I was kind of surprised. The guy just got paid, why talk like this? Why would anyone complain about cleaning up after Preston, Zadarius and Clark when the team witnessed success? I would think it shows you are a good team player more than anything. I didn't listen to the interview so maybe he wasn't complaining and was giving an answer as to why his numbers were down? Either way, I just didn't expect that from Blake.
Originally Posted by: Zero2Cool
I agree! I haven't listened to this one either, but I generally find when I do get surprised and I do listen, normally it's just them actually answering the questions they were asked honestly in their opinion.
Also note, that in one of the articles, it almost sounded like it was fairly brief time talking about this, so I'm assuming very little of the conversation was this, just this is being blown up as being more interesting part to Packers fans.
Also note, (at least in my opinion) nothing he said was wrong...
He feels his value is more than the Packers offered (lots of employees feel that way about their employers, even in the NFL).
He doesn't feel the Packers value ILBers as much as other teams (I think I've said in the past, that I'm not sure the ILBer role in this defense is as valuable or as important as ILBers in other schemes, where as CB and DL are more important).
He was asked to let the edge rushers be the aggressive playmakers and clean up after them, which I don't think many will have a problem with that, it just sucks that he got less chances to actually be a playmaker himself, but you got to make decisions on scheme and he played his role.
This last part is the most interesting part, not because anything is wrong with it, but an insight into the scheme.
I'm not positive what it means, but I'm thinking it means the edge rushers would given options to do what they thought was best, and whatever they didn't do, Martinez was asked to do the opposite.
So if Z stayed on the outside, Martinez held the run gap on the inside, and if he crashed inside, Martinez had to get outside run gap.
Not bad to give your smart playmakers options, though if Martinez role is simply to react and get their fast, someone with more speed would be nice. But I would this that would also really help the Safeties that are trying to play LB as the ILBers had very little depth.