I think Dallas is better than Green Bay. The only way the Packers win is if McCarthy out coaches Phillips and Capers out-coaches Garrett. Beyond that, I expect a pretty solid win for the Cowboys.

The Packers defense is better than last year which is what I guess realistically is all you can ask for, but they need a pass rusher opposite of Clay Matthews and they need some better thumpers inside at linebacker.

"porky88" wrote:

The biggest problem for the Pack Sunday is what to do at RT. I think we were much better on sunday with Tauscher in there. In the 4th quarter it looked like Clifton was out of gas and when Tauscher went down we went back to a disfuntional offense based on to much pressure.

I don't really have a problem with the defense. We GAVE the Bucs 28 points from what I count. The blocked punt, the 85 yard kickoff return, the INT for a TD, and the INT that they took down to the seven.

I know from what I recall the ST's entered into placing a lot on the shoulders of the D in most of the games we lost. They also haven't gotten a lot of help when our offense takes a half to get going and after we punt the opposing team is starting from around the 40 yard line the whole first half.

I don't recall the D playing necessarily poorly in the losses as much as they were always having to fight uphill against poor field position to start so many drives in those games. I would say they have been responsible for about 4 or five TD's that it would be nice to have back that were actually on them. The worst TD allowed was the one to the Vikes after we got back in that game and the one to the Bengals after we had them deep in their own territory on third down.

A lot of things far worse than the way our defense has played has happened in the games we have lost. If the other phases played as respectfully as the D we would be no worse than 6-2 right now.

"porky88" wrote:

That's exactly what it means.

"Nonstopdrivel" wrote:

A weird thought just occurred to me. Is it possible the reason why we have a top-five defense is because our opponents start out with such excellent field position that our defense just doesn't have too many yards to give up? As has been pointed out in other threads, the Bucs had all of two drives of more than 50 yards. Our defense may not have given up many yards, but they didn't have many yards to give. Maybe the numbers are deceiving. I'm not sure how this could be analyzed, though.

"Nonstopdrivel" wrote:

A weird thought just occurred to me. Is it possible the reason why we have a top-five defense is because our opponents start out with such excellent field position that our defense just doesn't have too many yards to give up? As has been pointed out in other threads, the Bucs had all of two drives of more than 50 yards. Our defense may not have given up many yards, but they didn't have many yards to give. Maybe the numbers are deceiving. I'm not sure how this could be analyzed, though.

"Nonstopdrivel" wrote:

It also doesn't hurt your stats much when your playing against 3 very bad offensive teams and then you put their backups in besides that, this alone i think helps with the yards allowed stats. But thats just my opinion. Sorry at work so i can't check their rankings i don't think

"dhazer" wrote:

Other teams have had to play them as well. I'm really sick of this attempt to discredit the defense. There's better rationale to it than that. Our division mates play or played those same teams too.

"dhazer" wrote:

+1. I'm sick of the attempts to discredit anything on the team that's working halfway decently. The haters are getting what they all wanted - two losses to the 'Queens, a loss to the 0-7 Bucs, a .500 record - you'd think they would be happy and shut their cake holes, but no.

Like you said, but more specifically: The Bears have played these shitty teams, as well - what's their defensive ranking? How'd their defense fare against the Bengals as compared to ours?

<Cue Hazer making excuses for the Bears, because that's how it works - make excuses for any other team that can be demonstrated to be worse than the Packers, but none at all for 'his' team>

"dhazer" wrote: