warhawk, what the deuce does that have to do with what I said about McCarthy's play calling in crunch time? Are you saying opening the 2nd half was crunch time?

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Talk to Nerdman about that. This isn't Machiaveliian philosophy. McCarthey lacks killer instinct; and in the playoffs, that's a recipe for disaster. I thought we learned that lesson once before in Philly.

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What I am doing is recanting how the game went. We let them back in the game with the fumble and then reclaimed a very solid lead considering our D.

From there McCarthy went low risk not to repeat what happened earlier.

Baltimore's playing at Pittsburgh this week in large part due to the fact Baltimore wanted more, got Palamaloud, and went home losers.

The bottom line is someone already posted on here how critical turnovers can be and in a high stakes game when your going home for good you better damn well not put the ball in the other teams hands. We didn't. We won.

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I wonder how many close games the Packers will have to lose before people stop finding the cautious, don't-make-mistakes, play-not-to-lose strategy defensible.

Because the funny thing is, they do make mistakes. They're not fundamentally sound. They're not disciplined. And every so often (more often than not in one-possession games), it comes back to bite them in the ass.

10-6 was good enough (just barely) to get into the playoffs this year. You can afford a few losses in the regular season and it's not the end of the world.

You can't afford a single loss in the playoffs. One loss and you go home.

Just because decisions happen to work out in the end, doesn't mean they were the right decisions, just as the fact that a decision happens not to work out doesn't necessarily mean it was the wrong decision. I don't know why people seem to think a coach should be immune to criticism just because he happened to win the game. We're fans of the team, not blind sycophants of the staff.

I do agree that "pussy" is too strong a word. I just lack confidence in McCarthy's ability to consistently field an offense that will consistently attack the other team until it is hopelessly defeated. I think he'll win more often than not, but he'll always leave us nervous as hell when the games really count.

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Fox showed the 4th and 26 play in their pre-game show. It still makes me sick to my stomach that we didn't run the ball on 4th and 1 to seal the win when Green was having a monster game. Heck given we punted the ball in the end zone it wasn't like it would have mattered even if he didn't make the first down considering the actual yardage difference that occured vs the possible reward.

This. +1

You shouldn't have quoted me as you're not talking about what I said at all.




Speaking on what I've quoted, we did turn it over, twice. Underwood Fumble, Rodgers Fumble.

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IronMan, Wow, hope you didn't hurt your brain with that contribution. FAIL.


And now being serious, there's an ebb and flow to game time decisions. As I've said before, when it comes to crunch time, I think McCarthy fails. Hell, how many times have we heard him say he shouldn't have challenged, or he should have? I was fine with that response the first time or two, but you should find a way to correct this instead of saying it every couple weeks. At least, in my feeble opinion.

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My beef is that our Offense fails to live up to its potential too often. Perhaps it is because our Defense always seems to show up and I've been spoiled, but man with those weapons it just seems we should be putting away teams and not allowing them to stay around (Washington game comes to mind as well as the first Bears game). I am not blind to the impact of losing Grant and Finley, but man we have by far the best WR core in the Conference and a Pro Bowl QB (I still say he is better than Vick and Ryan). If there is a problem with execution then they need to practice harder, but I find the play calling often baffles me. Who didn't know we would be stopped on that 3rd and 3 run with Kuhn in the 4th quarter? Who didn't know that was the play call when we saw the formation?

On this you and I agree. I've said before that despite his bullheadedness and stubbornness, I think he freezes or locks up or gets indecisive at critical junctures, sometimes at odd moments in which I don't understand why the decision seems hard to make.

I do believe he'll win more than he'll lose. I just wonder if he'll ever put together a consistent string of big-game victories. I hope he does.

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