Week 1 
Week 2 
Week 3 
Week 4 + Season 
Week 5 
Week 6 
Week 7 
Week 8 + Season 
Week 9 
Week 11 
Week 12 
Week 13 
Week 14 + Season 
Week 15 
Week 16 
Week 17 
Wild Card 
Divisional 
Championship 

Super Bowl (VS Pittsburgh Steelers):


My Coverage Player of the Week:
Week 1: Tramon Williams
Week 2: Sam Shields
Week 3: Nick Collins
Week 4: Charles Woodson
Week 5: Tramon Williams
Week 6: Nick Collins
Week 7: Nick Collins
Week 8: Charles Woodson
Week 9: Charles Woodson/Tramon Williams
Week 11: Tramon Williams
Week 12: Charlie Peprah
Week 13: Tramon Williams
Week 14: Tramon Williams
Week 15: Charles Woodson
Week 16: AJ Hawk
Week 17: Defense
Wild Card: Tramon Williams
Divisional: Tramon Williams
Championship: Sam Shields
Super Bowl: Nick Collins/Tramon Williams

The final game of the season is in the books and even though we won it all, a part of me is sad to see such an incredible year come to an end. I'm gonna keep this fairly short.

First off, I can't express how lucky we are to make it through the entire season with our secondary mostly in tact. When Woodson and Shields when out, we could all see the difference it made, but if you haven't seen the exact numbers, here they are:
With Woodson: 52.9%, 31.9 QB Rating
Without Woodson: 69.6%, 118.0 QB Rating
I'm sure over time we would have adjusted, but no chance we make the Super Bowl playing multiple games down the stretch without Woodson (and Shields).

As you can see, this game was no different from what we basically already knew about this team and that starts with Tramon Williams. BOSS! It doesn't make much sense to me. You target Mike Wallace 16 times when the majority of the time he's matched up against Tramon, but Ward only 9? This perplexed me even more in the 2nd half, particularly toward the end of the game. I don't understand why teams feel they're going to beat Tramon with anything other than a proven veteran that's more than a one-trick pony, even if that one trick is really good. I'm sure I wasn't the only one praying that entire 2nd half that every ball out of Big Ben's hand would find its way to man Tramon was covering. The pass break-up was really one of my favorite plays of the game. His change of direction is elite and has the ball skills to match. Game-winner was pretty sweet too.

He shares the coverage player of the week with Collins. His pick was crucial and quite frankly, he made a couple extremely impressive plays flying in to make great tackles. That poor edge contain on 3rd and 1 to Isaac Redman was a drawback and could have kept some distance and prevented a near heart attack, but that's not in coverage.

Shields didn't have his best game and allowed 78 yards, while missing most of the 2nd half. It was really only 2 poor plays that accounted for most of it though. He was caught playing too aggressively and overplaying his cards.

Jarrett Bush showed us more of the same. Decent coverage ability, poor ball skills, lots of athleticism. Still, it's hard to hate on him when he came up with a huge pick. Go back and re-watch that interception though and look at the 2 players streaking WIDE OPEN behind him in the middle of the field. If Roethlisberger doesn't go away from those progressions so quickly, it's a HUGE play waiting to happen and odds are that he probably doesn't make it back on the roster next year.

Pat Lee played what? About 15, 20 snaps? No targets? Man must have been doing something right. Will he actually become a player for us?

Our linebackers did a nice job for the most part. They did a nice job reading the quick screens to the wideouts and getting out there quickly. We won this game defensively in 3 areas. 1) Turnovers 2) Ability to limit the quick screens 3) Ability to contain the deep ball

One final point of note, I think the Steelers and Cardinals games last year are going to prove to be positive outcomes for us in the future. We recognized stacked sets as a true weakness last season and had absolutely no problem defending against them this season. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say it was a strength of ours. Some of it can be attributed to our superior depth, but I don't doubt it's something our defense worked on in the summer.

So much for keeping it short. Season in review will be posted tomorrow hopefully. [url=Pro_News/aid=164.html]full article[/url].

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The QB rating with and without Woodson is about what I expected, and you might as well say without Woodson and Shields. Although Shields returned in the fourth quarter, I think it's likely that his injury had something to do with getting burned by Wallace for that TD. It's a lot harder to get a jam on a receiver when you're playing with a shoulder injury, and Shields completely failed to do so--the first time I've seen him look like that all season. I don't think it was a coincidence. Also, I read that Shields was not on the field for Pittsburgh's final drive, which is proof of how significantly he was injured.

You make a good point about the Packers being lucky not to have any significant injuries in the secondary during the course of the season. That seems to be the one position group, second only to QB, where injuries will just kill you. We saw that last year. I guess it was fitting, then, that in the final game of the season the Packers lost two of their top three CBs and were able to weather the storm against one of the best QBs in the league.

