This, and all other columns about the Packers, will be written not by me alone but with the ever useful help of Mr. Walker, aka Johnny Walker Red.   I might break out the black label for special occasions like Monday night games, the playoffs, and when the Packers play the Vikings.   Mr. Walker will add his thrifty Scot advice and opinion on occasion, throughout this column.   This week we'll look at the first two pre season games, a few camp battles, and a quick tour of the 2003 offense.   Next week we'll cover the defense and the next pre season game.   Go Packers!

Pre Season Games So Far

I missed most of the first pre season game.   I had a date with a whip smart microbiologist who is almost as tall as me and a whole lot better looking, so I missed all but the fourth quarter.   I warned her, though, that were it the regular season she would have had to watch the game.   From the fourth quarter of that game I gleaned nothing save that if James Lee plays that well against the first stringers, Grady Jackson should keep an eye on the real estate market in Green Bay to be sure he can sell high.   Kenny Peterson looked like a player as well, and is it just me or is Ahmad Carroll backing up before the snap more often than he should? I thought those DBs had giant egos and short memories. 

I live in CT, so I thought the second pre season game would remain eternally shrouded in locally broadcast mystery to me.  But lo, rejoice and be exceeding glad for the NFL Network on DirectTV! I think the NFL network would broadcast team physicals if they could get the cameras in there, and Tuesday at 11 AM, I was able to watch the entire game.  Unfortunately, 11 AM is a little early for even me to sit down with Mr. Walker, at least on a Tuesday, so I had to manage watching a football game sober.  Here are a few reflections and notations. 

I guess No.  4 doesn't have much left in the tank, eh? The first completion was floated 30 yards over the head of Ashley Ambrose and landed light as a big fat feather pillow into Antonio Chatman's hands, apparently guided by advanced laser tracking and satellite GPS technology.  A few plays later he drilled one about eight yards to Bubba Franks that looked like it traded the GPS stuff for RPG.  One the next drive, in the midst of being tackled he side arm/underhanded/flipped the ball forward to an open man.  I'm sure it was the kind of thing that has coaches cringing, like when he blocked Sam Madison on a reverse, but there's still nobody like him and I wouldn't trade him for any other QB in the league.  When he finally retires we're going to miss him to death.  It's certainly a sign of institutional health when the QB controversy is who will be third string. 

The rest of the offense looks almost as solid.  There were a few drops by receivers, the line was playing some backups but even then did pretty well.  Before a scary slip on concrete, Javon Walker made a spectacular catch that should have looked a lot harder.  Mr. Walker (no relation) thinks he might be entering "makes the nearly impossible look quite ordinary" category.  Think T. O with a healthy attitude.  The Packers are going to score a lot of points this year. 

Which is a damn good thing because they may need to.  In the past ten years or so, it's become almost axiomatic that a great defense has to get a solid pass rush with its four down linemen.  The Packers have been spraying the D-line with high draft picks and big contracts for years, and it looks like they've nearly given up on getting to the QB without a blitz.  This looks really great in pre season, but history shows that calling "jailbreak" every other down is not the path to defensive enlightenment, but the road to scoring ruin.  It looks to me, though, that the Packers have decided that they simply lack the players to rush the passer any other way, and it's hard to blame them for taking the obvious alternative. 

One of the few teams that does blitz a ton with success is the Philadelphia Eagles.  A big part of why they could do this was two superior corners--a luxury the Eagles no longer have and the Packers never did.  The only way a defense can successfully bring extra players to pressure the QB is if they can cover the receivers man to man.  Drafting in the lower quarter reserved for playoff teams, Sherman has tended to spend early round picks on players who have extraordinary upside but for some reason are still around in the 20's.  Javon Walker was a JUCO guy who some people thought didn't have the mental skills to play in the NFL.  Robert Ferguson came out a year early.  In recent drafts, only Nick Barnett was close to being a blue chip player.  My guess is that Ahmad Carroll was supposed to be the next Ferguson or Walker.  A guy with rare athletic skills who needed a little work but in three years might be the best taken in the draft at his position.  I would assume, then, that the scenario was for Carroll to play nickel and dime back for a year, and then in 2005 takes over for Al Harris at RCB.  With Mike McKenzie too enthralled with the mysteries of Memphis BBQ to bother making a few million playing in the NFL, Carroll, Joey Thomas, or Michael Hawthorne will have to start.  Mr. Walker thinks Mike was choking on his pulled pork sandwich watching his competition in the first two games.  Hawthorne can't play half as well as he talks, and Thomas and Carroll have more flags pinned on them than a VFW convention.  So far, none of them look as good as Al Harris, much less as good as Bobby Taylor or Troy Vincent, the corners who were so crucial to the success of blitz happy Philly. 

In the pre season, when teams are only working on their own schemes and players, a lot of those blitz calls pan out for the best.  I wonder, though, what happens when Ron Meeks (Colts) or Mike Martz (Rams) gets a week to study Packer tape and dream up ways to make them pay for blitzing? Mr. Walker is optimistic, I'm not so sure.  Mr. Walker is confident mostly because the Packers do seem to be very unpredictable on defense these days, something that wasn't true the past few years.  When watching a defense on TV, the first thing to do is figure out which group of players is in--how many DBs, how many LBs, and so on.  The Packers are mixing things up enough so far that a fair amount of the time it was difficult to figure out who was on the field and what they were going to do.  One linebacker would be standing right next to the nose tackle while a DB would be to the left of the left end.  Five guys might be bunched up where the linebackers usually are, and so on.  One bright spot in the new scheme, Mr. Walker and I both agree, is that Darren Sharper is lining up everywhere but behind the Miller tap in Curly's Pub.  If I were an opposing offense, I'd make sure everyone on every play knew where Sharper was set up, because the Packer coaching staff clearly thinks his talents were underutilized over the past few years.  They might very well be right. 

