Welcome back to The Coach Clarahanson Show!!! In Coach’s Humble Opinion: Gun deer season should always have Away games Despite the outcome of Sunday night’s game, all in all I’d have to say the scheduling gods did a pretty nice job this year taking Wisconsin deer hunters into consideration. Normally Coach has to sacrifice a Sunday in the woods to head back to Lambeau, which can be dicey with an unexpectedly long blood trail tracking jaunt after dusk on opening day. Sometimes you gotta call it a night and continue the search in the morning, and those Green Bay noon kick-offs opening weekend can really put a guy under pressure. Packer games should always be Away games during gun deer season. Ideally, as was the case this year, a Sunday night game on the road would be preferred, although a Monday night Away game would also suffice. (Mind you, though, Thanksgiving day games in Detroit are not as desirable, as Vince Lombardi decreed over 50 years ago.) I lost no hunting or game-watching opportunities on opening weekend. As an added bonus, with the next game scheduled in New York I don’t have to worry about traveling to Lambeau from deer camp on the 2nd weekend either. …and with the beauty of Al Gore’s internet invention, I can watch the battle against the New York football Giants this weekend from the woods on my phone! I realize that not EVERY single gun deer season can accommodate two Away games for the Packers; so if we gotta play a home game that week, I say restrict it to the 2nd weekend. Even better, make that 2nd weekend home game a Gold Package game. People from Milwaukee are shitty hunters anyways (Click On Link). …At least, in my humble opinion. Create A Seam Here – X’s & O’s about the game or a scheme Here the “The Defensive Highlight” of the game… Here the “The Offensive Highlight” of the game… If you don’t want to read anymore, just have a look below at Robert Saleh vs. his one-time roommate Petite Fleur. San Francisco averaged 7.5 yards per play Rodgers was 10-of-20 for 41 yards in the 1st Avg = 2.05 yards/attempt, lowest of his career This is the summary of the game. Coach simply observes that this late in the Season the Offense was supposed to be jelling. Instead, the Rookie Coach, who has surrounded himself with inexperienced friends, seems to have gotten himself confused after a little bit of success. In this episode we’ll break down some of the, well, breakdowns on Offense, Defense and Special Teams…and hopefully find that they are correctable. Look, SF has a damn good defense, playing at home in Prime Time and tired of hearing how at 9-1 “they hadn’t played anyone” … it’s no surprise that they were fired up for the game and wanted to kick some ass. You have to give Petite Chat his due, nobody expected the Rookie Coach to have the Packers at 8-3 entering Wk 12. …but are the Niners so good they should kick our ass into next month? No. Nobody, I mean nobody, expected Petite Chat to look so outmatched going against his roommate, his brother and he best friend (Saleh, his brother and Kyle Shanahan, respectively). This kind of body language for a Coach at any level was awful and it was clear by the 2nd Qtr he had no answers for anything the Niners were doing in any phase of the game. Die-hard Packer fans have undoubted been reading all about “the Davante factor” all week… 2019 Packers thru Gm 12 Without Davante: 4-0 {avg 32.5 pts/gm} With Davante: 4-3 {avg 18.2 pts/gm} You’ve read all about how Aaron Jones touches and scoring were up during that 4-0 stretch (6.2 catches and 70 yards/gm, 77 touches overall and 551 yards), and you’ve read about how AR holds the ball longer to “wait” for Davante in the pedestrian 4-3 games (A Jones 1 catch for minus-1-yard in the last 3 games, 35 touches for 160 yards before that). Coach isn’t going to go through all of the gory details again here, he just simply observes that if AR and Petite Chat get their heads out of their collective asses, there is hope for the Offense down the stretch. Rodgers went embarrassingly bad 0-of-14 on third downs, holding the ball too long on many snaps. OK kids let’s have a more detailed look at the game, particularly the 1st half. Both teams actually had 8 drives, a lot more than the average of 4 or 5 per team per half in the NFL. On the bright side, apart from huge f’ng mistakes, the Defense played will, holding the Niners to 3.8 yards per play. On the other hand, our Offense was a disaster. Every single drive had a significant mistake! The game was over at the end of the 1st Half, the Niners were up 23-0. They scored on 5 of their 8 drives, we punted (poorly) 6 times, fumbled and stupidly went for it on 4th down (again) and gave up a probable 3-points. In the drive chart above, Coach