Welcome back to The Coach Clarahanson Show !!! In Coach’s Humble Opinion: Bakhtiari is a cool name... Mrs. Coach walks around the house randomly saying “Bakhtiari" ... she claims "it’s just fun to say.” So I started looking into it, and -- sure shit, it is! Baak-T-R-E. That IS fun to say. Go ahead, say it out loud. Told ya. Fun, right? But what the hell is a Bakhtiari? Never heard of one before the Packers got one. And it isn’t even spelled correctly (but in a cool way), so what gives? Well this is gonna blow your mind…
So, depending upon which side of the Euphrates you paddleboard down, the term Bakhtiari translates to “companion of fortune” or “bearer of good luck” and either of these interpretations do well to describe our left tackle this year. And that’s pretty cool …at least, in my humble opinion. PS She just said “Bakhtiari” again. Then she said “no holding” (?) Create A Seam Here – X’s & O’s about the game or a scheme Last week Coach said: We may not be perfect, but we are good enough to kick the Iggles’ asses. This one won’t be close, but Poutine will be sure to allow a buncha garbage-time points to make it look closer than it was… Well, it wasn’t quite like that, but we made it much closer than it needed to be and the final of 30-16 was actually closer than it looked. Coach has been accused lately of being a Debbie Downer, being too hard on the 2020 Packers and their shortcomings. “Hey, we’re 9-3 and we have a sledding hill, what’s not too like?” Coach faced much the same criticism during the 2011 Season. “Hey, you are way to negative, we are 15-1 and have the best Offense in the NFL.” In response, Coach replies that the only objective he has is to win the Lombardi Trophy every year. It’s the only objective you should have. Coach only has one benchmark, “Is this team good enough to win it all?” Anything less than that mark is a failure, sledding hill or not. The 15-1 Team all collected their participation trophies after getting bounced at home by the 9-7 Giants in their first Playoff game. Let’s be clear. Losers lose their last game of the year. Period. OK, we’re 9-3, where does that put us for the year? Well, we are still 0-2 against teams that had a winning record when we played them, and we still don’t pass the eye test (of “Can the 2020 Packers win it all?”). OK, we can only play who’s on the schedule, the point is that we have only played two teams that we could use as benchmarks and we lost to both… One thing we haven’t looked at very closely so far is the impact of net turnovers on the outcome of our games. The graph below shows Turnover Differential for each game (from -3 to +3) on the bottom axis and the Point Differential on the left axis. Obviously if we are above the “0 line on the left axis we won the game (positive point differential). All 3 losses came in the 4 games where we lost the turnover battle, despite having a prolific offense. Think about that for a nano-second. The lone victory was against the Jag’s, one of the worst teams in the NFL and we were playing at Lambeau. Another dimension of looking at this Season is to use the “Pythagorean” approach to predicting the W-L record for the Season. We have explained this in some detail previously and will do so aginna come playoff time, but for now we’ll just say that it uses Points Scored and Points Allowed to predict the overall outcome of the Season. (Formula at bottom of table below) The table below has the Actual wins for the Season and then the Predicted Wins next column (the Predicted wins are calculated after the completion of the Season). If the Actual Wins are less than the Predicted wins, it means that we were unlucky and vice-versa. For example, the 2009 and 2010 Teams had 11 and 10 wins respectively, and their Point Differential suggests they should have been 13-win teams … which lines up with the eye-test). Applying the same math to 2020, the result is that that we “should be” at about 8-wins vs. the current 9 wins (thru 12 games). This projects to about 11 or 12 wins for the 2020 Season. Another example: the model suggests that the 2019 Team would have had a 10 or 11 win Season rather than the 13 wins they achieved, which seems about right to Coach. We have 9 wins already, so does that mean Coach is “predicting” one or two losses in the remaining 4 games? No, but it does mean that we don’t look or feel like a dominant team and it would not be a shock to go 2-2 over the last 4 games … so what do we do? In perhaps a surprise, Coach is prescribing even more ball control. Because we can’t trust the Defense and Special Teams when they are on the field, the Offense might help by slowing down and milking more of the game clock. Let’s take a little deeper look at all three phases of the game… Defense The chart above shows the points allowed in each game (left axis, blue line), the average points allowed per game (left axis, black line) and the ranking in the NFL (right axis, number in box). The color scheme is straight forward… Red is bad – ranking between 21-32 Yellow is mediocre – ranking between 11-20 Green is good – ranking between 1-10 Important to notice about us, there is no green! We do not have a good Defense! Through the course of 2020 we have improved from awful to mediocre on Defense. Last year we melted from good to mediocre, I guess Pettine can hang his hat on consistency. What really galls Coach is that we seem so close to playing good Defense. We have so many good plays every game, only to have those plays overwritten by the next, usually horrific, play! On the very first play from scrimmage with 15:00 on the 1st Qtr clock, we could have started the process to destroy the Eagles. Give Kamaal Martin credit for diving into the backfield, but the fundamental he didn’t follow is to “break down” or slow down and be ready to make a lateral move so that you can’t be faked out… …had Kamaal played this properly, likely the Eagles would have gone 3&out and not gotten a FG on the opening drive. Fast forward to the 3rd Qtr, Carson Wentz was pulled for ineptitude and replaced by the rookie Jalen “Dick” Hurts. The score was 20-3 and Eagles HC Doug Pederson had to try something. Prior to coming into the game, Hurts’ NFL experience was attempting and completing exactly two passes for 15 yards. Shown below is Hurts in his first-ever real drive in the NFL. In a “Yeah, we’ve seen this before” moment, our Mike-backer miscarriage, Christian Kirksey, gets toasted again. On this particular play he was saved by a ticky-tacky holding call on the Eagles. The great news for the Packers was the holding call killed the drive and they ended up punting. We ended up with a FG on the ensuing drive, so now Philly was down 23-3 as Hurts led his second-ever drive. What the hell is it with the Packers and the Eagles on 4th and long? Here it’s 4th & 18 on the Packers 32. Defensive leader, Mike Poutine, what should we do? Oh, I know, let’s set up in a Deep Zone Prevent Defense. The Eagles overloaded left, and we fell asleep on the right. Jaire Alexander didn’t pay attention and the Eagles’ 2nd Rnd Jalen (Hurst) hit the Eagles’ 1st Rnd Jalen (Reagor) in stride for a TD, closing the score to two TD’s, 23-10 with 7:52 left in the game. WTF. Any sort of stop at all results in a very long FG attempt and a 23-6 score at worst. You tell me, is this Championship Defense? We had a chance to put them away on the 1st play of the game, and in the 3rd Qtr, and again in the 4th and we didn’t do it. Offense The Offense is scoring a lot of points and at 31.6 pts/gm we are ranked #1. This is, as they say, good. Not as good as the 35 pts/gm after 12 games in 2011, but good anyway. And you ask yourself, would Coach Lombardi be satisfied? No. Despite the typically pedestrian performance by the Defense and the Special Teams extra effort to lose the game, we won the game with the Offense. And … the Offense won the game on 5 big plays. In total we ran 59 plays and gained 444 yards, averaging 7.5 yds/play. The 5 big plays accounted for 211 yards, almost half of the yardage (77 yd rung by A Jones and 4 pass plays). That also means that of the remaining 54 plays we had plenty of mistakes and 3&Outs. If we refer back to the Point Differential vs. Net Turnovers graph above, the Eagles fit right on the line. Our positive turnover differential is likely why we won this game. Are we done for today Coach? No Jimmy, sadly we are not. Special Teams We are likely playing well enough on Offense to go far in the playoffs and the Defense looks like a problem that is getting a bit better … “BUT”, the Special Teams are all going in the wrong direction. ST Coach Meningitis is not getting it done. After Adams scored TD No. 400, we attempted a routine PAT. Although Crosby is 14 of 14 on field goals this year, he now has three missed extra points (43 of 46) and the Bears are calling to trade for him. Whadda we have to do, back-up further on the field to make the PAT more difficult and hold Crosby’s attention? His back was hurt a few weeks ago and maybe that’s still an issue? Coach doesn’t know why we missed that one, but the margin for error is very slim in the Playoffs and we can’t miss PAT’s. That of course brings us to “The Punt Return.” There have been 4 punts returned for touchdowns this year in the NFL, and the Packers have allowed HALF of them. Last time we gave up 2 punt returns for TD’s in a single season was 56 years ago. A punt return for a TD can often change the outcome of a game, and in this case it almost did. Just after Philly closed the game to 23-10, we went 3&Out and faced 4th&12 on our own 21 (this drive was the one with both MVS & ESB drops). And JK Scott, if you make a shitty kick, at least try to redeem yourself with a touchdown-saving tackle. Instead, twice this year, he literally got faked out of his jock as the last “man” between the returner and the end zone (let’s just say we are assuming that he both needs and wears a jock). Opponents are averaging 19.4 yards per return, which is 3½ yards more than the next-worst team allows. It is also 14.5 yards more than the Packers’ punt-return unit averages. Our punt teams suck, it’s official. So, to help you, the loyal reader, understand the technicalities that led to this abortion of a punt play, Coach will walk back through it for you... Step 1 – The Snap After studying this photo, go back up to the punt return and try to focus on the snap of the ball and the gunners. You will also notice that Summers lingers a bit too long before heading downfield (no doubt he’s worried about the punt being blocked, because holy shit that’s also happened this year!). Step 2 – The Coverage Problems:
Step 3 – The Punt Coverage Tackle OK, even though the punt was in the wrong place, this is what the coverage and tackle should have looked like. Ty Summers is now in perfect position to tackle Reagor … if … Redmond and Hollman had been in position and forced Reagor into the middle. This is not Championship football; this is not even competent High School football. As Coach has lobbied for previously, the Packers could – and seriously, SHOULD – recruit a top HS or Div III College Coach to come in and run Special Teams. This is not rocket science (sorry, no unintended pun nor pejorative reference intended toward the Space X rocket which blew up this week killing no one). Coach doesn't expect our Special Teams to be the best in the league, but worst in the league should be a quick, white-knuckle pass through a dangerous part of town -- not a neighborhood to settle in. Fire Menenga. ADVERTISEMENT WTF – Coach’s take on football news that’s messed up TAMPA, FL—Expressing disbelief over finally winning the prized piece of memorabilia at auction, Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski was thrilled Friday after purchasing a rare, game-worn Rob Gronkowski jersey. “I can’t believe he would part with—it’s got the NFL patch and everything!” said the 31-year-old, explaining that he’s followed Gronkowski closely his entire career and identifies with him more than any other player. “All my teammates talk about him all the time so they are gonna freak when I tell them about this. Gronk has always been my favorite player. He’s so tough and puts his body on the line, but also seems like a lot of fun. Plus, he even wears my favorite numbers: the half-built snowman and an ‘L.’” At press time, a gracious Gronkowski was thrilled to learn a dedicated fan named Rob Gronkowski had sent him a game-worn jersey and asked him to sign it. The Bears Still Suck – Coach has proof Bears QB Catches Himself Scrolling Social Media While He Supposed To Be Masturbating CHICAGO—Struggling to focus on completing the simple task, Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky had reportedly caught himself scrolling social media Monday while he was supposed to be masturbating. “Goddamnit, I’ve gotten sidetracked again—it’s like I have no attention span today,” said Trubisky, shaking his head in frustration as he tried to recall how he had gone from browsing PornHub to reading an in-depth Twitter thread on the student loan debt crisis in the first place. “I was so productive when I started, and now it’s been 30 minutes and I’ve barely touched myself. It’s pathetic. It was hard enough to carve out the time in my schedule to do this, and now that I’m here, I’m totally squandering it. Come on, concentrate!” At press time, Trubisky had made a deal with himself that if he put in his best effort and still hadn’t ejaculated in 15 minutes, he would allow himself to give up and go watch TV. Udder Stuff – Commentary from the Badger Underground A Parable of Bucky’s Big Ten Season With Bucky’s season in the crapper due to COVID, we are reminded at BU of what would be a true story from some sunny fall Saturday from a past glorious Wisconsin football season. What unfolds is a microcosm of the 2020 POS Badger season. Picture this, if you will. A Mr. Ben Dover was heading toward Camp Randall with his buds for a late afternoon game, all excited about the game and festivities before and after the game. He was thinking, “Hey, maybe I will score a hottie at the Big Ten Pub!” Well, they actually started off at the Big Ten Pub. And wouldn’t you know it, after a Spotted Cow and a couple of trips to the Octabong, Ben strikes up a conversation with one Jenny Taylia. Ben was stoked. This was all shaping up very nicely as the UW tubas popped in and shenanigans crescendoed. This is the corollary of Wisconsin’s awesome win over Illinois, Mertz’s 5 TD’s and mid-game tweet from Mahommes. Then a buzz kill hit. Jenny drifted into the crowd and was spotted making out with another hottie, not that there is anything wrong with that. This was like COVID striking the Badgers and having two games cancelled. Ben said, “WTF!” and then shook it off. The gang headed out to buy a scalped ticket near the train tracks across from the Fieldhouse. To Ben’s surprise, he scored a 50 yard line ticket for cheap. Off they went to Jingles for couple two tree shots of Jaegie before the game. The story is now tracking the awesome Michigan shellacking. Now, we are rolling! Mr. Dover makes it to the gate and the ticket taker says his ticket is counterfeit. What a kick in the nuts! Now we are at the Danny Davis concussion and his stupidity