Camp Battles

The Packers have struck gold so often in the late rounds of the draft and unrestricted free agent pool that one of the joys of rooting for Green Bay is figuring out who might be the next Mark Tausher or Donald Driver.  The leading candidate this year, I suppose, is Cullen Jenkins.  But who else is on the hot spot?

Obviously, third round draft pick B. J.  Sander (can you imagine, in a manly sport like football, using "BJ" as your name?) has looked truly abysmal.  That said, the first punt of the second game showed why the Packers drafted him.  He got a handle on that one and it was a lovely, high, and long kick that wound up being a touchback.  After that Sander was an outright embarrassment.  It would be a bitter pill to swallow indeed to cut a kicking specialist taken in the third round, but the Packers may have little choice. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the Tim Couch era didn't it? I remember seeing him play at Kentucky in college, and thought he was a hell of a quarterback then.  I thought the Browns made a great call taking him first in the draft, and thought Cleveland fans were a bunch of punks for booing him, and I was thrilled when the Packers signed him to back up Favre and maybe take over the starting job in a few years.  Mr. Walker, on the other hand, has no such background and thinks the guy just sucks.  Considering what Couch done on the field, Mr. Walker might just have a point.  I wonder if a big part of the problem stems from preparation.  I remember in an interview reading that this offseason Tim was spending "an hour and a half per day" on the Packer playbook.  We Packer fans have seen more than one quality quarterback, even those with NFL experience, humbled by the apparently Kabalistic offensive playbook.  What to us looks like a play action pass to us is called, as far as I can guess, something like "Z-break, 34, Outside Check, XOklahoma 19, Double Helix Hot, Umberto Eco 77 Smash. " I wonder if Couch still just doesn't know where guys are going, making it a bit harder to throw to them.  Judging by what has happened on the field in two pre season games, the QB depth chart should be Favre, Doug Pederson, and Scott McBrien.  Hey Scott! Mr. Walker thinks you ought work on your skills as a holder, you remind him a bit of Jeff Garcia, and not just because you're a short southpaw.  It might take a few years of holding clipboards and PATs, but he thinks you've got a shot!

The LCB spot currently vacant thanks to BBQ chomping Mike McKenzie (if you wonder why I keep talking about Memphis BBQ, it's because you've never had it) is an even bigger quandary.  To say that Ahmad Carroll, Joey Thomas, and Michael Hawthorne have not exactly grasped this opportunity is to greatly understate reality.  If I had to bet money on it right now, I'd say Carroll starts against Carolina and gets picked on a lot.  He looks as bad as the other two, but he has the most upside and is the fastest.  I really don't want to see what Randy Moss will do to him, but I don't think Randy will have any more trouble torching Hawthorne or Thomas.  One interesting subtext is what happens of McKenzie DOES report? Does Sherman want such a player so clearly unhappy at such a critical spot? McKenzie only needs to take off a few plays per game to be damaging to the Packers. 

The 2004 Offense

We Packer fans are deeply spoiled by over a decade of superior offensive talent, coaching, and production.  Every story about the Packers in the mainstream press notes that Favre is in the "twilight" of his career (why are football players never in the "midnight" or "bracing dawn" of their careers?), and that at some point time his skills will "diminish. " This after a year in which the offense ranked fourth statistically, and Favre led the league in touchdown passes.  During that league leading season, he posted those numbers with a goddamn broken thumb on his throwing hand.  Read that again and think about it, well over half of the season in which Favre led the league in touchdowns HE HAD A FREAKING BROKEN FINGER ON HIS THROWING HAND.  Name me another QB in the NFL who would even attempt such a thing.  And he blocks on a reverse. 

GM Sherman (one of these weeks we'll do a whole piece just about Sherman as GM) has also wisely put together a superior O-Line and backfield to make Farve's life as easy as such a thing can be.  You're Packer GM, tell me another team with a set of running backs for whom would swap? Najeh Davenport would start for a lot of teams.  Tony Fisher would be the #1 backup for most of them as well.  Ahman Green is one of a handful of running backs who can both blow up a big linebacker and on the same play simply outrun a cornerback.  When healthy, the offensive line is one of the best in the league, and the Packers have superior talent coaching the big bodies up front. 

The good news continues at receiver.  Again, I find it a bit bizarre that people are talking about Donald Driver's "decline" when he caught nearly everything thrown to him, all season long.  While Favre was playing with his busted hand, the team wisely ran the ball more, so all of the receivers including Driver had fewer opportunities to make catches.  How did they respond? By sulking and whining that they weren't getting their catches? By asking to be traded to a team that appreciates them? Nope, they worked on their run blocking.  Nearly every play out of a two receiver set where a running back gains more than five yards involves at least one good block by a receiver.  I can't get game tape, of course, but I bet every run over twenty yards had a key block thrown by a receiver. 

On a very bad day, the Packers should score 17 points, on a good day, 35+.  Unlike a lot of teams, the offense on a good day should be able to win games single handedly.  They may need to, as we look next week at the defense.

TCB is a contributing writer for Packer Palace.
© August 26, 2004.

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