[img_r]http://www.espnmilwaukee.com/includes/news_items/40/1936/woodsonromo.jpg[/img_r]Al Harris has two phones on his waistband whenever hes not on the football field, and there were times over the past two months when theyd be ringing almost simultaneously.

The Green Bay Packers veteran cornerback has friends throughout the NFL, and many of them were wondering the same thing after watching the Packers defense during preseason and in their season-opening victory over Chicago, and then watching what they thought was the same Packers defense in the seven games that followed.

Wheres the blitzing, heavy-pressure defense you guys were supposed to have this season?

I guess the whole football world (was wondering). I was getting calls from everybody, saying, Man, what are you guys doing? Harris explained. I just said, Were going to be all right.

Well, it looks like theyre going to be all right now, after defensive coordinator Dom Capers threw caution to the wind last Sunday and got after Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo with his most aggressive blitzing approach since the season began. Blitzing on more than half of Romos drop-backs, the Packers sacked Romo five times and pressured him repeatedly a stark departure from what had been a play-it-safe approach in prior weeks.

Midway through the fourth quarter, the NFLs third-ranked offense had a measly 131 yards and no points. The Cowboys didnt score until 38 seconds remained in the game, avoiding a shutout but still losing, 17-7.

Whatever triggered whatever, Im just glad it happened. Weve got a good defense. And when hes dialing it up, things happen, Harris said. Thats what this defense is a zone-blitz defense. Thats when you have chances to make big plays. In any scheme, youve got to know that if you blitz or you dont blitz, teams are going to make some plays. Me personally, Id rather err on the side of being aggressive and not letting (the offense) dictate what were going to do. Make them adjust to what were doing instead of us adjusting to what theyre doing.

The change in approach had a ripple effect on more than just Harris incoming call log as the Packers prepared for this Sundays game against the San Francisco 49ers at Lambeau Field.

Suddenly, the Packers defensive players were excited about the scheme again; Capers reputation as a savvy blitz-heavy play-caller was restored; veteran cornerback Charles Woodson was making a case for NFL defensive player of the year and looking like he was on to something with Oct. 5 his criticism of the approach Capers took against Brett Favre and the Vikings; and the 49ers and future Packers opponents were forced to re-evaluate their plans for attacking the Green Bay defense.

Throwing a change-up

With a few extra days off after playing a Thursday night game on Nov. 12, 49ers offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye spent last Friday and Saturday working ahead, putting together a skeleton game plan for Sundays game against the Packers.

Then he plopped down on his couch at home in front of his flat-screen Sunday afternoon "I've got the biggest screen HDTV I could get," Raye said and watched the Packers-Cowboys game.

We had two extra days and started a direction with the tape (of the Packers) that we had, and then all of a sudden, Sunday rolls around, Raye told Bay Area reporters earlier in the week. They play Dallas and they look like a totally different team. They were borderline dominant in that game.

Then we had to include how they played Dallas in the game plan So, we had to make some adjustments as we went along."

Working off the Packers previous games, Raye had observed that Capers does tailor his game-plans very specifically to opponents, taking different approaches against the St. Louis Rams (who play in the NFC West with the 49ers), the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who were starting a rookie quarterback in Josh Freeman), the Minnesota Vikings (with veteran quarterback Brett Favre) and the Cowboys.

They've been different against everybody they've played, Raye said. They game plan every team that they're going to play, based on the strengths and weaknesses of that offense. Tampa Bay was different than Dallas. Minnesota, obviously with Favre, was different than Romo with Dallas. The Rams were different than all of those. Because of the flexibility of the things they are able to do with their front seven people, you see a different style of defense based on the game plan they have in place. So, we'll have to see how they plan to treat (us). I would think they would start with us with stopping (running back) Frank Gore and (tight end) Vernon Davis because we're a little more throw than run with (quarterback) Alex Smith. We'll see a little bit different style of defense."

Indeed, Capers made it clear Friday afternoon that even though the blitzing scheme was so successful against the Cowboys, hes not going to go hog-wild with it against the 49ers if he doesnt have to. And stopping Gore, who enters the game with 551 yards (5.2-yard average) and six touchdowns, including 80- and 62-yard scores. Against the Vikings, that was Capers concern that an ill-timed blitz would result in a long run by halfback Adrian Peterson.

