Welcome back to The Coach Clarahanson Show!!! Coach is rested up from the bye week and ready to roll up his sleeves to offer you more football insight, a laugh or two, and maybe even scare you a little. That’s a full show. So let’s start by getting right to it: the Bye Week's mega contest that had a new all-time record number of entries (thank you!). Big congrats goes out to Roy Vander Velden of Little Chute (below, left) for correctly guessing the best movie without any hot chicks in it: The Borne Identity. For his winning entry, Roy of course receives the much talked about 7-days / 6-nights all-inclusive trip to Cancun, Mexico with famous Packers enthusiast, Ronda Tetas (below, right). Good on you, Roy, and don’t forget to wear a raincoat! OK, so with that big news out of the way, let’s get on with futbol! Well, the last time the Packers won a game in L.A., Coach was there and it was an 87-degrees Fahrenheit day on November 11, 1990 against the Raiders at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Don Majkowski stunned the 6-2 Raiders squad with a 29-16 victory, and Coach had to clap quietly. You see, earlier that same season, Pittsburgh paid a visit to the Coliseum and a not-so-lucky Steelers supporter was beaten severely by Raiders fans, suffering irreparable brain damage. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems a bit excessive. So going into the game, we knew to keep a low profile. That said, we weren’t about to forego tailgating (presuming we would survive the drive through South Central L.A. along Martin Luther King, Jr Drive, which is just 3 stop-and-go lights from where the Rodney King riots started a mere 17-months later), so upon our arrival we pulled out our Weber hibachi LP-grill and a cooler full of PBR. Shortly after cracking open my fourth cold one, 2 cops walked up and asked why we thought we could be drinking beer in public. We explained that we were doing something called “tailgating” and that it was a common, harmless custom in Wisconsin, where we were originally from. We were very surprised that the cops had no idea what tailgating was, although we were less surprised that they had no idea what a bratwurst was. However, ever tasting a brat, the police officers looked at each other and smiled as if a majik potion was dusted upon them, and asked that we please pour our beers into plastics cups so that it was a little less obvious to others that we were drinking beer. Very cool. I said “Thank you, Officer!” (which I think was the only time I ever said that without first getting a speeding ticket … why do I do that?). Coach won’t be in L.A. this Sunday to cheer Rodgers & Co. on to victory over the Lambs, but I will be thinking about answers for the inquisitive young man that always asks me questions about football X's and O's... Create A Seam Here – X’s & O’s about the game or a scheme No Junior, it’s not your imagination. The defense looks like last year…so much so that we are giving up exactly the same number of points per game, 24.0, as the 2017 final average….24.0. Huh? Coach I thought you said the Defense would be better this year. Well son, Coach did say that. But he also said that we have very little talent, so it’s going to take a few games for the Defense to get on track. In a Yogi Berra “déjà vu all over again” moment, Coach was trying to think of the last time our Defense stunk and our QB ran around and created magic come-back-victories. 1989. The year of the Majik Man! The Pack had a bunch of exciting comeback games and the team was nicknamed the Cardiac Pack. That season even included the famous Instant Replay game, which was the birthplace of “upon further review” fame (screen printed on tasteful t-shirts everywhere). That team got lucky and finished 10-6 but did not make the Playoffs (the fricken Bengals failed to win an easy game that would have given us the playoff tie-breaker in the final week). Even though it was an exciting team, it was not a good team. They finished by averaging 0.3 points per game better than the other guys. Frankly it is simply amazing that they had 10 wins and it was not an impressive Season. The graph above shows the Regular Season Win Total vs. Point Differential for the 1980 Season through 2018 Gm 6 (2018 prorated to 9.3 wins for the Season). The general takeaway is … “duh” … when we score a lot more points than the other guys, we win a lot of games. And while having a high point differential