has tried to capture a few of the key mistakes/events as an aide-memoire for you, the erudite reader (look it up). The first half could easily be made into a novel the length and complexity of The Brothers Karamazov, but let’s make it simple: Davante Adams got jobbed by the Refs on a Phantom Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty on the play (Seriously? His chest bumping a defender deserves a penalty equal to spearing a defenseless player in the helmet?) after the “Offensive Highlight” above… After a couple of incompletions, SF pins their ears back, our OL doesn’t block, SF covers Lazard (the hot read for the blitz) and AR holds the ball leading to the only turnover… SF is now setup at 1st & Goal on the 1, we trot out our “Goal Line Stand” Defense…. which in the good old days of yore would generally consist of lots of big guys…but Tevin Coleman had pretty much air to run against… Watch this GIF several times and many disturbing things emerge; it’s truly a LOL (cry-out-loud?) moment to observe Dean Lowry stumbling backwards into the picture after the TD and OLB Smith in the background, otherwise it’s a whole lot of small-fast guys getting pushed out of the frame… Arguably the game was over at this point. In the 8 games we won, we started-fast/scored-first and got turnovers. No dice on this day. Throw in a couple punts (really bad ones) and we gave them great field position for a coupla easy field goals. Not quite yet “the Dagger” but getting close… On the following drive we had arguably our last opportunity to salvage a game competitive, but it was missed by the Rookie HC. On 3rd and 8 at our own 34, Jimmy G makes a catch that the blind zebras whiffed on, but Petite Fleur did not challenge. It would have kept the drive alive and at minimum pushed SF back further on the subsequent FG drive. Rather than 13-0, challenge this call and the score could have still been 10-3…or maybe even we score and it’s 10-6 or 10-10. Yeah, wudda, cudda, shudda. The point being any NFL game hangs on just a few plays and smart game management (#McCarthyFiredForLowFootballIQ). The eye-ball test says we were manhandled on the O & D Lines, but none-the-less we had opportunities to make this a competitive game. Ignore the fact that the 2nd Half opened fantastic for the Pack. We held the Niners to a 3-and-out and we came back and scored a TD and a 2-point conversion. Both to Davante, both firsts from him this year. With the score now 23-8 (instead of us being at least tied, mind you), you no-doubt were thinking “Maybe, just maybe, we can climb back in this thing!” Nope. On the subsequent drive SF picked up 14 yards on 1st down and then the game was truly over with the 61-yard completion to TE Kittle. This just in, we can’t cover Tight Ends. Ooops! That was Travis Kelce in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago. The 61-yarder against the Niner’s is THIS one… (Sigh.) The D-Backs are in “Quarters” (4 across Zone DE) and the Safeties (Amos-and-Andy) get sucked-up on the run fake. Kittle is now running wide open over the middle, and the CB’s King and Alexander turn and try to play catch the TE (to be clear, the TD is not their fault). Ahh, for the love-of-Fritz-Shurmur, what the hell is going on out there? We’ll come back to Fritz and the progeny of his siblings in the Giants section below, but let’s just say that Fritz used the K-I-S-S rule, keep-it-simple-stupid. Much like Robert Saleh does for the Niners. A simple 4-3-4 concept, with typically a 4-2-5 Nickel Defense. Pretty much the same as Fritz. If it ain’t broke, …. Just sayin. Coach would be remiss if he didn’t share observations of the, well, coaching… I’m already getting tired of hearing LaFleur’s politically correct, Murphy-approved press conference responses after losses. They were okay after the first two L’s, but the push of the replay button after the 3rd loss is getting tougher to listen to over and over again, sorta like Luke Bryan’s “Huntin', Fishin' & Lovin' Every Day” song. Or any song by Luke Bryan for that matter. But I digress... Melissa McCarthy had plenty of weak assistants, OL Coach was not on the list. Coach has no doubt that Adam Stenavich is a good friend of Petite Fleur. But he’s equally sure that the 2019 Packers OL, and particularly LT Baktiari has gone backwards. His coaching career started in 2011 on the Michigan Staff as a strength and conditioning intern and was promoted to offensive graduate assistant coach 2012. WTF? After stints as double-secret-under-assistant-offensive-line-observer-coach at Northern Arizona, San Jose State and Indiana State, he was named Under-Assistant-OL Coach in SF in 2018; then, Petite Fleur gives him his first shot at OL. Rookie Head Coach, Rookie