Staying in the Groove
There was a very good, very clear, very obvious reason that led coach Mike McCarthy and the Green Bay Packers to push the pedal to the floor in the 16th game of the season at Arizona on Sunday:
To keep the momentum.
After the Packers began the year 4-4, they have won seven of their last eight games, with the only loss coming in a one-point shootout at Pittsburgh. They did not hold back in the season finale at Arizona, playing most of the starters and competing as if their very playoff lives depended on it.
Riding that wave is important to Green Bay for reasons beyond establishing a winning atmosphere and a justified confidence among the players. A day after the Packers dismissed Arizona with a 33-7 victory in Arizona, McCarthy explained that the momentum could help in the one area he cannot control, and thats lack of experience.
The Packers are still young. Several of them, like Mason Crosby, Ryan Grant, Greg Jennings, James Jones and Daryn Colledge, to name a few, can only draw upon their experience on the 2007 playoff team.
Twenty Packers, including the contributing rookies like Clay Matthews and B.J. Raji, and key individuals such as Aaron Rodgers, Jermichael Finely, Jordy Nelson, Josh Sitton and Jeremy Kapinos, have no playoff experience at all.
In contrast, the Arizona Cardinals are loaded with veteran players with postseason experience.
"Theyve won their division two years in a row," said McCarthy. "They have experience. Theyre coming off of a Super Bowl run. They have playoff experience, pretty much their whole football team. Those are the things that play to their strengths.
". . . . Well be totally in tune with the fact that playoff football is different. We have a group of men that experienced this two years ago. We have a group of men that have not experienced it."
After the game Sunday, one Packers veteran after another tried to hammer that point home.
"How they play next week, playoffs will be a whole other animal," cautioned tackle Mark Tauscher. "Its going to be a battle. I think theres no question there will be a more amped-up atmosphere than it was today."
If the Packers were overconfident, they hid it well, as if to say Tauschers message was well-received.
"We do think that momentum is hard to turn it on and off, so when you have it you want to keep it as long as possible," said Grant. He said that playing well at Arizona wasnt about a psychological advantage. "Its not about that. It never was. Of course, we expect them to come back and give us a serious fight because its the playoffs."
McCarthys next challenge will be to get the Packers ready for NFL playoff football.
"Playoff football is different than regular-season football. Anybody thats been through it will tell you that. It goes to a different level," he said.
Two years ago, the Packers had no momentum heading into the playoffs and had to hit the restart button in January after a bye. They lost at Chicago, 35-7, in the 15th game, and with the playoffs locked up, rested many starters for a good portion of the finale in a 34-13 victory over Detroit.
These Packers felt they needed the work and the experience and had to keep pushing at Arizona even when so many people considered the last game meaningless.
"We just felt like were not at the stage where we can kind of kick our feet up and take a nap for a while," said offensive coordinator Joe Philbin. "Lets just keep playing our style of football and see where that takes us. Hopefully, thats a good decision. How that plays out this week, were going to find out."
Everyone knows the Cardinals will play a different game this Sunday. Quarterback Kurt Warner will have a full 60 minutes to challenge Green Bays secondary, and the Cardinals didnt seem to put any pressure on the Packers, who pass protected long enough for Rodgers to daydream out there.
"Everybody kind of kept it vanilla," said Colledge. "They didnt do anything too super difficult on defense and they did that for a reason."
"We didnt roll out everything we had, either," said McCarthy. "Our principles are still the same, our base concepts are still the same. Weve established who we are, the way we want to play, that will not change. Now, what you do, change the face of it, those types of things, thats all part of the game planning."
Two months ago, the franchise was at a low point. Swept by Minnesota, beaten by Tampa Bay there were no hints pointing to the 7-1 run the Packers would go on to finish the year. But with that run, the Packers hope to extend it for three more games this season.
"Im in charge of their pulse and make sure when they need to get kicked in the ass, that happens, and when they need to be picked up, that happens too," said McCarthy. "We had some tough lessons that we encountered in the first eight weeks. We learned from them and we were able to put together eight weeks of good, quality football. I think the greatest strength of this football team is overcoming adversity."
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