Like you, I was glad that they kept throwing at Tramon. I'm not sure which play you are referring to when you mention the "pass break-up." I thought you were talking about the fourth and five play, but then you mention the "game-winner," which is definitely the fourth and five play. It was a textbook play, which we've seen from him all year. Wallace complained afterwards that Tramon made contact before the ball arrived, but it didn't look like it to me.

What a nightmare, having to watch the Packers protect a narrow lead in the second half of the Super Bowl with Jarrett Bush running around out there. True to form, his best plays were made near the line of scrimmage (the interception and the QB hit on the blitz). Get him ten yards or more downfield and he is lost, although I can't fault him too much for getting burned by Ward on that TD. He was in one-on-one coverage, protecting half of the end zone, and Ward had time to make about three moves.

I like what you wrote about the Steelers and Cardinals games last year being important to this year's success. There's a nice symmetry to that. It's sort of like what Raider Pride wrote a few weeks ago about how the loss to the Giants in the NFC championship game led to the QB change that made this year's success possible. The heartbreaking losses don't seem so bad when lessons are learned and the team is ultimately successful.

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Awesome seeing Bush getting an INT because I've been defending Bush this season. Wonderful ST player, and the only reason he's defending is because of injuries. So I say blame the injury bug, not Bush.

Two injuries to CBs in one game and we still win. Great job Packers. I'd probably give it to Collins who has a slight edge over Williams with that INT. INTs make a huge difference. They end drives and set things up for the O.

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INTs make even more of a difference when they are returned for touchdowns. I would give Collins the edge as well. He made some nice tackles, and in coverage he made up for getting fooled a couple times against the Bears.

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I couldn't believe how may times they ran that quick screen/swing play to Mike Wallace. It didn't work from the beginning. I guess it's useful in an offense that struggles to run, but Pittsburgh is not one of those teams.

It's really virtually impossible to mask deficiencies in the secondary when you play against good quarterbacks, which was precisely our problem in pass D last year. Our regular season numbers were actually very impressive, but when it came time to defend against the better passing offenses, we struggled. Offenses could spread us thin and complete passes after pinpointing the weakness in our D. This year we excelled in man coverage, specifically in passing off receivers between corners, but also did a better job of disguising zone coverages.

The pass break-up I was referring to (though it may have officially not been scored as such) was the play to the right sideline earlier in the game on Mike Wallace. It was the play where the commentators said that there was only one place to fit the ball and it was at the sidelines. Big Ben threw it directly at Wallace right on time and Tramon essentially broke on the out route exactly with Wallace and got his hand in there to knock it away. Tramon's everything you look for in a corner and his development has been the most exciting part of this season to me. (I'm a bit biased though as you can tell what my favorite part of the game is based on these threads).

Sometimes there's a silver lining to losses that we can't see immediately. Sitting with the Lombardi trophy back in its rightful place, we can now reflect and not feel so badly about prior losses to the Giants, Cardinals, and Steelers, though all of em probably left every Packer fan devastated. They were good learning processes from which we saw the results this season.

One other thing that's somewhat related to that final point, I love how McCarthy learns from his mistakes. He RARELY makes the same mistakes twice. Our team looked frozen in that Championship game and since, our team has practiced more in the cold (even if its in the Hutson Center). He schedules well, gives ample rest to the guys who need it, and accepts input from our players. I can't believe I was so stupid to even think earlier this year that we should begin to consider whether McCarthy's job should be secure at the end of the season.

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I would have loved to see the faces of Packers fans across the nation when Bush made that pick. That was absolutely awesome. I was ecstatic and really couldn't stop laughing for a couple minutes. And imagine if he came up with that ball on the final play giving him 2 Super Bowl picks, even if the second would have just been a product of luck and opportunity. ::lol:



That's one of the staples of the Pittsburgh offense though. They have receivers that can block and a pair of tight ends who also excel in that area. On top of that, they have the fastest receiver in the league with elite acceleration and it's no surprise they had it in their game plan. All of our corners have taken after Woodson though. When they see him throwing himself into offensive linemen, you better believe they don't want to be whiffing or shying away from contact on the perimeter when they have to to watch said play with him in the film room.

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I can not believe Pitt never threw at Lee. That was amazing.

Greg, I read somewhere that Shields was not in for most of the 2nd half. He badgered the coaches so much they put in him for one series and it was apparent that his injury was preventing him from playing up to his abilities and they did not put him back in after the TD.

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I miss the RashaanSalaami's posts.

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I do too. Shoot the guy an email or something.

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