During the Buccaneers game even Greg Olsen was saying not to play soft defense. Why would a defense go soft? My speculation is they were hoping the Buccaneers would dink and dunk the clock away. Knowing full well the Packers offense would probably go three and out, maybe Joe Barry went soft hoping the Buccaneers wouldn't get big chunk yards?

I would still rather murder kill them and give the ball back to the offense. Worse case scenario (no turnover) is you go three and out burning up clock and/or their timeouts and then pin them inside the 20, again.

Matt LaFleur one told Mike Pettine to be more aggressive. Fine, he inherited Pettine, but he hand picked Joe Barry. If you need to tell your hand-picked DC to be more aggressive, why the hell did you hire him? Unless you don't want to be aggressive? I'm in circles here.

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It's frustrating to me too.
All game our D was stopping the BUCS. Why, when the game is on the line, would you change it? The worst that could happen, is that the BUCS score, which is what happened anyway.
Playing conservative at that point is a recipe for disaster.
We are lucky that Brady allowed the delay if game, and the 2 point attempt was knocked down.
I think had it gone into OT, we would have lost. Our offense did nothing in the second half.
That doesn't give me much hope that suddenly our O could get any kind of score.

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There's no way to sugar coat it. It was a bad scheme to play soft zone on that last drive. All game your D has shut them down and u decide to do that? What makes him think that our D is all of a sudden give a big play for a touchdown? Also, u dont give mr. dink and dunk (Brady) that type of coverage with more than a minute left and a time out. It clearly didnt work and had it not been for a royal screw up on Brady's part, we most likely lose in OT.

Sometimes coaches outsmart themselves...This is a classic case

The screw up on the two point conversion was on the coaching staff. Everyone knows you call the two point play at the same time so you can hurry to the line, call it and catch defense off guard. How they didn't have multiple plays called is astonishingly bad.

I absolutely hate the soft defense. Why we have our guys so far off the WR's just pisses me off. We have SPEED. It's OK to use it. I get they don't want to get beat over the top. I just want to see the off coverage being like 5 yards, not 10+ yards.

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It did work, we won.

Barry knew they needed the 2pt conversion, defense held up. They burned the clock down on the way across the field. Offense needs to score more than 14.

Btw, they executed that onside correctly. The front line went for blocks, not for the ball. Lazard was a level behind them, fielded it cleanly and went down. BOOM. Good to see.

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There haven't been many games where we could only score 14 points and win.
The defense definitely was a big reason we won.

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For years I have said that I dislike prevent defenses. They don't work often enough. The good news for yesterday was there really wasn't a downside.
If the Bucs scored they still needed to get the 2 point conversion. (We know they failed. Good news.) If they succeeded the best they could do was tie the game. (Still good news)
If they scored quickly Rodgers still had a chance to drive down field to attempt the FG.
(Packers would have still had a timeout.) Depending on the time left he can do this. Depending on the field position there is a high probability of Crosby getting the FG. (good news)
If the Bucs used up most of the clock Packers still have a chance to win in OT. (Sorta good news)
Going prevent forced Brady to execute plays with a subpar offense. Odds were with GB.
Under almost every scenario the odds still slightly favor the Packers a little.

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Probably due the heat, their viagra wore off sooner...


It looked like they went to a prevent defense and your stated reason is the only reason to go to a prevent defense (other than the other team is clearly more talented than you, and your just trying to stop a complete and total blow out, which clearly doesn't apply here).


But there is absolutely only two reason why, in this case, the Packers defensive tried to play prevent defense in a one score game, and more than 3 minutes reminding and a future 1st ballot HOF QB throwing the ball...

1) Someone made the incredible incredible stupid decision to play the clock instead of the team...

2) No one overrode that extremely extremely stupid decision...

This quite literally is the Kevin King before halftime against the Buccaneers decision all over again, where someone made an extremely extremely stupid play call decision, and there was no one there to correct them...

Whomever made that decision needs a detention and call to the principals office, and be educated on never calling a prevent defense when you have more than 1:30 per drive... so this was a one score game, so no prevent unless the clock is under 1:30 (maybe even less if they still ha e their timeouts) and in this case they called it in a one score game with over 3:00 remaining. Just pure stupidity, unless you thought your prevent defense would confuse the QB (it's not... it confused your coverage team more).

Also whomever is supposed to be watching the play callers to not make stupid calls, should also be punished, that might be LaFleur...



This was the most aggressive game I've ever seen Barry call.. he sent more 5 rushers against the Buccaneers than I've seen over muliple other game streaks...

I honestly didn't know Barry knew how to be that aggressive... and that's what I've been looking for...

Also on one of the plays where the RB got wide open on prevent defense, it was with Walker on a blitz so no one had coverage on the RB, but the coverage also looked confused in prevent defense.

As for Barry's hiring, LaFleur wanted someone that knew and would run the Vic Fangio defensive scheme and so looked at coaches that knew that scheme.

Barry's version of the scheme certainly is not the more aggressive version of that scheme.

Also ironically, Broncos released Vic Fango and the Vikings hired his right hand man to be their new defensive coordinator.

49ers were trying to get a deal worked out with Fango to be a senior consultant or something, but it fell through, but the Packers should seriously consider bringing in Fango in some role (Just my opinion, but we are running a conservative version of his scheme).


But in this conservative version, the defensive front must win, or the backend could be screwed... but the Packers have been getting good pressure which partly by design to attack the pass and be a bit more vulnerable to the run.


Also on a complete side note, Packers coverage is good on their main calls, but they need to be better prepared on their change ups, like the calls they don't often make, like prevent defense, looked like they needed to talk a lot more about that when setting up...

But ideally, I want to demand that at some point they run a surprise change up with a Tampa 2 coverage... just randomly call in once per game. But they have to be ready for that random call...

But I think it would really mess with the offense, for a single play and the ILBers or Safety will ha e a shot at an INT if it's a pass play and you don't over do it.

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All a "prevent defense" does is prevent you from winning.

To me the ONLY time you should even think of using it is when you are up by at least 17 points, and there is only 3 minutes or less left in the game.

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ya we sure paid our coverage guys enough this past year to stick them on the receivers and let them duke it out.