Chad Clifton's injury is killing this offensive line - and the lack of an alternative or contingency plan is directly attributable to Ted Thompson, Mike McCarthy and James Campen.

While it is popular to direct ire Allen Barbre's way - he is not the Packers biggest problem. Yes, he imploded in the first half of the 1st game and he started slowly last Sunday, but that is not so shocking for a first year starting offensive tackle - especially when you can see him improve as games go on and occasionally deliver some damned solid blocking as a run and pass blocker at other times in games.

No, the bigger problems lie elsewhere.

The fantasy that Daryn Colledge can play LT needs to end quickly. It is not fair to him to be shifted around, and it is even more unfair to Aaron Rodgers and the team, because his play at LT has been God awful the past two games.

I like him as a left guard (a position that if he settles into full time he has a chance to be very good), but IMO he does not have the tools or the psyche to play LT. And with Clifton down it creates a HUGE problem for this offense. Perhaps another whole week of prep will help some, but he was consistently beaten in run and pass blocking matchups two weeks in a row. I was never sure where the urban myth developed that Colledge was the answer at LT, perhaps one decent showing after a slow start against Jason Taylor, but he has never showed he can play the position other then that one game when he was afforded help on just about every play. One thing is for sure, banking on that fantasy is killing the Packers offensive fire power right now.

The problem does not stop with Colledge either, rather it sets off a chain of events that leaves the offensive line embarassingly inept in both pass and run blocking.

Scott Wells is not a starting quality NFL Center and it is going to take great coaching/game planning to hide his deficiencies with the matchup coming on Monday with the William's brothers. His play at St Louis was totally unacceptable and the matchup was much easier than what he will face next Monday night in a HUGE game against HUGE competition. If the offensive line was more settled the team could offer help and hide his lack of size and ability, but with Sitton being a first year starter and Spitz playing his 3rd best position the alternatives become more limited.

Ditto Jason Spitz, just about the time he starts to settle in to being a decent Center he is suddenly having to shift to LG - not a position he has trained to play and he stuggled against St Louis as well.

Sitton is another first year starter and like one can expect, his play is up and down, but at this point in the season he may be the Packers most consistent offensive lineman - NOT a good sign. Rather, the biggest problems in the offensive line are College as a LT, Wells as an inept Center, and Spitz not being able to settle in and help Sitton with complex run and pass stunts.

This offense is going to continue to struggle until it gets better offensive line play. That is not an issue that should be so exposed due to one injury - and as I started that is directly attributable to TT, MM, and a seemingly over his head position coach in James Campen.

Say what you will, but Mike Sherman and his staff kept the Packers winning when they lost both Clifton and Taucher in the same season - what is happening now is unacceptable and needs emergency repair NOW. Failure to respond with serious answers falls on the guys on the front office and the coaches - not scapegoating individual players.

Hear, hear.

I didn't understand the offseason strategy on the line. Every move was calculated to boost the interior — signing Duke Preston, drafting TJ Lang (a future guard, not a tackle), then keeping Lang and Evan Dietrich-Smith on the roster over Meredith and Moll. And yet the blindingly obvious vulnerability was at tackle, where there is inexperience on one side and age/injury history on the other.

As Bruce so rightly says, one lone injury should not lead to the kind of musical chairs we have witnessed. And especially not after McCarthy has stated over and over again that he had learnt his lesson from 2008 and there would be no more shuffling.

Ideally, you want your two active backups to have versatility. One ought to be able to step in at any of the three interior positions; the other should be able to play either tackle position. The Pack's two senior backups — Wells and Giacomini — cannot do this. Wells can apparently only play center (though he played guard in 2005) and according to Bruce he doesn't even do this very well. Breno can only play right tackle — maybe at a push right guard, but I doubt it. So any time one of the starters at the other positions goes down, it's time to shuffle the pack.

Last year the Packers did have a versatile, replacement-level lineman: Tony Moll. A few years back, they had Grey Ruegamer. Nobody ever mistook either player for a world champion. But they were versatile, hard-working, and just about dependable as backups. That's really all you need. A good coach will adjust scheme and support to cover the drop in quality.

So the wound is self-inflicted. And it's killing the Packer offense.

Excellent post Bruce.

Posted this in another thread, but Bob McGinn wrote a great article about the line and he thinks Colledge is actually a natural at RT. Also talks about how over his head Campen is, having only taught high school football before going to the pros.

This is another Bob Sanders situation in the making. McCarthy is a good coach but seems to have wasted three years of his tenure with a subpar D-coordinator and is wasting another year with a subpar OL coach.

Wells simply doesn't have the bulk or strength to stand up to the Williams' Wall. He is always on roller skates against mammoth tackles. Having Spitz, Sitton and Colledge on the inside working against the vikes DT's is the best chance the Packers have of performing acceptably this week. The other option I could see would be to cut block like hell against the Williams'. Go after their legs from snap #1 and don't stop until they have to take a breather from picking themselves up off the ground after every play.

Another strategy that I'd like to see would be early on to go to a no huddle and keep the Williams trapped on the field and wear them down trying to rush the passer. Put Rodgers in the shotgun and run a series or two that way. Get them worn down early and by the 4th quarter the running game should open up.

While I easily agree that something needs to be done to recruit, coach up, and keep the O-line healthy. Winning teams find a way to win in spite of deficiencies. In 2007, we had no run game until mid-season, so we passed nearly every down and won. Rodgers is a versatile QB, who can scramble for gains when he needs to. I agree when he was quoted last week as the cure being even less protection in the backfield so that he can spread the ball around. I'm fairly certain he has the ears of the coaching staff. You can't believe the Pack can't run quick slants and screens. I have a feeling we'll all see a VERY different look from the GB offense next Monday night.

