It's one thing to play devils advocate, but this is just being to picky. This is just looking for perfection. I was more encouraged by what the Pakcers defense did to Arizona than what they did to Buffalo or Cleveland. Green Bay's defense has been forcing turnovers all preseason long. Its' not just a one game fluke. It's very likely that this defense is going to force a lot of turnovers this year especially since they've barely scratched the surface on the type of looks they showed.

That is not flaw. That is a positive. Saying that they could have scored two touchdowns or what is just speculation. They could have punted too. They could have went for it and not got the first down. They could have missed a field goal.

If you're expecting a top five defense and perhaps you are as some people probably are now, you'll be disappointed. I think they'll finish in the top ten in turnovers this year and in the 10-15 range in points and 15-20 range in yards.

That type of defense + the current offense is going to win a lot of games. If the defense improves as the year goes on, it could be a pretty good when the games become even more crucial.

Look at the drive chart. The defense held them to a field goal. It was 38-10 at half time.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/gamecenter/drivecharts/NFL_20090828_GB@ARI 

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Even if we rule out the turnovers, those INT's turn into broken up passes and fumbles turn into sacks for lost yards which will still result to the other team punting eventually...So your logic of thinking "we cant force punts we only cause turnovers" is flawed...name one D who wants to allow the other team punt the ball and put the O in bad position...good luck on finding one!

To say that the defense didn't play very well except for the turnovers is like saying that "Bullit" would not have been a very good movie without the car chase. Well, it DID have a car chase, and it was amazing, and that's what made it a great movie.

My only big concern about the defense in the Cardinals game was that there were huge holes in the zone coverage in the middle of the field. Hopefully that problem is fixable. I know they had some headset problems that may have contributed to it.

I do think that there is a lot that we don't know about this defense, however. There could very well be weaknesses that other teams have not exploited because there is not much game-planning in the preseason. But so far there is not much about their performance on the field that I have a problem with.

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As for the 2nd drive scoring, not sure what to tell you. That link does say that the second drive resulted in a touchdown, however the same website shows that that scoring drive took place in the second quarter (see overview of the quarter on GameCenter page, as well as scoring summary). The same can be said for the official playbook... The scoring summary says that the FG was on their second possession, but the play by play doesn't.
http://packers.com/images/gamebooks/090828gamebook.pdf 

My guess is that someone at the NFL messed up, they very well could have kicked that FG in the first quarter, it's just that the first two sources I looked at said they didn't.

Well, I don't think I'm going to convince anybody that there's the potential for massive problems (~25th ranked defense) with a few not-so-major bumps in the road. I never said that I expected the Packers to be a top 5 defense, never give up big plays or big drives, or not continue to get turnovers. I realize that I'm playing the what-if game... As soon as you change one play, the entire rest of the game changes. I understand this. I just don't want this team to be the Brewers and to see people expecting grand things, and then things fall apart once people start under-performing or performing at a career-normal level. I guess we'll see, I'd much rather be wrong than right here.

This argument seems to be able to be made on the other side of the ball as well. If DRC hadn't screwed up his assignment on Nelson, we would have punted that drive. Can't make that assumption. Though I do like the possession by possession breakdown. I think I heard a couple commentators talk about risk-reward for other teams running the 3-4, and it comes down to pressure from the front 7. We risk ourselves by potentially taking our D out of one match-up to focus and exploit a different match-up.

I don't understand the part of about not getting pumped up like for the Brewers season. If you weren't pumped up while your team is doing well, then why be a fan at all. I'm going to be pumped and optimistic from the onset until proven otherwise. I think if you don't approach it that way then you must have been a Lions fan in your previous life. j/k 🙂 And thank you for at least acknowledging you'd rather be wrong than right in your argument 🙂

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Of course. Again, I acknowledge how *****y "what-ifs" are, I just can't think of another way to try to get my point across. I wasn't even thinking about that when I was watching the game and seeing the secondary get shredded, linebackers being pushed around on runs... That's my concern. The way I see it, you can count on at most 3 of 4 of these things at any given time... Pressure on the quarterback, solid run blocking, solid pass coverage, turnovers. I think we only accomplished two and got a C- or worse at two more.

Again, I hope the Cardinals end up being the best offense in the league and we cruise to the division title, but what's wrong about pointing at a problem (pass coverage,giving up lots of long runs) and wanting/expecting improvement? I think I went about doing so in the wrong way, but it seemed the best way to make my point at the time.


As for the Brewers...
Hey, I dished out money for MLB.tv since I live out of market, desperately tried to find a vacation day to use on Miller Park... I was as pumped up as anybody about the season, once starting pitching stopped super-performing (I forget who started the trend, was it Soup or Parra?), I was still confident about getting to the postseason, I figured that by the trade deadline we'd reinforce starting pitching by getting a #3 or 4 pitcher... We didn't exactly do anything. I was still watching every game a few weeks after we got Lopez, then I started losing the faith. Only look at the scores nowadays.

What we did do was too little, too late. And I never did get why people were so gung-ho about Looper... Wins are awesome, but look what happened when his bats started performing at a normal level for him.

We'll need to start another thread on the Brewers. I'm still so p.o'd about this season. I better wait till October when i can rip on the Cubs and White Sucks having the same length of off-season as the Brewers.

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also, you have to realize that forcing turnovers is one of the points of this type of defense. so yes...it *is* actually something we can be counting/depending on.





also, off-topic: wtf is with you 'tards and the inability to use the quote function properly?

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It's funny......he is saying the same thing i thought about, but didn't post.
You can't depend on turnovers. And the Cards were moving the ball too well against us.
Turnovers are great, but they won't come as often as they did so far.

Good points DKF.

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