I like the way it went (against Dallas), Capers said. Believe me, if you look at every place Ive been, I like to try to keep the offense on their heels. I felt better about Sunday, obviously. When you have success doing it, it affects the way you call the game, and you like to keep it going that way. Ive always felt that its important early in the game that you dont let them get that run established. Because I think most people in this league will get impatient with the run if you stop it early.

We got in a lot of predictable situations. They came out and their first three runs, they won. We lost, lost, lost. Then we won the rest of the way out. And then the very first run of the second half, Johnny Jolly made the hit for no gain, and it was still a tight game, but we were able to get into more predictable situations. If its third-and-5 or less, the conversion percentages (are much higher) as opposed to third-and-6 or more, and now you can bring more pressure. It opens up a whole new array of things you can do.

Emotional lift

Packers assistant head coach and inside linebackers coach Wintson Moss found himself feeling a little jealous on the sideline Sunday. Having spent his entire 11-year NFL playing career as a linebacker in schemes that eschewed blitzing, he got caught up in all the excitement as the Capers and the defense went after Romo with blitzes by, among others, inside linebackers A.J. Hawk and Nick Barnett (two sacks).

In my career, when I was with Tampa Bay, we didnt pressure a lot. We played a 3-4 that was very standard. You just created a fourth rusher inside or outside and played base coverages behind it, Moss explained Friday. I get to the Raiders, and Al (Davis) didnt like a lot of variation, didnt like a lot of adjustments. He paid his defensive line a ton of money to sack the quarterback. So I never blitzed with the Raiders. I get to Seattle, and its the same scheme we played at (the University of) Miami, which emphasized just the defensive line rushing. So my whole playing career, it was all about the defensive line rushing, and I didnt get to blitz very much.

Im very upset about that.

But what he wasnt upset about was the Packers approach against the Cowboys one he expects youll see plenty of in the final seven weeks of the season.

When youre on defense and you call a base call, especially when youre a match defense, you have to wait for the offense to do something so you can react to it, Moss said. But when youre playing a pressure call, it has nothing to do with the offense. That ball is snapped Clap! Snap! you go. As a defensive player, who doesnt want to do that? So you can tell why a player, when they hear a pressure call, their antennae go up. They would love to do that more.

Asked why the Packers had abandoned that approach for so much of the year, Moss replied, I think weve had some very, very solid success with pressure throughout the year. There have been spots where we couldve done it better. When we do pressure, we have got to get to the quarterback. There were times when we didnt, and that hurts. Thats why its been a very fine line between Do we pressure? and Do we not pressure?

The Minnesota games, we tried to get after Brett, and they did a good job picking up our pressures and made us pay for it. So weve kind of come full-circle weve had success with blitzes. So if that unfolds on Sunday, then Dom is a coordinator who goes in there with the full package and what were playing well, thats what were going to go with.

Packers safeties coach Darren Perry knows the feeling. He played for Capers in Pittsburgh from 1992 through 94 and experienced the kind of emotional lift the Packers players felt against the Cowboys. And during last Sundays game, he actually radioed Capers, who works from upstairs in the press box, to tell him about the vibe on bench.

I told Dom, This is the most excitement weve seen on the sideline in a long time probably since the first game of the preseason, Perry recalled Friday. Because everybody was into it. Theres something to be said for knowing that on any given play, your number could be called. You get excited. You kind of have a little more juice.

As a former player, Perry acknowledged that players always want to blitz, and its up to the coaches to be judicious with how they use their pressure calls. The beauty of Capers scheme, he said, is the options he has in blitzing while Woodson and Barnett did most of the damage last week, cornerbacks Tramon Williams, Jarrett Bush and Harris, safety Nick Collins and outside linebackers Clay Matthews and Brad Jones all blitzed and had varying degrees of success.

I think were to the point now where weve got enough guys coming (on blitzes) where they cant just focus in on Woodson, Perry said. Now you give them something to think about, where they cant just say, Theres 21, hes coming. Thats not necessarily so. You try to keep them off-balance and use your personnel. It gets everybody excited because everybodys involved we can bring safeties, we can bring corners, everybody gets an opportunity to make a play. We feel like we have enough playmakers that it can be a different guy from week to week. The beauty of it is having all the different moving parts. It really can create some doubt, and thats what you really want to do get them out of rhythm, show them something different and force them into some mistakes.

It also creates more work for opposing coaches like Raye and 49ers running backs coach Tom Rathman, who worked with Perry in Oakland. Perry said he and Rathman used to go back-and-forth during practices since Rathman was in charge of the offenses blitz pick-ups, and now theyll be matching wits in a game that counts.