doesn’t guarantee a Super Bowl, it does show that if you don’t have a high point differential you won’t win a SB (for reference, the 1966 and ’67 teams had point differentials of 12.2 and 8.8 respectively). What it also shows, yet again in yet another way, is that the 2018 Team is the very definition of mediocre. Through 6 games we are averaging 0.7 points per game better than the competition. As your eyeballs already tell you: if we stay here, we are going nowhere. One of the most frustrating things for any fan is to see your team F’ing up … especially when it comes to things like stupid, stupid penalties. Wanna know why we are losing? Yeah A-Rod has missed a few, Crosby shanked a few and the D has been Swiss Cheese in the first half – but what’s really killing us is penalties. When you compare our penalties to those of our opponents, we are dead last by a very wide margin. We get called for 3 more penalties per game than our opponents!! In the NFL that is a BFD!! To put a finer point on it, we also give the other guys more than one extra 1st down every game, good enough for a number 29 ranking. Take a look at who’s down there with us and you see the bottom dwellers in the standings and arguably penalties are the biggest thing holding back both the Viqueens and the Pack. If you want a positive spin, clean up the penalties and we’d have a pretty good record. Penalties are important, but the most important thing is the scoreboard and an even more concerning thing is that we are getting handled in the first half. On average, we are down by a TD at the half. OK, so AR has been able to pull the rabbit out of his hat in the second half and get a few wins... but “Son, being fat, dumb, and getting your ass kicked in the 1st Half is no way to go through life” said somebody somewhere, and it is just painful to watch. If there is good news in the chart above, it is that we are winning the 2nd Half and, both the Offense and the Defense are playing better. In an exciting Majik Man kind of way, Rodgers is pouring it on in the 4th Qtr, so net/net we’ve snagged 3 wins out of the jaws of defeat. The really good news is that the Defense has been in shutdown mode in the 3rd Qtr, giving up only 1 point on average. One point! The cynics amongst us will point out that the other guys are well ahead so maybe they take their collective feet off the gas, but still we are holding them to one point. Oh, by the way, we did beat the Niner’s in a game that felt like a loss if you were there (Coach was there, but in the concourse watch the Brewers beat the Dodgers, and when the baseball game was over went back inside to watch the last 3 minutes of the Packers/Niners tooth extraction). The final minute heroics of A-Rod felt like the 3rd stick of cotton candy at the County Fair. Tasted good for a minute, but leaves you with a sick stomach. So why does it feel that way? Well the scoring profile and the penalties were exactly like they’ve been all year. Down by 4 points at the half, mistakes and penalties killing any momentum, still down by 4 at the end of the 3rd Qtr. Yet, but yet, A-Rod wins the game at the end, against a team that came in 1-4 and got killed by the Rams the following week (during the Packer’s bye week). But what made it really sickening is the way they ran the ball down our throats. The hell of it is that we averaged almost as many yards/carry, 5.5 vs. 5.8…we just didn’t run the ball enough. Guys, come on, cut the crap, we are averaging 5.5 yards per carry and we only run 21 times? In a footnote of adding insult to injury, CJ Beathard stats against us on MNF were: Who the hell is CJ Beat hard? Exactly. He’s the grandson of Hall of Fame GM Bobby Beathard, but other than that just a guy from Iowa who went a combined 26/54 for 230 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT in 2015 & 2016 vs. Wisconsin. The guy is a backups’ backup and we let him torch us in the first half. To be clear, we had no pass rush and our very average secondary got exposed. if you want something optimistic to look for in the future, just cut out the penalties and run the f’ng ball, and we’ll probably win some more games. Penalties = Coaching No. of run plays called = Coaching Consistent debacles in 1st half = Coaching Of course, Fat Mike is the wildcard…a little bit of common sense and we start winning – convincingly. WTF – Coach’s take on football news that’s messed up Fox Cancels Thursday Night