Hey everyone. A little later than usual today, but I'll give my post game impressions.

*Rodgers really continues to impress me. He's had his cold spells, but the fact that he hasn't turned the ball over through three games under this kind of pressure is really a testament to his performance. He really looked to be enjoying himself on the drive that ended up with the designed QB draw for the TD.

*Red zone offense was atrocious in the first half. Failing to get a TD out of either of those opportunities inside the 20 is inexcusable. Thank goodness the Rams are pitiful, and that we kind of found our groove in the second half.

*There really are no holes in the run game. Grant seems to be running hard, but there just isn't much there.

*On the other hand, for the second week in a row against this defense, it seemed like an RB (Stephen Jackson) hit the second level on far too many carries. This MUST be a point of contention in practice leading up to next Monday night.

*Jennings has been relatively quiet despite the two big plays today. To me, this comes as a function of McCarthy STILL focusing too much on the downfield passing game. Spreading teams out, rolling Rodgers out and flooding one side of the field works with frightening effectiveness, but McCarthy is sticking to his guns with committing to the run game even when it's frustratingly ineffective.

*John Kuhn had a nice little day as a playmaker in the offense, as well as doing better on his blitz pickups which had been poor in the first two weeks. It also helps that he's a special teams ace.

*The Rams really picked on Chillar, and the play at the end of the half especially was inexcusable. Why we didn't have four guys standing on the goal line in a pre-designed cover 4 is beyond me. It was nice to see him make a good play in coverage on the Pack's final play of the day, and have Greene come running from 20 yards away to give him praise.

*Donald Driver looks better than ever. How he stays in this shape and continues to be a consistent playmaker is beyond me. Love DD.

*As much as I've railed on his play calling, I have to commend McCarthy for setting up those zone left and zone right plays the entire game to drop the nice little reverse to Driver following the Woodson pick.

*Speaking of, Charles Woodson is on a whole different level than any CB I've seen in my days as a fan of the Packers.

*Where is Jermichael Finley?

*Johnny Jolly was an absolute monster all day.

*Leonard Little had his way with Allen Barbre. This could look like an entirely different offense if Clifton gets healthy and we get Tauscher back in here. Look at what we did on Rodgers' TD pass to Driver. We rolled him out left, and he had all the time in the world. Teams can't cover our guys for that long. If we can design rollouts to get that kind of time, I don't care if we're playing the Rams, Vikings, or Steelers, we're going to gash them and for A LOT of yards.

*Mason Crosby continues to do worrisome things... today shanking an extra point. It's hard to be confident in that guy's consistency right now.

*It's good to see Aaron Kampman still possessing the same motor as a pass rusher even as a stand up LB. It paid off in the form of his first sack in the scheme today.

*Plays of the game:

Driver's insane one handed grab to spark a struggling offense.

Woodson running the route for the WR and getting his third pick of the season.

Rodgers' bootleg left and dart to Driver for a TD.

Rodgers' go-route throw in tight coverage right on Jennings' right shoulder for a 50+ yard gain.



Now we go to the dome for a prime time, Monday night game. Not only does it have huge divisional implications (if we win, it ties us for the division lead and gives us an early tiebreaker going into the bye... a loss puts the Vikes 2 games clear, and gives them a tie breaker. Huge swing) but possesses one of the more unique storylines in NFL history.

Having faith in this defensive front against Peterson, and this offensive line against the Vikings front four is difficult at this point, but divisional games are always close, and if we can win the turnover battle and go with whatever is working for us on offense, I definitely give us a fighting chance.

If anything, it's nice to have another week to enjoy a Packers win. Autumn is in full swing in Green Bay, WI. Go Pack.

I feel like the blitz schemes have been a little vanilla these past two games. I'm hoping Capers has saved something special for the Vikings.

DELETE

It seems like everything on been vanilla on this team so far this season and I think thats why some fans are getting frustrated.

Knowing what we saw in preseason and what this team was capable of it appears we have come close to completely abandoning all that and are switching back to a more conservative football team.

I keep thinking Management and most of the players have had Favre-Viking on the brain since his signing. When this game is over there will be a (win or lose) collective sigh of relief.

So yeah, I hope they have saved their best plays/plans for this game. The players shouldn't need any pumping for this one.

I can't help by find 2 things extremely troubling in these 3 weeks.

1. Our front 7 or in the case of this week, 8, cannot stop the run. The rams have 1 good offensive weapon. We slowed him down for a quarter or so but he still had a big game. You have to think that the gameplan was to shut down Jackson. We better get it together for next week.

2. Obviously the O-line isn't protecting too well and not opening holes. What bothered me more is that I watched really closely this week and saw holes for Grant to run that were either missed, or he was too slow getting there. He did give me hope with some hard running in the 4th. It was nice to see him run like that for a change.

I have to believe that Capers will have this Defense juiced. I know they'll say it's just another game but I'm willing to bet that they go after Favre early and often. Key on AP, shut him down and make Favre throw to win. I also know this is the NFL and anything can happen on Sunday but Minnesota, IMO, has not been impressive so far. Maybe it's just my green and gold goggles but they look to have some problems as well.

I just got done talking about that with a guy here at work.

Where's all the crazy, pre-snap movement we saw in preseason? All the exotic blitz packages, the pure chaos?

