Julius Peppers was open. Aaron Rodgers threw a perfect pass. Peppers dropped it. The call was fine, the execution was not on the part of Peppers. Great call and if Peppers would have caught it, you'd be saying the same thing. 🙂

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I won't spend the next two weeks picking apart the play calling but the Peppers play was instantly poor. With the receivers and backs that are on this team there is no need to try and throw the ball to Peppers. Even though everything worked the play still failed for one reason. Julius is not a receiver. He has never caught a pass as a receiver in game situation before. When the time came to make the play he didn't. You do stuff like that when you don;t have confidence that the real players can make the play.

Same for the onside kick. Defense is not stopping them so don't put them in a poor situation by giving NO a short field. If they were positive every player for NO was going to leave the line early to set up the return that would be one thing but clearly they did not.

Mike was 0-2 on those calls. It looked like he was coaching the weaker team not the better one.

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My point was not that I think we should have gone with a screen on 4th - it was that just about any other play would have a better chance of being successful than running behind that scrub. I never once said specifically that the best option would have been a screen - seems you are just looking for an argument.

The reason I didn't care for the pass to Peppers is there was no reason to put him in as a receiver. We already have receivers, so I have no idea why you would pull a guy to do the job that he was signed for, only to put a defensive player in his spot. If it were for blocking purposes, it would make sense, but to be a pass catcher - just Mike trying to turn heads.

What the heck happened to Tramon, he got just torched all night. Same with Hyde. Expected House to be the weakness in the secondary but at least he was in good position and disrupted a few passes (the PI on him was just awful and I won't count that against him).

Brees picking up yards and scores wasn't the problem-he's a stat whore if there ever was one and Saints offense just flings the ball around until they get something. Missing tackles and letting the Saints have their way in the ground game is.

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Penalties in the red zone were killers

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Anybody going to/hosting a Halloween party? Got a costume picked out? I'm going to one on Friday night. I got my costume all picked out. I'm going as the Packers defense! Nobody will notice me!

And yes I totally stole that from somewhere

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This loss irritated me more than the other losses have. I'm tired of seeing this defense play the way they do. They are hot or they are cold. There is no middle ground. NASCAR worked great against Carolina...it was awful last night. So why continue to run it? Change it up. The defense looked slow and uninterested in playing the game.
-Poor tackling
-No push
-Receivers wide open (not a single defender within 10 yards at times)
-Players falling down for no apparent reason

These were the things I constantly saw overall.

I get that there are injuries and the Packers are having to shuffle guys but this was just awful.
-Micah Hyde had a terrible game at safety.
-HHCD really needs to work on his tackling because 1) he keeps missing and 2) he is going to injury himself the exact same way Nick Collins did if he continues to fly in with his head down.
- There were a few plays where AJ Hawk rushed in and instead of taking on a block, he fell and the lineman laid on top of him. That led to Ingram being able to run it right up the middle untouched.
- House was pretty awful all night. Didn't look like himself and was worked by a rookie...a good rookie at that.
- Lattimore was just terrible. Beat on run plays, lost in coverage and terrible tackling

Overall, guys that needed to step up didn't and the entire unit took one giant step backwards.

Offense was looking promising and I thought the game was going to be a shoot out up until Rodgers injury. Aside from the few bonehead play calls (4th and 1 ran behind Taylor Lane and the Peppers route), the offense was rolling. Rodgers had time and when he didn't he was able to find the open area to escape to. Unfortunately, everything went downhill once Lang was injured and Rodgers tweaked his hamstring. Double whammy.

For once, it would be nice to see the rest of the offense pick it up and put the team on their back like Rodgers does. He toughed it out and came out to play (50% Rodgers is better than 100% Flynn) and I feel the offense let him down. Poor protection, dropped passes--some leading to interceptions and mental lapses (jumping offsides).

Once this team gets hit with a few miscues, they deflate quickly.

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^^ Lacy looked great last night overall I think if the defense had held up a little better we could have used him more and softened the blow of Rodgers' injury.

I'm sorry, I re-wrote what I wanted to say like 3 times and at one point had in () that Lacy was the only player to really put the offense on his back. I forgot to add it back in. Totally didn't mean to take credit away from him because he was the one person who still played the same after Rodgers became injured.

Thanks for the catch.

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