A MATTER OF STYLE. Doesn’t it seem that the philosophical approach to football ultimately made the difference? Denver is led by Manning. He is THE unquestioned leader of the team. He is the boss and the players are the employees. It was that way in Indy as well. How he goes, so goes his team. It was obvious the psychological effect the game had on Peyton. He was shell-shocked in his post-game interview, stammering for words, his confidence shattered. In contrast, Seattle is an 11-man team effort with interchangeable parts. Anyone can step up on any given game day. It showed once again on Sunday that football is a team sport.
—Michael, Los Angeles
http://mmqb.si.com/2014/02/04/russell-wilson-seattle-seahawks-super-bowl-xlviii/2/
Great observation, very similar to what our Packers team is facing currently with Rodgers.
Point is, at this stage we are WAY more like the DEN team who got their asses handed to them than we are the SEA who gave them the beat down. We have SO MANY HOLES on our team to address, especially on defense. Currently, we are in dire need of upgrades at FS, SS, OLB, ILB, NT, DE and possibly TE and WR, maybe even CB if we can't get the Shields deal done.
I was pretty happy to see Mike Daniels comments the other day about assuming more of a leadership role. We need more of that. Take some of the emphasis off of Rodgers being the end all for this team, and get some super talents all across the board to make a real, winning "team." It is time to add at least one premiere talent at any of those positions on D, and work to fill out the rest of our roster with upgrades, as opposed to sticking with some of our own who haven't been getting the job done. It would be nice to see the team leadership expand to other areas of our Packers team other than QB.
Leadership has been a problem in GB. When your trusted veteran CB, Tramon Williams, comes out publicly to state this after the season's end, maybe it is time to start listening. Add some quality, proven vets Ted. I found it really odd that we were in some games after Rodgers went down, except for our defense tanking. How the hell does Rodgers going down correlate to such a swift downfall in our defense? Well, pretty much the same way Peyton being flustered in the SB against SEA brought their entire team down. Too heavy a reliance on one player.
Figuring Ted likes to stick solely to the draft, I would be hard pressed to see us returning to another SB and winning for at least a few years, knowing many important players we've added in the last few drafts are slipping in their development (Burnett, Perry, House, Hayward, Worthy to name a few), and it will take time for new draftees to develop enough to make the significant contributions we have been lacking, needing to truly compete.