in playing with it during the second half leading 28-0 at Michigan. Ben is more than pissed. A young, exuberant Barney Fife type cop out to make his first bust thinks Ben looks like a well-known scalping ringleader. He perp-walks Ben out like he is the scalper version of Pablo Escobar. Off he goes to the cop shop. This is not unlike the questionable officiating in Evanston. Ben gets raked over the coals and is released 3 hours later just as the game ends at around 6 PM, a Badger loss in triple OT that is still being talked about years later. Ben missed it all. In 2020 season terms, we are at the Minnesota game cancellation. Ben is now downtrodden and spots a seedy strip joint on Willy Street. He pops in to see the early show. He leaves at 4 am after dropping a hundo $1 at a time on an over the hill aging stripper. His head hurts and his mouth is dry. He has to take a piss. This is like the forlorn performance Bucky had last weekend against Indiana. What started with such high hopes (Ben’s gameday, or Bucky’s season), ends in scary disappointment. Bucky heads to Iowa City this week and we do not expect much energy. DD3 is still out and the excitement level is low. Look for less than 10 points out of the Badgers and a bit more out of the Hogeyes. Score: Wisconsin 3, Iowa 13 We’re Gonna Kick Your @$$ – predictions for the upcoming game For the 2nd week in a row we’re playing a Head Coach that we like, Lions HC Darrell Bevell! You may recall that as Coach predicted in WK 2, the previous HC, Patty Patricia, was fired after the Lions got blown out by the Texans. Lions Offensive Coordinator Darrel Bevel has been named “Interim HC” to finish out the last 5 games … and he started with a bang. The Lions scored 14 points in the last 2:18 to beat the Bears 34-30. At this point he is the only undefeated HC in NFL history. The Bears suck and any team beating the Bears is a team we like … but that’s not why we like Darrel. Good ole Darrell was an Offensive-Sub-Lower-Assistant Coach with the Pack in the early 2000’s and was subsequently promoted to be Favre’s QB coach in 2003. Bevell was also among the talent evaluators of a young QB coming out of California named Aaron Rodgers. Bevell thought he was the best quarterback in the 2005 class. So do a lot of other people now. Roughly the same number that said they attended the Ice Bowl. And like the Eagles HC Doug Pederson last week, Bevell has a hunting story with Favre. They went hunting for cougars. No, Coach is not kidding. “I have a cousin that’s down in Southern Utah, so we went on a hunting trip down there for cougars. We were able to track a couple, and I think we rode the ‘horses’ for like 18 miles first, and we were able to find just a beautiful cougar.” Nope, still not kidding. “Maybe Brett would be able to tell it a little better, he had a bow he was trying to use. I think he said he could raise ‘four arrows’, and at the end he had shot all of his arrows and the cougar was still running and wanted more." Not kidding, nope. The Packer angle is nice, but that’s not the big reason we like Darrel. We like Darrell because he helped Barry Alvarez revive UW Football in the early 90’s. After a slow start in Madison, 4th-year HC Barry Alvarez led the ’93 Badgers to their first Rose Bowl berth in 31 years and that team’s QB was none other than Darrell Bevel. Although the game was played on UCLA’s home field it felt like Camp Randal because at least three-fourths of the 101,237 fans in attendance were Badgers fans (including Coach). “I think it’s kind of a little ironic, the play I’m known for in Wisconsin history was a run, since I was not the fastest guy,” said Bevell discussing his score that gave the Badgers a 21-16 win over the UCLA Bruins. Truth be told he wasn’t much of a passer either, but he was a winner! Oh well, back to reality. According to the experts at Prognosticators Associates, the Lions have a less than 7% chance of making the 2020 NFL Playoffs. The Packers objective this weekend is to make that probability less than 1%. Through the magic of mathematics, even if we beat the Lions, we have a non-zero probability of missing the playoffs. Normally Coach would scoff at the odds of the Pack missing the Playoffs, but you could say that about losing the 2014 NFC Championship Game as well.* Suffice to say, Coach’s view is that we should try to win the next 8 games. * see also: “List of games Coach will never stop talking about” The Lions and Bears split this year and the Lions should have won both. This clip (Click On Link!) is from their first game this year, where the Lions best player, D’Andre Swift, dropped the winning TD as time expired. The Bears suck, and the Lions lost a winnable game to a team that sucks, therefore, thru the power of the transitive law, the Lions suck. The Lions are filled with “OK” players like Mitch Stanford and his side-kick Adrian Peterson. Mitch has 94.4 passer rating and Adrian, internationally recognized child disciplinarian authority, is their leading rusher. All “nice” players, to be sure, complete with fully mediocre statistics. Good