OL Coach, facing his old team, who has 4 DL selected in the 1st round. Rodgers was sacked five times (at least three Rodgers held the ball too long), we couldn’t run, and they won in a knockout. What’s not to like? They may both grow into their jobs, but this was a huge hiring mistake by Petite Chat. Switching to Special-Ed Teams, after seven weeks JK Scott was averaging 49.2 yards per punt with a net of 44.4. Between Weeks 8-10, though, Scott averaged a pedestrian 36.3 yards per punt with a net of just 34.7. As bad as we are at punting, punt returns are worse… Thirty-one NFL teams have at least 40 total punt return yards this season. Thirty-one NFL teams have a long punt return of at least 10 yards. Thirty-one NFL teams average at least 3 yards per punt return. The 32nd team in all three categories: the Green Bay Packers. We have NEGATIVE 11 total punt return yards through 12 games. The Packers longest punt return this year went for a single yard. WTF? Only once in the past 37 years of the NFL’s 16-game regular season did a team finish with fewer than 100 total punt return yards. The 2015 San Diego Chargers had 84. The Cardinals hold the record for fewest punt return yards in a single season, with 27 in 1965, when they were based in St. Louis. The 2019 Packers are on pace to finish with minus 14. Looking at our ST Coordinator’s experience: Why TF was this guy hired? He was the Special Teams ASSISTANT Coordinator on teams that were a collective 24-88 when he was there! I hope I’m wrong about this, but I suspect ST will be the demise that prevents us from winning the division and bounces us out in the 1st round of the playoffs. To that end, however, Mark Murphy will call it a "successful season" and tout the significant turnaround of the team by his personal selection for head coach. Man I hate being right all the time. WTF – Coach’s take on football news that’s messed up Matthew Stafford Admits He’d Play Through Back Injury For Better Team Than Lions DETROIT—Leading up to their annual “Super Bowl” game on Thanksgiving, Lions injured quarterback Matthew Stafford admitted he wasn’t going to risk discomfort for the team he was drafted by 11 seasons ago. In that time, he has taken the Lions to the playoffs three times, going a dreary 0-3. “No fricken way.” he said, “It’s not like this team is worth it. Maybe if we had a shot at winning in the playoffs once in a while like half the other NFL teams, but I’m not gonna do it for these ass clowns.” The QB finished his press conference in a peculiar manner by misapplying a famous anonymous quote intended to inspire injured athletes. Stafford proclaimed “Today I will do what others won’t so tomorrow I can do what others can’t.” Either way, it makes sense. The Bears Still Suck – Coach has proof Local Hero Tackles, Detains AR-15 CHICAGO—The unseasonably warm weather in Chicago this past weekend almost turned a gleeful lakeside stroll into a horrific incident. An attempted shooting took place in broad daylight along the pathway of Grant Park, but luckily a hero was close by to intervene and prevent another Windy City tragedy. Mike Oxtuc stopped his walk short and managed to tackle the shooter’s AR-15 to the ground. He pinned it on the lawn until authorities arrived and even kicked it a few times for good measure, though it did not appear to be resisting in the least bit. Bewildered, the shooter shrugged and slowly backed away. “Honestly, I was kinda hoping to make a name for myself. You know, like Jussie Smollet,” he told reporters later. “But everyone just blamed the gun. So… well, I guess I won’t be famous after all.” “At this point, we aren’t looking for any more suspects,” an FBI official told reporters as the AR-15 was read its rights. “It seems the AR-15 acted entirely of its own volition.” Adding “The weapon is obviously a menace that needs to locked up to prevent any further harm.” Some onlookers clapped, while others could be heard hurling admonishing jeers and taunts toward gun as it was hauled away in the back of a police cruiser. According to CDC mortality statistics, of the several hundred gun deaths that occur in Chicago each year, up to 75% are caused by a rogue assault rifle, shotgun, or handgun. “Despite the nation’s strictest gun laws, it’s a huge problem in Chicago that needs to be addressed before these guns act out,” a CDC spokeswoman said. “It’s 3 p.m. Do you know where your assault rifle is?” she cautioned. As for the shooter, he has purportedly decided not to use any type of gun for his next attempted mass killing so that he will “…get full credit for it, like the Tsarnaev brothers,” to which every Chicago politician responded, “Who?” ADVERTISEMENT – Are You Living With A FIB? You no longer need to risk suffering dangers like heart attack or stroke from having to live with an S.O.B. bastard from Illinois, because now there is Xerelto! 