTF is going on with the Defense? It’s obvious that we have reverted to the Poutine Defensive philosophy of trying to sack the QB on every play, whether the other team is passing our not. Rashan Gary is now up to 8.5 sacks this year. The Browns game was the 2nd time he had two sacks in a game. Getting sacks is great, except when the play is a draw and not a pass. The situation was 3rd & 10 in the 4th Qtr, with the Browns down 24-15. Normally a passing down, but not an excuse to break outside contain. Rashan Gary is lined up at Left OLB (yellow box, #52). At the snap he jumps inside of Kenny Clark trying to make his way to Mayfield for the sack, only it’s a draw to D’Ernest Johnson, who picks up 30 yards on the draw play and sets-up the Browns 3rd TD. There were plenty examples throughout the game of us not playing disciplined for outside contain. One humorous/painful example is of Preston Smith … cheating inside only to be outrun by Anthony Schwartz for 13 yards … while being blocked by Mayfield. Humiliating. How it's supposed to look is how Cleveland's "91" (Joe Jackson) played outside contain. He shut our down our reverse attempt for a 10-yard loss. According to LaFleur: “We’ve got to get back to playing everybody do their 1/11th and not trying to make a play and press. I think a lot of times when we do that, we get ourselves out of position.” So, is there a root cause for the melt down on run D? Perhaps... Preston Smith at 8 sacks now after the Browns game. He was initially scheduled to make $12 million in 2021, but his contract was significantly restructured and includes the following 2021 Regular Season incentives: 6 Sacks $500k 8 Sacks Additional $750k 10 Sacks Additional $750k 12 Sacks Additional $1.2 million 14 Sacks Additional $1.2 million A problem in any business are the unintended consequences of bonus and incentive programs. A problem in GB? You decide. For cripes sake, can we just play old fashioned D and get a stop on 3rd Down? We can’t survive in the Playoffs on a diet of interceptions. WTF – Coach’s take on football news that’s messed up Star High School Quarterback Blissfully Unaware He’ll Be Jets Starter 4 Years From Now BEND, OR—As he excitedly slapped a teammate on the back after delivering a pinpoint 30-yard throw in practice, sources confirmed Wednesday that local star quarterback Cole Rabuck was blissfully unaware he would be the New York Jets’ starter four years from now. “He goes out there every day, he’s got a great arm, and he just loves the game so much,” coach Ron Sever said of the 17-year-old who will be drafted fourth overall to a 3-13 Jets team and whose fans will immediately revile him and blame him for every failure. “He’s got a great head on his shoulders and a bright future [of being drafted by the Jets and repeatedly humiliated on a national stage] ahead of him. He’s a generational talent, honestly, and if he keeps it up, he could be the next Aaron Rodgers, [Mark Sanchez, Sam Darnold,] or Peyton Manning.” At press time, Rabuck, who will reportedly express relief when he is out of the NFL by the age of 27, was telling teammates he wants to play football for the rest of his life. The Bears Still Suck – Coach has proof Matt Nagy Boasts He'll Be Bears Coach For Two More Games CHICAGO—No shock to anyone, the Chicago Bears were one of the first among eight teams that have already been mathematically eliminated from any chance of a playoff appearance. Amid swirling rumors about his job security, Bears head coach Matt Nagy declared Monday he believes that he will coach the team's final two games of the regular season. Not because he is a good coach, but because the Bears have a long-standing policy of never firing a head coach during the regular season. Nagy has come as close as anyone, though, and Bears brass have publicly lauded a new NFL rule that allows teams to begin interviewing candidates during the final two weeks of the regular season if he won't be returning to the team in 2022. Earlier, Nagy told the players he was aware of no changes to the timing of the Bears' annual evaluation process for coaches, which typically concludes after the regular season. “I told the guys ‘That’s a win for us!’ They deserve to have some sort of feeling of what a win would be like. For me personally, I'm just really happy for the players that I haven’t been fired yet because I’m sure they would feel responsible. They’ll all be outta here when it happens a week from Monday. It will be good to start the new year this way, on a positive note." Udder Stuff – Commentary from the Badger Underground Wisconsin Wins 2021 NCAA Championship! (for real) Yes, the UW Women won their first NCAA volleyball championship the other day downing a formidable (not to mention, laden with hotties) Nebraska team. Dana Rettke is quite the phenom in the middle. Check out this Championship match winning spike! (click on link) And in other news, Bucky won the Las Vegas Bowl as predicted. It was a bit more of a grinder than expected with the Badgers nursing their lead the whole