Games Yielding to Literature LOS ANGELES—Having Thursday night NFL games on Fox was officially called off for the remainder of the season after network executives discovered the immersive power of literature, purportedly realizing that no game featuring tired, recuperating players could ever compare to the wonder of opening a work by Leo Tolstoy or Jorge Luis Borges and becoming engrossed in a masterful volume of fiction. “After the Broncos blowout of the Cardinals last week, and another lame blowout of the Dolphins by the Texans this week, we realized our midweek matchups do not even remotely compare to the rich explorations of the human condition contained in novels such as Mrs. Dalloway and Moby Dick, and thusly we have concluded that henceforth it is best to cancel the Thursday Night Football experiment that started on Fox early this year,” said Fox associate producer, Brian Koval, clutching a copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude as he observed that mere pixels on a screen could never engage one’s imagination as fully as the majestic sweep of Gabriel "Gabo" García Márquez’s magic realism prose. “The rich imagery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and other great works reveals complex worlds that no coach’s game plan could ever hope to match. As such, there’s no reason to continue with this farce of a game on Thursday nights. We could be entertained for a thousand lifetimes simply by visiting our local libraries.” Can A Serial Marijuana User Like Sam Shields Be Successful In Rams’ Cocaine-Based Culture? Crenshaw, CA – With Los Angeles Rams ProBowl cornerback Aqib Talib relegated to injured reserve, former Packers DB (Dope Burner) Sam Shields has moved into Talib’s starting spot. In Green Bay, Shields was the fastest guy on the grass and the biggest smoker of it. He was released by the Packers 2 years ago for his “inability to pass simple concussion protocols” such as touching his index finger to his nose or scraping resi’s from a one-hitter. Shields denies any wrong-doing, claiming “medical” marijuana is needed to alleviate lingering mental effects from football collisions. But can someone like Sam Shields, who greeted Green Bay police at his front door with a burning doobie tucked behind his ear, fit in with the Rams strict cocaine culture? In all likelihood, Shields’ dedication to the ganja isn’t going to fly in Sean McVay’s famously coked-out locker room. Shields just wants to light up and chill the "F" out, but the Rams are the kind of team that want you doing rails until 6 o’clock in the morning and then challenging a stranger to a fight. The Rams have an intense, disciplined coke-head mindset: It’s all about “Us versus The World” … “Everyone’s out to get us” … “Don’t snitch on me or I’ll kill you"; it’s about cutting up lines and rolling up hundreds. There’s no way Sam Shields can perform at a high level having such a large contrast in basic fundamentals with his teammates. It will be sad to see Shields become this year’s guy who went somewhere to stay in the League another year, instead of rolling into retirement when he should have. The Bears Still Suck – Coach has proof At the halfway point of the season, in one single game, the Bears when from 1st place to LAST place in the division. Think about it ... that's pretty hard to do, but if you suck as bad as the Bears, I guess anything that shitty is possible. After forcing New England to fumble twice in a row deep in the Pats own territory, and subsequently jumping out to a 10-point lead at home, the hapless Bears immediately gave up a touchdown to Cordarrelle Patterson on the ensuing kickoff return, letting the Patriots get right back in the game. Mitchell Cutler threw 2 picks, and 3 other interceptions were dropped by Patriots defenders in the end zone. Overall Jay Trubisky completed only 26 of 50 attempts. The most pathetic completion was his last… Down by a touchdown with 5 seconds left, Matt Nagy calls a Hail Mary from the Bears 45-yard line. (You’ll recall that a 32-year old Aaron Rodgers completed a Hail Mary in Detroit 2 years ago from the Packers 39-yard line, so the Bears attempt was well within reasonable range). And…a 24-year old gun-slinging Mitchell Turdbiscut winds up and lets one fly – and it’s complete! Only the quarterback that the Bears moved up one position (yes, one position) to draft, in lieu of taking Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson, threw