Green Bay It should not have come as a surprise to the Chicago Bears that on third and 1 from the 50-yard line - with a little over a minute left in the game - Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy went for six.

Surprising, perhaps, that he took the chance at that point in the game, but surprising that he threw the ball deep?

No way.
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Since he took over as head coach in 2006, only one other team - the New Orleans Saints (44) - has more completions of 40 or more yards than McCarthy's Packers (42). Over the last two seasons, the Packers have ranked first and tied for first in completions of that length and enter Week 2 of this season with more (34) than anyone else over the last 33 regular-season games.

The Bears should have seen it coming.

"I think they try to, but we have a lot of threats on this team, so they can't really focus on one thing," said receiver Greg Jennings, who caught the game-winning bomb from Aaron Rodgers. "I think in that situation, that specific situation, third and one, you're pretty much expecting run. You want to stack the line for the run, so you kind of have to play tight.

"But we throw a lot of look (quick-hit) balls. The corner was probably looking for just something like that and got beat deep. I can't say enough for Mike calling that call."

The deep route doesn't take up a very large section in the Packers' playbook considering they run a fairly traditional West Coast offense where slants, hitches, curls and crossing routes are most prevalent. Subsequently, the Packers' receiving corps is constructed mostly of receivers who in college caught short passes and then used the best moves they had to get extra yards.

Jennings was noted for that kind of ability coming from Western Michigan as was James Jones at San Jose State, Jordy Nelson at Kansas State and Brett Swain at San Diego State. Only Donald Driver, who played at Alcorn State, came with a reputation for getting deep, but his lack of size and average speed left him waiting for a call to the NFL until the seventh round of the 1999 draft.

If you were forming a super unit of deep receivers, you'd want the power of Terrell Owens, the grace of Chad Johnson, er, Ochocinco, the speed of Randy Moss and the hands of Larry Fitzgerald. Those are elite athletes with special skills that make them a threat to get deep on any given play.

The Packers' group, on the other hand, doesn't have a single guy who runs under 4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash. It only has one guy - Nelson - who is taller than 6-foot-1 and weighs more than 210 pounds. Jennings (5-11, 198 pounds) and Driver (6-foot, 194) are considered small by elite receiver standards, the 6-1, 208-pound Jones ran a pedestrian 4.54 40-yard dash coming out of college and the 6-0, 203-pound Swain ran a 4.61 at his college pro day.

So how is it possible that Jennings, Driver, Jones and Nelson have combined to make the Packers one of the better deep ball teams in the NFL?

"It's more technique than anything in football," Jones said. "Speed is probably the last option. Technique-wise, if you think about it in the NFL, you really don't have a lot of guys who run sub-4.3s. All the premier receivers: Fitzgerald, he's not fast. Anquan Boldin: he's not fast. Terrell Owens: he's fast, but he's not 4.3. It's more technique."

In the Packers' case, they have solid route runners who are a perfect fit for an offense that tries to take what the defense offers. The Packers rarely come out of the gate throwing deep, but rather they work the short and medium areas of a defense, hoping to establish a pattern of completing balls in front of defenders. They try to run every route at the same speed, so that when it is time to take the route deep, the cornerbacks don't know it's coming.

"When teams start to get irritated with the ball getting thrown in front of them, the quick stuff, they start to sit and squat on things," receivers coach Jimmy Robinson said. "It's natural to want to jump a route after you've seen it thrown in front of you a couple times. So you take a shot from time to time. You have guys who want to settle on routes; that's the time you want to test them."

If you think about the times the Packers have had the most success going deep, it's usually at the end of the games. Last week was a good example, as was the 71-yard touchdown Driver caught in the fourth quarter against Detroit last December, or the 34-yard pass Jones caught late in the Jacksonville game that set up the go-ahead field goal, or the 63-yard completion to Jennings in the fourth quarter of the Houston game.

The list goes on and on.

A big part of the deep-ball success the Packers have had is McCarthy's trust in his receivers and quarterback to make adjustments at the line of scrimmage. First, with Brett Favre, and now with Rodgers, McCarthy has built-in sight adjustments that allow the quarterback to recognize one-on-one coverage and audible out of a pass or run play to go deep.

"We like to take shots down the field, but we still run the West Coast," Jones said. "It's still a lot of the same thing. Most of the time you see us go deep, it's us checking to something. Like if we have a hitch on or something and the guy presses, with our offense we turn that into a go route.

"A lot of things might start from a quick game and then go deep. It's still a traditional West Coast. But when you got playmakers like we do, you definitely want to take advantage of going down the field and making a big play."

The Packers' number of long completions the past two years dwarfs the amount they gained under Mike Holmgren during the 1990s. Even as the Packers were building a powerhouse under Holmgren and Favre, the most passes of 40 or more yards they completed in a season was 11, which occurred during their Super Bowl-winning season of 1996.

Some years they had as few as five completions of 40 or more yards, although in the final three years of Holmgren's tenure they averaged 9.

McCarthy's advantage is having a quarterback with the touch Rodgers has on his deep ball. Favre was never a great deep thrower, but he got better as the years wore on, and completed 17 to lead the league in 2007.

By most accounts, Rodgers throws a more catchable deep ball than Favre. He knows when to put air under it and when to drive it down the field. The fact he missed on a couple of long throws against the Bears was partly attributable to the pressure Chicago put on him all game long, which is something future opponents certainly will take note of.

As the season goes on, Rodgers and his receivers will continue to try to stretch the field.

"We try to have 'shot' passes in our game plans," quarterbacks coach Tom Clements said. "We're a precision, ball-control passing team. If we have the opportunity to take a shot, we'll take a shot.

"We've had some good success with it. It's been a weapon for us."