On the cusp of a Big Ten championship and eminent NCAA playoff berth, the #2 Michigan Wolverines football program was brought under indictment this week for “comprehensive recruiting violations” (I know, shocker), forcing a mandated immediate and indefinite suspension of their head coach, Jim Harbaugh, from all football-related activities at the university. Michigan Athletic Director, Early Agzit, called the charge "A bunch of malarkey..." and "...tough to prove, considering all the steps we've taken to avoid getting caught." Agzit then announced the immediate hiring of Les Miles, the recently fired head coach of LSU's football team and former assistant to legendary Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler. It is unclear at this time how many Wolverine players on the active roster will be declared ineligible for future games (a.k.a. Will be declaring for the 2017 NFL Draft). FBI Director, Jim Comey, could not be reached for comment, but his spokesperson, Mark Fuhrman, indicated to reporters that in Comey's view a rush to judgment is warranted. "In this particular case" Fuhrman said "the end justifies the means if Packers GM Ted Thompson takes this opportunity to replace Green Bay head coach, Mike McCarthy, with Harbaugh." ...and presumably post haste in order to get back into the playoff hunt. When asked how he would respond to a dismissal by Thompson, McCarthy said "What took you so long?" (Click on Link) Create a seam here - X' & O's about the game or a scheme Knile who? Don’t bother, he’s gone after showing Ted enough with 5 carries in two games. We don’t really have a running game, so stay tuned while we rummage around for guys working in pizzerias who have already demonstrated they have no ability when they played for other teams. OK, enough of the negativity! Aaron looked great! He threw four touchdowns to various receivers and all is OK, we beat the Falcons! (Well, a moral victory anyway.) Special Teams had a great return by Davis and our punter showed us some of his impressive Schum shots, so maybe we are finally getting to league average in that category. Giving credit where credit is due, A-Rod did look better than any other game for over a year and his stats were much better (Coach doesn’t believe in Fantasy Football so that part doesn’t matter). The mechanics were better, but he’s still throwing late and behind many receivers as you saw on the desperation drive at the end to try to win the game. He’s also locking in on his primary receiver far too often and not looking at other players. As you can see below, he had 3rd & 6 and doesn’t bother looking at a wide-open Jordy who could easily have gotten the first down. Instead he ran around, got sacked and we punted. We used to call these short passes “the West Coast Offense”…it drives coach nuts to see us (AR) simply refuse to take what the defense is giving us!! But the Defense looked much better -- didn’t it, Coach? Yes, Johnny, it looked very good when the offense ran a play that ran into what we called on D. But when the other team ran a play that the big Legume guessed incorrectly, we got gashed. Anyone out there annoyed by collapsing in big games? Leroy Butler's analysis (Click on Link) does a nice job of outlining why the last Atlanta TD was a classic combination of wrong defense with wrong personnel on the field. He doesn’t call out Capers by name, but he’s very clear he was not impressed with the Legume. WTF - The Coach's take on a bad ref call or a bad play call or the like Weiner probe. Nuf sed. Coach’s next WTF goes to Cam Newton. Not for his complaint about an apparent “Shaquille O’Neal effect” (a double-standard for him failing to get the referee protection of defensive penalties when he takes a shot to the head) because he is a large quarterback (uh, then stop running the ball, Mongo); rather, it’s his choice of post-game attire that he likely stole off the set of The Mask. Once again James Jones' younger brother, Julio, found himself involved in a questionable pass interference play that likely affected the outcome of the game. Only this time interference WAS called on the defender, but Julio was the guilty party! Jones held former Miami Hurricane standout LaDarius "Larry" Gunter by the shoulder pads on a key 1st down play that prevented Gunter from getting an easy interception and resulted in a 24-yard advance for the Dirty Birds. Larry popped up with his hands spread out wide, like the banker character from the movie version of Stephan King's novel Shawshank Redemption -- after he crawls out of the state penitentiary via the raw sewage pipes into the pouring rain outside, and rightfully so! It was complete BS. That “drive” resulted in a 40-yard field goal for the Falcons which, in hind sight, was the difference in the game. It seems like the Packers are always the poster child for proving something is wrong about NFL refereeing that needs to be fixed immediately (see also, replacement refs in Seattle, Jerry Rice 4th quarter “non”fumble in 1998 playoffs in San Fran with replay suspended that year, etc.). Now we are getting screwed again – this time in order to prove to lazy football patrons that pass interference needs to be reviewable. Julio Jones highlighted the issue when he got mauled by Dick Sherman a coupletree weeks ago, and he was front and center again -- only as the perpetrator -- this past Sunday during the Fox matinee game. It almost seems like it is too perfectly set up against the Pack. Regardless, if that's what it takes to make PI reviewable, then I'm for it. But if the Packers get screwed again by a bad PI call / no-call to drive the issue home to a nationwide audience in a playoff-caliber matchup later this year, Coach will be calling on you to get your torch and pitchforks and we're going after Goodell at his home (his wife is Fox News fox, Jane Skinner – great name, so it might be beneficial to surprise attack at night, and I call dibs, but we can plan the details out later). Anyway, ... Knowing that Roger G is a follower of The Coach Clarahanson Show!!! (as much as Coach is a follower of MILF Fox News anchor women), he probably will heed this warning and PI will become a reviewable play next year. The only problem is that the Rules Subcommittee will likely fail to consider unintended consequences and completely remove common sense from the review process (as they sip Mai Tai's at their Miami hotel pool together during the owners' meetings next March), making pass interference calls more controversial than they are today (see also, "fewer" kickoff returns by changing the touchback to the 25-yard line, or the 2-replays review limit even if you are right both times, or the 15-yard "Jim Schwartz" penalty for throwing a red flag on an automatically reviewed play, etc.). The anticipated PI review rule flaw will be demonstrated, and then undoubtedly ignored, during the 2017 preseason "test period," and the Packers will fall victim to it and the idiocy of the NFL's implementation of that half-ass new PI replay review rule -- most likely on national television with a season-changing outcome. ...and the rule will be revised or eliminated the following year until we get screwed over again in 2018, which will end up with the NFL re-instituting another, less idiotic (but still probably not as good as an obvious and simple solution that 2 guys in a tavern could come up with), version of the rule in 2019. (Sigh.) What else... Oh, yeah: When smokin-hot sideline reporter and part-time voyeur victim, Erin Andrews, asked Mike McCarthy at halftime of the Atlanta game about what the Packers needed to do in the 3rd quarter, MM's reply was "We need to get the run going." Huh? WTF, McCarthy? You were completely dismantling Atlanta with the pass in the 1st half, and now you need to completely switch gears and run the ball? WTF for? ...to have frequent 3-and-outs? ...to tire out our defense? ...to showcase our no-name pickup RB's off the street? ...to lose the game? Sorry to sound like a broken record, but as sure as the Bears still suck, Mike McCarthy cannot manage a football game. He unjustifiably does the exact opposite of what is supposed to be done in key game situations to win games. Think about it ... When we were down by 2 in the 4th quarter, if we didn't get that "12 men on the field" penalty called in our favor -- you knew McCarthy was gonna go for it on 4th and 1 instead of kicking the sure-bet, game-leading field goal. I was freaking out, screaming for him to kick it. You were, too. Stick to offensive play calling, Mike, after you get instructions from a real head coach ... somewhere else. OK, one more… If I'm Thom Brenneman, I have GOT to be thinking -- WTF, man?! You might be asking "Thom who?” (...and why does he spell his name with a silent 'h' in it?) Thom Brenneman was the play-by-play announcer in the early 90's, alongside legendary color commentator Harry Carey, for the Chicago Cubs. Thom saw many painful contests of Cubs baseball game losses up close and personal. So, the Cubs FINALLY get to the World Series, and Thom gets assigned by Fox to do a Packers football game in Atlanta with Trohy Aikman so that St Louis native and Cardinals fan, Jhoe Buck, can do the play-by-play of Game 5 at Wrigley, which the Cubbies win in dramatic 3-2 fashion. THAT sucks (if you're Thom), but it's also what Coach considers "FIB justice" (see also, FIB karma). As for the silent "h" ... Who TF knows? Maybe ask his brother, John. Bears Still Suck - the Coach has proof I bet you couldn't wait to watch the Bears beat up the Vikings on Mundane Night Football. Cutler was back, Alshon Jeffry caught up to Geronimo Allison in quantity of 2016 touchdowns... pretty awesome stuff (that's sarcasm). Bears fans, until your team stops being referred to as "the perfect medicine" for what is ailing your opponent each week, you pretty much suck. Putting things in perspective, Chicagoans were more surprised that the Bears beat the Vikings than the Cubs won a World Series game at home (something no one alive has ever witnessed before). But Coach can be gracious, too. Congrats to Soldiers Fields for actually selling out a game this week! No, it wasn’t the nationally televised Chicago Bears football game Monday night (that was still blacked out in Chicago), it is Saturday’s rugby match between Ireland’s “Ireland” team (catchy name) versus New Zealand’s “All Blacks” (and I thought “Redskins” was provocative). Judging by the tailgate poster, I suspect there won’t be a sober soul in the stands. I can’t believe I turned down free tickets (I just can't stand going to Chicago). Coach had another trip through Chicago en route to a decent city on Monday. During my layover at O'Hare it was quite