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Wisconsin has enjoyed a resurgence of its running game due to lesser competition, Iowa’s unwillingness to pack defenders between the tackles, and running jet sweeps & fake jet sweeps to deter defenses from packing the middle of the field. So it’s on to Minnie. This is the oldest continuous rivalry in NCAA Division 1 football, and the 128th meeting of these two teams which started in 1890. It is one of the truest rivalries considering that after all these meetings the series is tied at 60-60-8. Last year the Goofs won for the 1st time in the last 15 years. This year they are looking good and this game is the first one in our lifetime in which the winner wins a division of conference. Historically, Minnesota had great teams before 1940. They have 7 national championships. They think they are hot shit now and have a lot of people in agreement. True, this squad will pose more of a threat to Bucky than usual and it is always a good game. Before we get too worried, though, remember Bucky is favored by 2.5 on the road (despite being ranked 12 versus MN’s #8). We predict Lee Corso will be donning the Bucky head gear before the game although Kirk will be picking (wrongly) the Goofs. Anything less than Paul Westerberg as the guest picker will be a disappointment. MN has racked up an impressive record against a weak schedule, except for the Penn State win where Penn State’s CB inexplicably stopped covering receivers 15 yards into their routes. The Gophers have two thousand yard receivers and their QB is ranked 2nd in the conference. Again, stats against an easy schedule. They run a spread offense, something that our defense has had difficulty figuring out. Defensively, they defend the pass better than they defend the run. With a rain/snow mix falling and winds blowing 15-25 mph, our vulnerability to the pass will be somewhat negated. We won’t lose as much with the passing game as will the Gophers. Our offensive strength is running the football and our defensive strength is stopping the run. We think MN will choke with the national spotlight on them. Bucky 34 - Goofs 21. We’re Gonna Kick Your @$$ – predictions for the upcoming game The Packers lead the all-time series with the Giants, 33-26-2, including 28-23-2 in the Regular Season and 5-3 playoffs….AR is 4-2 Regular Season and 1-1 in the Playoffs. The last two Playoff Losses, 2007 NFC Championship (Brent Faver) and 2011 Divisional Round were killers and Eli Manning is the only QB to have beaten both Favre and Rodgers in the playoffs. Both of his teams beat the Pats in the Super Bowls of those years, too. We were heavily favored both times and the Tom Coughlin/Baby Manning teams were barely above 0.500 in the Regular Season. As you the loyal reader know, Coach obsesses on arcane statistics, and he usually goes back 30 years to make statistical comparisons with Super Bowl Winners. What is interesting, to Coach anyway, is that those two Giants teams are complete outliers. They are the exception that proves the rule and they are the two that give hope to the “just get into the playoffs” sentiment. Take those two teams out of the data base and the stats skew much more to “defense wins championships” and “scoring more points than the other guy” is key to winning. Speaking of that, where are the 2019 Packers after the Beat-Down-On-SF-Bay? Well, we have our nose above water at a positive 1.5-point differential, tied with Houston for 12th ranking. The graph below has a lot of data, so let Coach explain a bit before your head explodes. The graph plots the 2019 NFL Season, Point Differential vs. Wins. The X-Axis shows the number of team wins through Wk12 (11 games for most teams) and the Y-Axis shows the Average-Point-Differential-per-Game (offensive points – defensive points). The green dashed horizontal line is the median point differential of SB Winners (50% above, 50% below) and the red dashed horizontal line is the floor. 