Heat - Are we playing that different than preseason? Obviously the results are different which gets people to say "why arent we playing like we did in Aug". But I am wondering have you (or anyone else please) actually noticed that the scheme is much different?

I am hoping that is the case and that we "release the hounds" so to speak.

Your response is appreciated.

It is my biggest fear that we go into this game playing not to lose, aka conservative, limited risk taking on def, dropping back in coverage, bend don't break def.

McCarthy and Capers need to identify Vikes weakness's and put the pedal to the floor.

I know I am not Heat and I wish I had the Link or Video, But I saw or read somewhere the other day , that after speaking with Dom , it was stated that the Packers Ran 1 Schem against the Bears, One Scheme against the Bengals and another scheme against the Rams...and as they stated they pretty much stayed in those 3 schemes the whole game with variations of them...As I think it makes sense... Play this scheme for 4 quarters...get that scheme down.. then the next and the next...now that they have had 4 quarters each on same scheme...now you can mix it up...and run mutiple schemes in one game...not knowing which scheme is being run..

After I ponder on it , that is probably why the Pre-season looked the way it did with the D , they played each of the schemes in the first quarter and a taste of each scheme made the confusion...just a thought..and I do wish I had the Link or Video that had the report on that ...I found it...

Tom Pelissero: The game plan has been so different each game -- nickel vs. Bears, base vs. Bengals, "big Okie" with 5 LBs today --

So that is 3 Different Schemes in 3 games....and I do beleive in the preseason we saw these mixed up in each game...

I think we probably got overly optimistic about how mature the 3-4 defense was in preseason. Capers knows better than anyone what his guys can manage, and right now they're on a fairly limited playbook.

I suspect we'll see more of the D implemented during the bye.

I think the Vikes and Packers have both been saving some stuff for this game. I think the Vikings are gonna open it up downfield a little more than they have thus far, and we'll see some new looks on offense and defense from the Packers. We need to contain Peterson, force a couple of turnovers, and not drop passes and I think we can take the Vikings.

Well, if by playing, you mean, "winning convincingly" then yes, we are.

But I'll assume you mean more of the play-style and not just the result. But to be honest, I'm not sure. I'm not privy to the playbook nor do I have coffee with Capers. But what I'm seeing with my own eyes is a defense that is less active than they were in pre-season.

Now, this could be because they could afford to take more chances in pre-season. Or because they were working on bigger picture-type things in pre-season thus, using more packages, blitzes, formations, etc. so that when the season comes around, it's something they've at least worked on.

That's my guess...I just don't know. From the looks of it, they're being more conservative than they were.

They're running virtually the same stuff as they did in the pre-season. The difference is, they are tipping their hand too much and not executing the blitzes very well at all. The zone blitz works well when the offense doesn't know who or how many are coming, and WHERE they are coming from. In most cases, the Packers have been very predictable in that regard.

I am no scheme expert, but I was at both home games. Against the Bears, there were a lot of snaps with just 2 down lineman. Much of the time the 2 lineman were Jolly and Jenkins. It seemed as if this was to protect against Olsen beating them downfield, but surprisingly the Bears didn't/could run more effectively against that defensive front. I bet they will run more vs. the Pack in Chicago.

Against the Bengals, it seemed a much more "vanilla" 3-4 defense (Pickett, Jolly and Jenkins) yet the Bengals gashed the Pack on the ground. I really don't know how that happened other than it seemed like the Packers missed a ton of tackles. Pickett in particular seemed to be in the backfield alot and simply couldn't close the deal.

I didn't see alot of the Rams game, so can't comment. I did read where Chillar was used alot in lieu of a saftey presumably to stop Jackson. Mixed results. We'll see what they plan to do vs. Peterson. I hope Giordono is ready, he seems to be a sure tackler.

The main problems in the last two games compared to the Bears game is that we haven't effectively stopped the run. Against the Bears, we could do various blitzes on 2nd and 3rd and 8 or more. In the last two games, we haven't done that because the teams have run so effectively against us.

You can't dial up an exotic blitz on 2nd and 6 if the team might run against you. You need 2nd and 9-10 or 3rd and long to really see the blitzes come out.

The Woody pick in the 4th was what you'd call an exotic blitz just to throw one out there.

I think the preseason gave everyone a false sense of how far along our defense was. The preseason generally doesn't see 3-4 teams using exotic blitz packages, teams save those for the regular season. The Packers though were learning the new D and so they wanted to practice it as much as possible. Couple that with the fact that no team relly game plans during the preseason and suddenly our exotic, blitz-heavy defense was working VERY well against vanilla offenses that weren't prepping for our D (and even if they were there was no game film). Now that teams are actually spending a week preparing, you're starting to see the holes that exist. Capers is a great coach, I have no doubt that the D will improve, but the fact is that we have personnel built for a 4-3; give the staff an offseason, the draft and free agency (with TT, maybe it's only 2 out of 3 of those) and the D will be much better. The worst part of this whole thing is, we took one of the best overall defensive ends in football (maybe second to only Jared Allen when it comes to pass rush and run stopping) and marginzalized him. It's those types of things that cause this defense to operate sub-optimally. And for everyone that says we're injured and that's why we're havng issues, that has been an excuse on this defense for the past four years. When does it stop being an out and start being an MO?

Jackson is one of the top backs in the league. He'll get his yards but he really didn't burn us too bad. We kept him out of the end zone. If we can control AP like we did with Jackson that will help the cause.