surprising to see near-zero Bears jerseys being worn by the locals on a game day; yet, PLENTY of Cubs apparel. Noteworthy, I factually observed more Cleveland Indians apparel being worn by travelers in Chicago than Bears apparel. Apparently there is a soccer team in Chicago called the Fire(?). Coach is unfamiliar, but noted more of those jerseys being worn by the dapper airport staff than the typical Urlacher #54 left-overs acquired via the Goodwill outlet stores sprinkled generously across greater Chicagoland. One last thought... It's not just the Bears, ALL of Chicago sucks. Even the famous, yet homely (in a bug-eyed, inbred sort of way), celebs from Chicago getting TV closeups by Fox cameras during the World Series (Bill Murray, Eddie Vedder, John Cusack, Vince Vaughn, etc.) had to leave Shit-town to become famous. Not so in Wisconsin! Our celebrities never had to leave their hometown to become famous ... Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Steven Avery, Bill Schroeder, just to name a few. Udder stuff - commentary from the Badger Underground One major test stands between the Badgers and a trip to Indy for a rematch with Michigan or Ohio State. Evanston has been the site of more Badgers implosions that Badger Underground cares to remember. Rarely have we gone in as the underdogs to Northworstern and again we are 5.5-7 point favorites to the Mildcats. During the last two visits, we committed a combined 7 turnovers. None of the losses can equal two that happened on Camp Randall turf. The first was the “take a knee” game during Ron Dayne’s freshman season. Despite the hit that Barry Alvarez and WI recruiting took over the next couple of years, Ron Dayne teams went on to win two Rose Bowls. The second debacle took place last season as Jazz Peavey caught the game winning pass in the end zone, took 5 steps in the end zone with the ball secured, then was hit out of frustration by a NU defender, causing the ball to shift as Peavey went out of bounds. Peavey would have been better off spiking the ball after two steps. That game, like the take a knee game, tarnished what otherwise would have been considered a good season. Here’s ‘s troubling about our chances this weekend… WI has been able to get by the last two games without their stud NT. Cichy was the second most physical player on that defense. NU’s RB is a load and is among the conference leaders in rushing. Iowa and the Cornholers did not possess such physical runners. Cichy filled DL gaps during the first half of the Iowa game. His replacements racked up a bunch of tackles in the Nebraska game, but are far less physical. I expect our defense to get shoved around. If TJ Watt is unable to go, we lose yet another disruptor who has been the face of our defense. Complimenting their running game, NU has developed a very good passing game. Good news there is that the WI DBs have steadily improved from week to week, making a number of impressive plays on the ball versus Nebraska. Despite getting two OL starters back against Nebraska, the OL continued to underwhelm and had as little push as we have seen this season. LG Deitzen is still dinged up and looked like a hybrid of the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. He regularly got shoved back into the pocket and repeatedly whiffed trying to block LB’s, setting up T-bone hits on Clement like we have never seen. Continued porous pass protection for Joe Willy Hornibrook is going to get him laid out for good one of these weeks. He has withstood a ridiculous number of hard hits. Enter the pick machine Bart Houston. Despite Houston’s ability to run for his life, we did not see much in the way or rollouts or bootlegs. Following Hornibrook’s regrettable pick into coverage trying to throw to an open Fumagalli, Houston did one better forcing a ball into double coverage after staring down the receiver who was never open and had zero prospects of ever getting open. Two 4th quarter picks, a missed FG and a missed extra point late is hardly confidence inspiring. To this point, WI’s offense has been able to put together one key drive late and rely on the defense to do the rest—with the exceptions being the MI & Ohio State losses. The defense’s ability to do that this week is in question. The OL has been nothing short of awful in obvious passing situations since the Michigan game. NU hung with Ohio State at their place while we fell apart late against them in Madison. We both beat Iowa. Nebraska beat NU as they were still figuring things out. We self-destructed in the 4th quarter vs. Nebraska, but ran the ball down their throat after getting a TD to win in OT. NU is improving each week and against good competition. We have been losing a key defender each of the last three weeks. We do have the revenge factor on our side this weekend, like we got in Evanston the year after the take a knee game. I don’t care what form it takes, but catching a break – even if on a controversial play, would be karma. FIB karma. We're gonna kick your a$$ - predictions for the next game Rematch!!! We’ve all been waiting for this one! No doubt the emotional scars left over from of the Hall of Fame game “scrimmage” will spill into the contest this Sunday. Try to contain yourself. Temperatures have been unseasonably warm, but there is little chance the painted “G” will curdle on the 50-yard line at