90% of SB winners have had a point differential above this level of 4.3 points. Obviously, there is a big correlation between scoring more points than the other guy and the number of wins you have. A team that is “above-the-line” is “unlucky” in that they have been beating teams by a bigger margin than their record shows. The opposite if true if a team is below-the-line. In the case of the Pats, Ravens and Niners, they are “unlucky” and arguable should be undefeated. The Dolphins are way below the line and should have lost about 50 games so far, but somehow have won twice. The Packers are “lucky” so far, as the graph, the formula Coach discussed last week, and the eye-ball test, all agree. They say that we have a 0.500 team right now. We have played an unusually large percentage of games at home in the 1st half of the season, and have been incredibly healthy so far, both of which have helped the Rookie Coach tremendously (see also: 2018 Chicago Bears who went 12-4). We are a little bit better than the last two years, but not a dominant team no matter how good 8-3 sounds. So how we gonna beat the Giants? This game is a git-right-game. We gonna git-right or this season is headed south in a hurry. The Giants started the 2019 Season 0-2 after getting killed by the Cowboys and the Bills, so they benched Baby Manning and decided to roll out the new kid, 1st Round Pick Daniel Jones from Duke. There was some optimism after winning their first two games with Jones under center, but the Giants then went on an extended losing streak to sit at 2–9 after week 12. He’s got a passer rating of 87.8, with 17 TD’s and 8 Int’s, and it looks like his teammates think he’s a good leader. Any objective observer can at least agree he is much better than Mitchell Trubisky ever was. Who knows, he could be dangerous, but this is the kind of opportunity for the D to get back on track and the Offense to spread it around. The Giants are coached by Fritz Shurmur’s nephew, Pat. Pat Shurmur is in his 2nd year and obviously he has fallen far from the Fritz gene pool tree. He has the Giants ranked 29th in passing, 13th in yds/rush, 24th in Scoring and 29th in Scoring D. The 2019 season is the New York Giants' 95th in the National Football League, their 10th playing their home games at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. They are attempting to improve on their 5–11 campaign from last year, but only have 5 games left to win 4 if they are going to do that. Pat’s uncle Fritz Shurmur was an NFL coach for 24 years, and was Coach’s favorite all-time Defensive Coordinator of the Packers, running a base 4-3-4 scheme. The Defensive scheme that the Chargers, Niners, and Eagles (the representative “3” in our 8-3 record) all use today is based on Fritz’s D. Giants fans have good reason to be nervous about this Sunday’s game… The Packers Git-Right! Packers 31 Giants 14 Chevon McNuggets - G.O.A.T. facts to chew on JB – Packers you forgot about, but stories you’ll remember about them The first NFL draft occurred in 1937. Naturally, the Packers’ first pick ever was a University of Wisconsin player, Eddie Jankowski, from Milwaukee. This 5’9” fullback played all 4 backfield positions for Wisconsin, and was a fullback for the Pack for five years behind the famous Clark Hinkle. He also filled in a bit at linebacker. A defensive highlight of Eddie’s career was a 27-yard pick-6 against the Bears at Wrigley Field in 1937 in a game in which the Packers naturally won (way back then it was just “The Bears Suck!” and not “The Bears STILL Suck” of today). Due to the tight quarters at Wrigley, Eddie ran headfirst into the brick wall at the corner of the endzone. It was an incident long remembered by those who saw it. “There were only two things he could do,” said Dr. W.W. Kelly, the Packers’ team physician and longtime board member. “The choice was between stepping out of bounds on the one- or two-yard line and saving himself or running into a brick wall.” John Walter, sports editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, immediately added, “Eddie chose the wall and the bricks suffered more than the Packer fullback.” In short, “Janks” was no Kevin King, and he was a key member of the world champion 1939 Green Bay Packers. Janks actually suffered a serious head injury against Washington in the final game of 1937, and it left him unconscious for nearly two hours and hospitalized for several weeks. He never again gained significant yards. Remarkably, however, he did score 1 of the Packers’ 3 touchdowns on a one-yard plunge when they beat the New York Giants, 27-0, in the 1939 NFL Championship Game, played in his hometown of Milwaukee. …and THAT, my friends, is pretty sweet.
After football, Eddie Jankowski joined the Navy to serve our country in WWII. In 1947 he became the Whitefish Bay High School head coach and in 1996 died at the age of 83, 9-years after Colin Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee. Just sayin. So, Eddie Jankowski, we posthumously salute you as a war veteran from Milwaukee, a stand-out athlete in Madison, the 1st player ever drafted by Green Bay, and a Packers NFL champion -- and now we will belittle the Giants once more.
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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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