Its going to be interesting. He considers himself a guru, Perry said with a laugh. Theyve got a lot to prepare for. Theyve seen a lot (from us). And theres no way you can (practice) all that stuff. You throw some new things in there that they havent seen, and that can create a little bit of havoc for those guys. Theyll be thinking about that, and you have to use that to your advantage.

Was Woodson right?

After having a heart-to-heart with Capers following his critical comments after the Packers loss to Favre and the Vikings in Minneapolis six weeks ago, Woodson wasnt looking for a chance for an I-told-you-so this week after his dominating performance nine tackles, two forced fumbles, a sack and an interception against the Cowboys.

But theres also no denying that the defense is better when Woodson is involved and being used in a variety of ways, which was his point in his post-game interviews in the Metrodome visitors locker room.

That said, Woodson also saw a different attitude from his defensive mates, a confidence in the scheme and a willingness to go all-out things he hadnt seen consistently before Sunday.

Thats what (the defense) is supposed to look like, Woodson said of the game plan for the Cowboys and the way he and his teammates executed it. And the one key factor in that game was, we won our one-on-one battles; and another part to that was guys, no matter what play it was, were going 100 percent. There were some mistakes and things that we missed, but when youre going 100 percent, you can make up for a lot of those things.

I think early in the season, we messed up on some things and guys werent hustling to make up for it. I think last weeks game, thats what it looks like. I dont want to get into that whole questioning-the-game-plan thing again, but I loved (the game plan against Dallas). And I thought that we handled it well.

Woodsons hope, of course, is that the Packers success last week prods Capers to make those calls again in the coming weeks and not back off the aggressive approach is the defense gives up a big play or two on occasion. But, he said, its incumbent on the players to give Capers the confidence to keep being bold in his calls.

I think really for any coach in the league, youre going to call the things you feel the team is comfortable doing. And there were some times where he called some things (earlier in the season) and we didnt get it done, and of course he backed off of them, Woodson said. I think last weeks game showed that the guys on the field, even though it might not always happen the way its supposed to, as long as guys are going 100 percent and making the plays and not allowing it to be too big of a gain, hell keep calling them. Hopefully it does carry over to this game.

Thats really the vision that we have

As frustrated as some of his players and more than a few fans might have been during the times when Capers was playing things more conservatively and not blitzing, the point they were missing was that Capers would much prefer to be aggressive, too. Where do you think the Steelers Blitzburgh nickname from the 1990s came from?

Its always funny to me, because fans, players, everybody, theyd like to blitz every down. But the bottom line is the results, Capers said. I can remember back when we had it really going in Pittsburgh, wed win a game, give up seven points, and everybodys ticked because we didnt blitz enough. And Im saying, I thought the objective was to win the game, not whether you blitz 40 times.

Capers laughed, then paused.

There are certain things you have to do to allow the blitz to be more effective, and the first step, weve got right now were playing the run pretty well, he said. Now, weve got to play the run well on Sunday. And then, in a 60-play game, theres going to be two, three, four impact plays that will determine the outcome of that game. And those are the ones you saw Charles was involved in last week.

Certainly, the results have been there. Entering this weeks games, the defense ranked fourth in yards per game, fourth in rushing yards allowed and rushing yards per carry, sixth in passing yards allowed, third in takeaways, second in third-down efficiency and 10th in points allowed.

But its possible that Capers needed a game like last weeks as much as anybody, to see his players execute his pressures properly and instill the confidence he needed to take a more aggressive tack the rest of the season.

No question. Were all human, and if somethings going good, youre going to ride that horse, Capers said. And if its not, then youre looking for something else to try to go to. But the real good defenses that Ive been around, you get that momentum going and playing aggressively, and you get the offense reacting to you rather than you reacting to the offense. Youve seen us at times when weve done that, and youve seen us at times where we havent been able to do that. Thats what we did all during the preseason. We dictated the tempo of the game. The opening game of the season against the Bears, we dictated the tempo of the game. Against the Cowboys, we dictated the tempo of the game. And the times that we havent played real well, we havent been able to do that.

I think as weve moved along, I think were making progress in terms of what we have to do in terms of doing what gives us the best chance of winning the game. I like the effort and the passion that played with. We still made some errors, but if you play aggressively, it covers up a lot of those. We had a lot of green jerseys around the football, and usually when you do that, good things happen.