for them. “However,” we destroyed them 42-19 at Lambeau in game 2 this year and that game was a pretty good indicator of the Season to come for both teams. We score about 8 points a game more than they do and they give up about 5 points a game more than we do. Crunch that all together and we average almost 13 points a game better in point differential (see table below). Knock off a few points for home-field advantage and mathematically we should be a 10- or 11-point favorite. Vegas is following this week’s popular story-line that the Packers “struggle” in Daytwah and that the players “like Darrell”, so we are “only” a 7 ½ point favorite. We have beaten the Lions 103 times, the most any team has beaten another in NFL history, and we have average about a 3-point win over that time. Rodgers is 16-5-0 over the Lions during his career, with a bit better percentage at home (9-2-0) than in Detroit (7-3). Coach really chuckles that 7-3 means Rodgers “struggles in Detroit”. We have averaged a 31-20 victory in those 7 wins and 11-19 in the losses. So let’s say that another way. Win-or-lose we give up about 20 points-a-game to the Lions over Rodgers career (exactly the same if we include Rodger’s games at Lambeau against them and almost the same as the series average of 19 over all 182 games). When we win, we average 3 TD’s. When we lose, we average 1 TD. We lose games to the Lions when our offense sucks and we score less than 20 points. The plan for this game is to play well on Offense. The mighty hippo foreshadows the Packers plan for the amoral Lions (Click On Link!)… Give them their average of 20 points, the Packers Offense will roll up 35. Bet the Pack, bet the Over. Packers 35 Lions 20 Chevon McNuggets - G.O.A.T. facts to chew on JB – Packers you forgot about, but stories you’ll remember about them It's not often that Coach begins his tribute to a former player by introducing a new signee, but welcome to Green Bay Anthony Rush! At 6’-4” and 361-lbs, you are needed big time on our D-line. Why am I so excited about an overweight defensive tackle that’s been cut multiple times by other teams? Well, besides the fact that he didn’t go to that factory for stamping out dominant NFL linemen, Northwestern (Rush went to Alabama! …well, Alabama-Birmingham, but that’s still better than NORTHWESTERN!), he could be this decade’s Howard Green. Midway through the 2010 season, Ted Thompson claimed defensive lineman Howard Green off waivers at the behest of D-Coordinator Dom Capers. Green, 31, had been cut 12 times by 10 teams since entering the NFL as a sixth-round draft pick in 2002. The last time it was by the New York Jets, who after a couple of seasons grew weary of Green’s weight issues and eventually waived him after he tipped the scales at 355 pounds. Capers believed Green could help his defense that was leaky against the run … sound familiar? Green was hardly a “great” player, but he ended up filling a niche the Packers badly needed: another really big man in the middle. The Packers’ run defense improved from No. 25 in the league in rushing yards allowed (124.3 per game) in the seven games before Green’s arrival to No. 10 (107.5) in the nine games after. Before Green, the Packers ranked No. 10 in the league in scoring defense (19.4 points a game). In the nine games after, they ranked No. 1 (11.5 points). Sure, Green was just a journeyman gap plugger, but the dude filled a role (and a gap!) that ended up making a difference. The Packers might very well not have won the Super Bowl in 2010 without him. Recall it was Green who slapped Big Ben’s throwing arm on that pick-six by Nick Collins, and no team with a pick-six in the Super Bowl ever lost the championship game (Collins new this, and that’s why he celebrated so gloriously when it happened). Oh, and for the record, Green also did not attend Northwestern; rather, he was drafted out of LSU, a school much less frequently identified as a talent pool for impactful NFL defensive players. Without hyperbole (or sarcasm), in last year’s NFC championship match, the San Francisco 49ers could have actually won that game over the Packers without throwing a single pass. Each game we lost this year has again exposed our unending inability to stop the run. Más o menos, all that’s really changed defensively since that embarrassment in the gay bay 11 months ago is that we’ve replaced our downfield tackling machine (Blake Martinez) with a downfield missed tackle / missed assignment machine (Christian Kirksey). God help us if we need our middle linebacker to stuff the run. (In my best Edith & Archie Bunker vocal melody) … And you knew who you were then -- girls were girls and men were men, Mister we could use a man like Howard Green again. So, Howard Green, today we salute you as a waiver wire cast-off turned Super Bowl champion in Green Bay. And to Anthony Rush … no pressure, dude.
Mrs. Coach just said “Bakhtiari” again (it’s cool).
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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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