second half. Our true freshman Braelon Allen galloped for 159 yards and the D was stifling, just as we hoped and expected. They opened up with a Herbig sack followed by an INT on the Sun Worshipers’ opening drive. A decent Mertz pass and a Chenal TD got things off to a nice start. The second drive yielded another TD which capitalized on the ASU depleted secondary. After that, it was pretty much a parade with the D clamping down for the final 46 minutes of game time. Not pretty, but we won. Other than Khakipants's Wolverines getting shellac'd by the Georgia Bulldogs in the Orange Bowl, the Big Ten went undefeated in bowl games leading into New Year's Day. Not too shabby, but "Whoopdeefriggindoo!" because Bucky shoulda played Michigan in Indy. We’re Gonna Kick Your @$$ – predictions for the upcoming game Under normal circumstances, Coach would point out that we are about even on Offense with the Queens, we have a slight advantage with our D and we’re playing at home, so throw on a few more points and we “should” win by 5.1, which is driving the Vegas line to 6.5 points in favor of the Pack. “But” …. as we looked at above, our Run Defense is now at 31 (4.8 yds/attempt) and the Queens have the #17 Rush Offense (4.3 yds/attempt) “And” … throw out all that stuff in the days of The Covid, what is the Injured Reserve and Covid situation? We will be missing a total of 20 players for the game with the Queens, 10 on the Covid List and 10 in Injured Reserve. The lists for both are damn impressive (pretty damn depressing), including three 2020 Pro-Bowlers and a number of key starters. Reserve Covid List = 10 Injured Reserve = 10 “And” … we gave up about 4 yds/attempt to Dalvin Cook in our 34-31 loss to the Queens 34-31 Loss on Nov 17th, and he is averaging 4.7 yards/carry in 2021 (1067 on 226 carries). “But” …. the Queens also have a buncha guys out for the game (13 on IR and 5 on the Covid list, 18 total vs. our 19 with MVS coming back), so arguably we are even on missing players. Where does that leave us for this weekend? Well, for sure Rodgers is not worried about idiot ViQueens fans who have to hold their buddies back from trying to sucker-punch him… … what he is thinking about is how we lost our last two games to the Queens and we are only 3-2 against them in the Rogers/LaFleur era … including losing the last two at the Humpty-Dump-Deux. In the first game between the Vikings and Packers this season, Minnesota came out on top by a score of 34-31 after running back Dalvin Cook and receivers Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen combined for over 300 yards against the green and gold. Now QB Kirk "Kissin" Cousins is recently ruled out with COVID, so with Thielen also being out … … and Minneapolis essentially being out of the playoff race after their loss to the Rams last week … … expect this one to be another tough Divisional game, but it will break the Packers’ way and pretty much match the long-term average score. Packers: 28 ViQueens: 24 JB – Packers you forgot about, but stories you’ll remember about them With Borky out this week, Coach feels compelled to remind you, the astute reader, that our hot-and-cold punter also manages the holding duties for place kicking on Special Teams. So now the Packers are scrambling for a fill-in punter and place-kick holder. There has been considerable speculation regarding who will be holding for kicks (perhaps Randall Cobb?) and handling the punting duties (bring back JK Scott?) this weekend. All this got Coach to thinking about the 1975 Packers great, Dave Pureifory. When Chester “the Molester” Marcol went down after twisting his knee tackling a kick returner, Coach Starr had nowhere to turn in the middle of the game, so he asked the team if anyone had kicking experience. Packers DT, Dave Puriefory raised his hand and explained he kicked in high school in Ecorse, Michigan. With no other options, Starr sent Puriefory in to kick. He handled kickoffs okay (as any of us could, except Mason Crosby) and made 2 of 4 extra points (Huh, also similar to Mason Crosby!). He was already a Special Teams regular, so having an extra tackler on the field was a plus. There were no field goal attempts, as the Packers just went for it on 4th downs (see also, LaFleur game strategy with Mason Crosby).
Dave was known as the Tasmanian Devil on the field for his reckless abandon pursing ball carriers, but also known to be a very mild mannered sort off the field. After 6 years as a Packers DT with Dave Roller (and part of the self-titled “Gang Green” defense), he moved on to play for the Lions as a defensive end. He ended his career as a Birmingham Stallion in the USFL where he was a DE opposite Reggie White. How ‘bout them apples? So, summarizing, Corey Bojorquez, will eventually be playing defense next to Aaron Donald in the CFL after a brief stint with the Lions. Any questions?
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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
November 2022
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