the ball 1-yard short (yes, 1-yard). What a puss-armed dipshit! Only the Seahawks can complete an intercepted Hail Mary, and only the Bears could complete a Hail Mary 1-yard short of the goal line. Even the replacement refs could get this replay right: After further review, the Bears still suck. Udder Stuff – Commentary from the Badger Underground Wisconsin Pre-Selected for Holiday Bowl SAN DIEGO – Perhaps they are jumping the gun, but the Holiday Bowl committee made a gutsy move and selected the Wisconsin Badgers for the New Years Eve classic. Holiday Bowl committee chairman Mitch Gunnerfelt said in a statement, “Wisconsin fans travel well and we had a great experience with them back in 2015. They brought a lot of revenue in for the City and we sold more tickets than ever. With their season going a little rocky and another trip to the Big Ten Championship looking questionable, we thought we’d offer them something now and lock them in.” Of concern, Wisconsin’s season could actually head in that dreadful direction if they do not take care of business this weekend in Evanston. This game will be tough. The Wildcats are actually in first place in the division as they squeaked out a close win over wretched Rutgers last weekend. They almost beat Michigan which is more than Bucky can say, and they're coming off a respectable 10-3 season last year. We can never look past these guys (or their alumni)… This series has seen many upsets since 1980, most of them in the form of NU upsetting Wisconsin. We are 1-4 in Evanston since 2000. This is a must win game. Keep in mind that bad things happen in Evanston. Just ask Jason Burns, Darrell Bevell, Scott Tolzein and Joel Stave. The football gods still owe us one for the two Badgers touchdowns called back on our home field when the teams met in Madison in 2015. The game-winning TD pass to Jazz Peavy was disallowed despite him taking four steps in the end zone with the ball secured. NW plays solid D with DE Joe Gaziano giving QB’s fits and MLB Paddy Fischer (a great Irish drunk’s name) drawing comparisons to 1995 MLB and current Head Coach, Pat Fitzgerald (yes, another great name for an Irish drunk). Their running game looks a little off from last year with workhorse Justin Jackson graduated, ranking 125 out of 129 schools. Leading rusher Jeremy Larkin was forced to retire due to stenosis in his neck. Clayton Thorson is a decent QB, but a bigger issue is another week of several starters missing from the Badgers defensive backfield and defensive line. Loudermilk is again ruled out and backflipping NT Sagapolu is questionable. Starting safeties Dixon & Nelson are out & questionable, respectively. Two other front line DB’s are questionable. Yikes, if all 4 of these guys are out, watch out! Similar concerns on offense: Hornibrook may not play this week due to a concussion. Considering the flaccid pass game we've displayed thus far this year, we do not see this as a big buzz kill. In fact, we relish the thought of getting a look at Jackie Coan, who has completed 100% of his passes so far, and seeing a game plan relentlessly pounding the ball on the ground over and over again until the 'Cats scream for mercy. If Hornyboy IS out, look for a tricky full house backfield with Groshek and/or Ingold running some sort of run-pass wildcat option (both were high school QB's). Bucky is favored by 5.5 points to prevail. If the O-line keeps rolling, dumb mistakes are kept to a minimum, we somehow find a pass rush, the backups starting in the secondary don’t get lit up, and we don’t turn the ball over 5 times as we have on previous visits to Evanston, Bucky will win. We say 28-19 with pom poms waiving, but dread a possible debacle with something like a 16-17 loss. In other BigTen(14) news, WTF is up with Purdue? They also won 49-20, over #2 Ohio State(!), and are now tied with the Badgers. Watch out for those guys in a few weeks. By the way, Northwestern beat them. The blueprint for the rest of our season is to somehow get by with a win this Saturday, empty out the bench against Rutgers and get healthy for stretch run games against Penn State and Purdue. This Saturday has key games that may bring clarity in the two divisions:
We’re Gonna Kick You’re A$$ – Predictions for the upcoming game 7-0 Rams vs. the 3-2-1 Packers (lift-off?) at 3911 S. Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA. Kick-off at 13:25 PDT with the Rams a 9-point favorite, 90% of the pundits are picking against us and the Packers sporting an 0-11 streak in L.A. against the Rams. And we are losing by an average of 30-17 over that streak (go look it up, 1967-89). The last game we won in L.A. over the Rams was a 27-23 win where we held on at the end, with Vince at the helm no less. So, this game will be no gimme, but did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor??? No!!! And we will not give up now!!! Hear me now and believe me later…. Coach just wants to pump you up for this game. OK, so the Rams have a much more talented roster than the Packers and their coach is innovative, creative, a good teacher, a motivator and an excellent game manager. We should still be able to beat them like 7 out 10 times, right? Oh, wait, yikes… Below average roster? Fat Mike at the helm? I guess we’ll have to look for other insights into how we will beat the Rams. It’s the Packers’ first appearance against the Rams at the venerable stadium since 1978, and a return to the venue where the NFL’s most storied franchise won the first Super Bowl in 1967. It’s also a return for Rodgers…. …fourteen years ago, Rodgers produced one of the best passing performances in college football history against one of the sport’s greatest teams. On Oct. 9, 2004, Rodgers led seventh-ranked California and the nation’s top scoring offense against top-ranked USC, the defending Associated Press national champion. The only blemish on the Trojans’ 2003 record was a triple-overtime defeat at Cal. A year later, ESPN’s “College GameDay” set up at the Coliseum for the first time to see if Rodgers and coach Jeff Tedford’s Golden Bears could knock off Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, LenDale White and Pete Carroll for a second year in a row. “We knew it was going to be a tough game and we were excited about the opportunity to compete with them,” Rodgers said this week, “and we had a legitimate chance to beat ’em.” “It seemed like he hit everything,” Carroll said, “and that was an understatement.” “I don’t care if you’re throwing against air,” Leinart said. “To go 23 of 23 is really difficult. … For him to do that against one of the best defenses in the country, he was phenomenal.” Rodgers matched an NCAA record by completing his first 23 passes against one of the best defenses in USC history, and they lost, ooops, never mind, that doesn’t help the argument. Ah, here we go. The Rams are vagrant team with no real roots. About as bad as the Racine/Chicago/St.Louis/Phoenix Cardinals, the Rams have moved all over the place Cleveland Rams 1936 AFL Cleveland Rams 1937-1942 NFL Cleveland Rams 1943 – Suspended Operations Cleveland Rams 1944-1945 NFL* Los Angeles Rams 1946-1994 NFL St. Louis Rams 1995-2015 NFL Los Angeles Rams 2016-present *L.A. Rams 1945 Won the NFL Championship
Truth be told, Coach has always sort of liked the Rams and their helmets, he just doesn’t like losing to them. And proving that it’s not a new phenomenon, their QB had a smoking hot GF (at that time) to roll around in the hay with! Despite all of the moving around, they have been a reasonably successful franchise. The Rams have played 82 seasons, Won 3 Championships (’45, ’51 and ’99) and Lost in 5 Championships (’49, ’50, ’55, ’79 and ’01) and have an overall record of 562-559-21. And while all of that is “nice”, it makes you appreciate the Packers even more with an all-time record of 740-564-38. Pitty the schmucks in Cleveland, it’s not just the Champion Browns that abandoned them, it’s the Rams too. Seems like every team they have that has a little success moves out of town (Indians next?). Packers and Rams have played 92 times and the record is 45-45-2, and the Rams are ahead 22.9 to 22.8 on average. This is interesting as most of the Packers average scores vs. other teams are around 17….so Packer-Rams games have been high scoring on a historical basis. The Rams have pretty decent defense, but they gave up 31 points to both the Seahawks and Vikings this year, so we definitely have a chance. The keys to this game are as old as football itself:
For you young’ens who don’t remember, it was quite the Half-Time show. While there was nothing like a wardrobe-malfunction, nor Clydesdales playing football in the snow, there was quite a show none-the-less. We were at the height of the Cold War and the Space Race was at full throttle, so the organizers thought “What better than to show some American technological prowess at Half-Time?” In the biggest shock of this century, we WILL play our first good game of the year and we’re gonna Rock’em at the Coliseum (Coach will keep saying this until it happens)… Pack 35 Rams 31 I’m not sure I’d bet the house, but Coach has confirmed that the Packers may have a special “Rocket Man” motivational speaker this week to get the team “fired up”. Rocket Man? Yes, Rocket Man! JB – Packers you forgot about, but stories you’ll remember about them Risking reader inspirational whiplash... One of the lowest points in Packer history was the disastrous 1991 season under the misguidance of head coach Lindy Infante. This was the last time the Packers played the Rams in L.A., suffering a 23-21 loss on the way to a dismal 4-12 season. Luckily Bob Harlan sprung into action and righted the ship in 1992 bringing in Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren, Brett Favre, T-Buck, and Assistant Director of Pro Personnel Ted Thompson (per hindsight, not too shabby). There was not much to cheer about in ‘91. The Packers were left with three sub-par quarterbacks after the departure of long-time Infante protagonist, Anthony Dilweg. There was the oft-injured Don “Majik Man” Majkowski, Bears reject Mike Tomczak, and this week’s flash in the pan, Blair Kiel. Kiel boasted the top completion percentage of the 3 men that year (58%), and had a rock solid QB rating of 83. With those gaudy numbers, Kiel felt he should go out on top and immediately retired after only 4-years with the Packers. But there’s more to the story (of course)… After departing the NFL, Blair Kiel led a relatively quiet, unremarkable life as a loner that kind of kept to himself – until he unexpectedly became a world renowned boot-glass beer drinking champion! Oddly enough, his trek down this path began when he was hitch-hiking from Chilton to Sheboygan in a drunken stupor. He was detained by a Calumet County Sheriff's deputy for weaving as he walked southbound along the northbound side of Highway 32. Before being brought in for booking, Kiel made a break for it when the constable briefly turned his attention elsewhere. After a scamper through several strips of woods used to mark farming property lines, breathless and sweaty Blair nonchalantly eased himself into the crowd at a local church picnic where he held himself up against an open edge along a long wooden table. Large glass “boots” full of beer were placed in front of each man standing there, and the crowd cheered “chug-chug-chug” as they encouraged each man to pick up his boot. Without thinking, a parched Kiel picked one up and polished it off in 3 quick glugs, far surpassing the speed of the other competitors. The crowd cheered, and an elderly man leaned into him saying “What’s your name, son?” After a half-contained belch, the former Packers QB slurred “Kiel”… As has been customary for centuries in beer drinking competitions using a glass boot, the winner gets the town named after him. So, in the summer of 2002, the quaint country village on the border of Calumet and Manitowoc counties once called New Guernsey was renamed Kiel, Wisconsin. Drunk on the success of his newfound talent, Blair Kiel went on tour showing off his boot drinking skills. The climax of his career came in 2004 when he took 1st place in the glass boot category at the Federation Internationale de Bier Association (FIBA) drinking competition held just outside of Hamburg, Germany. Alas, all good things must come to an end, though, and things went downhill for Blair from there. As younger, more tech savvy entrants began to overtake the sport, Kiel found himself placing in the mid to lower ranks in competition after competition, until he eventually dropped out of the Professional Drinkers Tour altogether. He hit rock bottom in 2009 when he was infamously arrested for taking tall boots off of female tourists walking the strip in Las Vegas, then crazily screaming at them and exposing himself while urinating in their footwear. Sadly, Blair Kiel died in 2012 at the age of 50 from an apparent heart attack in the early morning hours on Easter Sunday at the home of a friend. No word on the real cause of death, though.
And so to you, Blair Kiel, we raise our glass, and hope the Packers kick Ram ass. Cheers!
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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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