3) I put the blame for the lack of killer instinct on Mike McCarthy . Don't get me wrong, I think Mike McCarthy is a great coach, but he needs to put opposing teams away. Both games we had them backed in a corner and failed to throw that final punch.
"zombieslayer" wrote:
But it's not like they went completely conservative. At the end of the half, they were leading 21-3 with less than 20 seconds left and they went with an empty backfield and tried throwing the ball downfield. Then in the second half, they were trying to throw on first down in their own territory when Rodgers got blindsided and fumbled the ball. After that, they got stuck deep in their own territory a couple times in a row, and maybe McCarthy got a little gun-shy, but I still think it falls mostly on the players to win their battles and avoid those situations.
When you take the lead, the other team is going to play with some extra fire, and you have to be able to counter them, which means blocking the guy you are supposed to block and beating your man off the line of scrimmage when you are running a pass pattern. When the Packers got the lead on Sunday, their players stopped doing those things. I think this is a problem McCarthy needs to address mostly by changing the mindset of the players, rather than play-calling.