There Are Eleven Guys On a Side

I've really made it a point to give McCarthy a bit of patience this year. Whether or not I agreed with the hire, he is our coach and I want him to be successful. I haven't railed on him much at all this year.

But I am going to put this out there, because it needs to be put out there, and I don't' care WHO the coach is. If you make a mistake with too many guys on the field, or give up big plays with too few players on the field, that is a mental coaching error. It is also fixable.

It is also EXPECTED to be fixed. Immediately.

I'm sorry to say this, but having too few guys or too many guys on the field ranks up there with troubleshooting your computer, and the first thing on the list is "Is your computer plugged in?".

This is basic football 101, and I don't care if this is his first year coaching or not: the rules haven't changed since high school, and he's coached long enough to know the number of players required.

Why am I bringing up McCarthy moreso than Sanders? I'll tell you.

1) Because Sanders hasn't fixed it. This is a recurring problem, and if your coordinator can't fix a basic problem, it is McCarthy's job to do it as head coach.

2) Because I noted something back in training camp, something that lit up a yellow flag for me. I mentioned it, and havent' harped on it since, but I am going to bring it up again.

When the special teams coach was keeping Driver after practice to practice returning punts, McCarthy knew nothing about it. In fact, he told the media that in a press conference, even mentioning that your starting flanker shouldnt' be returning punts.

Why was this not communicated to the special teams coach? Or Driver?

Much was placed on the former head coach for being a bit of a micromanager. This, to me, is a yellow flag for going 180 degrees the other direction.

Again, not a McCarthy bashing session or an agenda...I don't care who the coach is when it comes to not fixing such a basic problem. It needs to be done.

Why I Like Koren Robinson

Okay, before anyone jumps on me, I will say that I can think of 50 reasons why I didn't like his signing.

But I have seen on interesting positive. He's bailed Favre out on more than one occasion.

Favre does have a tendency to put his receivers in situations where they have to make a play on the ball, particularly if he's frustrated. Given our record over the last season and four games, that's more often than not.

After watching Robert Ferguson alligator-arm several interceptions last year, or, my favorite, falling down as the ball settled into the hands of the defender, I invented the following measuring stick.

A quarterback throws the ball into the endzone with decent coverage.

A #4 receiver falls down before the ball gets there.

A #3 receiver tries to make a play on the ball, but is unable to prevent the interception.

A #2 receiver knocks the ball away.

A #1 receiver makes the catch anyway.

In his limited time, I've seen several plays in which Favre threw a relatively poor pass Koren's way, and Koren turned his body around, and made a great play to knock the ball away from a defender. After watching some of the receivers we've had over the past couple of years, this was refreshing.

Koren is an active receiver who doesn't rely on his route and the ball to be delivered perfectly to make the catch. He goes to the ball and uses his physicality to make a play on the ball. I believe Greg Jennings has at least that potential, too.

But those receivers rarely get blamed when a ball bounces off their hands and into the hands of the defender, or when they can't adjust on a route and make a play on a ball that's "a little inaccurate". It seems pretty cheap when that blame falls entirely on the quarterback, because "that's who the interception gets assigned to", and "he's the one who threw it".

I don't care who is back there, Favre, Rodgers, or Quinn...I would much rather have a team of Driver's and Robinson's who go out of their way to make a play on the ball....even the less-than-perfect throws....than the prima donas who sit back and watch it happen.

Finding Our Place In The NFL

In education, there is a test out there called MAP. It's a computer program, that a student from elementary school to high school can sit down and take. It's all multiple choice, and once you take the 50+ question test, it spits out a score and tells you where you are with some standardized percentile score.

Most interesting, though, are the first ten questions. It gradually pinpoints your rough levels with a game of "higher" and "lower". It has a repository of tens of thousands of questions, and starts out with a middling ability level. If you get the question right, the next question is harder. If you get it wrong, the next question is easier.

For example, your first question might be a division problem. If you get it right, you might be finding common denominators in mixed numbers. Get that right, you might be doing complex algebra.

Get the first question wrong, and you might drop down to subtraction with borrowing. Get that wrong, and you might be finding the next number in a series. Get that wrong, and you might be doing simple addition facts.

But after ten questions, it claims to have you pegged. The problem is, since it is multiple choice, you have a 25% chance of guessing a problem correct that you have no idea how to do. In that low of a number, a couple of lucky guesses and your levels may be quite skewed.

What does this have to do with the Packers?

Well, in a way, each game has been something like one of these tests. We played a 4-0 team in the first, and got slaughtered.

We played a 3-1 team next, and fell apart after initial success.

We played an 0-4 team next, and won a close game.

We then played a 3-1 team again, and fell apart after initial success.

What does this suggest to me? We're certainly not as good as teams like the Bears, Saints, and Eagles. And we're probably better than the Lions.

That gives us a long range of teams that fall between 1-3. and 3-1. And we can guess that we fall somewhere in that range.

However, and I just throw this out for argument's sake, what if we got lucky versus the Lions? What if McCarthy's smoke and mirrors with the shotgun and extra blockers did just enough against a poor team to eek out a victory, when perhaps that team might have won had it more video to watch?

I'm not trying to say we're worse than our record, but when you look at the teams we play, the only team that appears to have truly been on our talent/coaching level is the Lions, and that game was a critical Bubba Franks tackle from heading into overtime.

We talk about "Wait and See" a lot in our forums. However, I think, just like this test, that after ten games, we'll know exactly what kind of team we're fielding in 2006.

But, we're getting a good idea along the way