Lambeau. But really, the primary reason that we will beat the Colts is that mediocrity should prevail over ineptitude. We are an OK team and the Colts are really, really bad. Any questions? We have done a good job of squeezing past the lousy teams we’ve played ---- we’ve beaten teams that are 19th, 20th, 28th and 29th in point differential. Yay! However, we’ve lost to the 3rd, 7th an 8th ranked teams. If the pattern continues of only beating lower ranked teams, we will finish at 10-6. OK, we are right at the half-way point in the NFL season. We are going into Week 9, we’ve played 7 games and we’re going to win the Super Bowl, right? Pete Roselle, NFL commissioner who grew the league to what it is today, had a stated objective of parity between the teams. His thought was that if every team was mediocre, all teams would be good. That led Coach to think about various synonyms for the word mediocre. Maybe we can start a contest, which word do you think best describes the 2016 Packers thus far? decent / middling / ordinary / second-rate / undistinguished / uninspired / colorless / pedestrian / unexceptional Hey, that’s not fair, Coach -- we’ve had a lot of injuries! Well toughen up, Sonny. The chart below plots wins vs. injuries and the Packers have had an average number of injuries this year and are average at winning games. Naturally the Pats are at the top, winning more games than their injuries would suggest, and are performing much better than the Packers. So, Sonny, stow that injury excuse for someone who cares… Now we’re 8 weeks into the season and it’s time to start thinking about how the playoff race is shaping up. We are in a logjam of average teams and we have lost to the only 3 good teams we’ve played; who also happen to be in our conference so they will be in superior position when it comes to play-off seeding tie-breakers. Keeping with the tracking we’ve been doing (Coach’s “Pythagorean point differential model”, the extrapolation of current record and the FiveThirtyEight prediction), we see all agree that -- based on results so far, the Packers will finish 9-7. Combined with the 10-6 game-by-game look above, its starting to feel like Marty Schottenheimer is setting us up for another disappointing flash in the playoffs. Shockingly, after all of that, “if the season ended today” it would be January, and we’d be the number 6 seed in the playoffs… …and while getting into the playoffs is “great” according to Mark Murphy, Coach would rather focus on winning our last game of the playoffs. Unfortunately, FiveThirtyEight has the highest odds for us as “one and done.” The FiveThirtyEight forecast below is very interesting when it comes to playoff seeding. They actually “play” over 100,000 game simulations to come-up with the forecast below. What they are basically forecasting is another exit like we’ve had every year with TT, MM & the big Legume. Coach would gladly take “an Elway” and let the team slide for a year to re-stock the coaching staff and get ready to win. This mediocrity thing is wearing thin. JB - Packer players you forgot about, but stories you'll remember about them Cecil Isbell was a star for the Packers and the Purdon’t Boilertinkers in the 1930’s and 40’s. He is second only to Chuck Cecil on my list of favorite Packers Cecils. Aside from swooning the ladies with his muscular frame and metrosexual name, the highlight of his days in college was probably his winning of the Allstar game MVP award after leading the College Allstars to victory over the NFL Champion Redskins. From there he went on to share the leading half-back roll with Packers star Arnie Herber, both of whom threw passes to NFL Hall-of-Famer Don Hutson!
In those days the “quarterback” position wasn’t really recognized; some “halfbacks” were designated to throw the ball, and the Packers had two of them. In 1942 Isbell passed for 2,021 yards and 24 TD’s…IN A 10 GAME SEASON! Scale that up to 16 games and you have over 3,200 yds. passing and 39 TD’s. Think about Starr, Favre & Rodgers, sprinkle in Lynn Dickey, the Majik man and a few others and clearly there is no other franchise that has had as many good passers as the Pack!! At the end of his career he went on to Coach the Boil-lancers for a coupla years, and then in ’49 moved on to coach the new Colts team in Baltimore. The roots of the franchise go back to December 28, 1946, when the bankrupt Miami Seahawks of the All-America Football Conference were purchased, relocated to Baltimore and renamed the "Colts." On September 7, 1947, the Colts, under Head Coach Cecil Isbell, won their initial AAFC game, 16-7, over the Brooklyn Dodgers. That was the highlight for Isbell’s coaching career, as the team concluded its inaugural season before a record Baltimore crowd of 51,583 by losing to the New York Yankees, 21-7 and he got booted after a 1-11 1949 season. The AAFC and NFL merged in 1950, and the Colts joined the NFL. Later, of course, infamous owner of the Baltimore Colts and notorious drug addict, Robert Isray, moved the franchise in the dark of night to Indianapolis for a cash payout. (One wonders what he needed all that cash for all of a sudden.) You know the rest. Anyway, Cecil Isbell was good.
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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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