It'd be nice not to have to move Colledge over, but seriously though: Just how many teams have a game-ready left tackle sitting on the bench right now?

From what I've seen, most teams have a couple of decent backup linemen and then have to play the shuffle game if a starter at another position gets hurt -- this isn't something unique to the Packers. So the only way to ensure that you have just the right guy to fill in for a hurt o-lineman is to have Biff's Sports Almanac from Back to the Future.

Sky:

I am far from a negative guy, but you're giving TT, MM and JC too much of a pass.

No one expects a LT to come in and hold the quality of a starter - that would be unrealistic. But the fact remains that the current shuffle weakens the Packers across the board - not just at one position.

Teams cannot control for injuries, but GM's HC and position coaches are accountable for having backup plans and getting the job done if guys go down. In this case one player went down and the offensive line has not only failed to get the job done, the breakdowns are like the boy trying to stick his fingers in the holes in the dike, not real solutions.

I am not saying it cannot be fixed - I am saying it needs to get fixed fast and better planning needs to be in place.

At this moment trading Moll seems to have been fool-hearted and not preparing for the possibility of an aging veteran LT coming off surgery on both shoulders and both knees is inexplicable IMO

Let's pray Cliffy the Big Red Dog can get ready to go - and the staff finds a better solution than this inept shuffle that has taken place so far.

I can't believe anyone is pining for Moll. Moll was terrible. He was terrible in preseason - I don't miss him for a second.

Of course, the staff had a contingency plan - where is the "not preparing" assertion coming from? That the contingency plan is not very good is another matter altogether.

My biggest problem right now is that MM had said previously that he didn't want to shuffle guys if there is an injury, but now that's exactly what he's doing. With Cliffy going down, we are worse at THREE positions, rather than just one if we put TJ Lang at LT. Or two positions if we put Lang at Colledge's spot and move Colledge over to LT. I guess the staff didn't feel there would be a big dropoff from Spitz to Wells and Spitz would be better at LG than Lang. As Bruce stated, Wells was bad on Sundary. Also, Spitz has not done well at LG historically, so I don't know where that thought process (Spitz at LG) was ever valid. My biggest beef is that there is a reason Lang is on the roster - USE HIM!

I know what you're saying, but I also have a hard time faulting the Packers for the emphasis on acquiring defensive contributors with their high draft picks last year. Given the extreme lack of line players in free agency, the only way the Packers could have gotten help on the line would have been to draft someone like Michael Oher (since the top-flight guys like Andre Smith and Eugene Monroe were already off the table), which would have been a major waste at #9. Instead they went with TJ Lang -- he's definitely not at the level of Oher, but again they drafted for their immediate offseason needs, not based on the injury situation in week 4 of the season.

As for Moll, I can't see how he'd be any sort of improvement -- I remember his play being atrocious.

Anyhow, I agree that the line needs to be better. I'm just saying that, given the way things went down last season, in FA and in the draft, I can understand why the team did what they did during the offseason.


I was thinking the same thing, but you've got to figure that as a, what, 4th or 5th round guy he's probably just not ready to play in the NFL yet.

La Ment: I am not exactly pining for Moll, but it sure speaks to the sad state of affairs.

You are a solid poster, whose opinion I respect (despite you not posting enough). I agree with most of the rest of your post - including while I don't think that Lang is the answer, I cannot see how inserting him instead of this massive shuffle could be significantly worse than weakening the offensive line across the board.

Till this season, I never valued the offensive line more then I do now. I really wish that TT would have addressed the position better. There is nothing wrong with spending money on better players for the offensive line.

Again though: Whom?

It's awful easy to say "TT should have acquired more depth at this position", but who should he have spent money on in free agency given the dearth of decent line players available?

Injuries happen. I see it as the lack of a quality backup for Clifton is killing the olilne.

Bruce,

Those are the things that I think 98% of the fans see and are concerned about as well.

I'm sorry, but I don't think we have prayer of winning this upcoming game or any game that has a very strong defense with the OL that we have in place right now.

Sky: while I generally support the notion that finding decent players (even serviceable one's) at certain positions - CB and LT come immediately to mind - it is unfair to expect fans to rattle off a list of solutions, esp when the GM and Coaching staff that are professionals in this area failed so miserabley to be ready for this situation.

Frankly, Levi Jones is a solid possibility. He is on the street because of money, and the Packers sure can afford to spend it to fix this problem if necessary.

The bigger problem is they were caught flat footed with a plan that has clearly not worked to this point.

The downside with Jones is his injury history -- he's 30, just coming off a season on IR and the Bengals were concerned enough to spend a #8 pick replacing him. I agree that he's probably the best FA available right now, however, so let's think about this one:

• Clifton may be able to come back as soon as this week. At the same time, Jones would probably need a couple of weeks to get into football shape (no camp, no games, coming off IR last season).
• Jones is a LT, and my understanding is that he hasn't played another position.
• Jones will probably want starter money, so maybe $4 million or so. We have cap room ($17m), but remember we're almost certainly going to try and use a bunch of that re-signing Nick Collins.

So from where I'm sitting it basically makes sense to sign him if Clifton's injury is more significant than we've been led to believe or if we think he'd be an upgrade over Clifton. If it's just to provide a backup for Clifton, man, I dunno -- that's a lot of chicken feed for a guy riding the pine.

Either way, the bottom line is that it'd be extremely surprising if Jones would be able to help us before the bye.

It seems "depth" is a problem across the board for our team.

I do agree with you about the OL and depth and I was not 100% confident with Clifton coming into the season. I would have liked to have seen TT pick up a quality or draft a quality lineman last year to replace Clifton or at least be the future replacement.

I wonder, if Clifton can't get past these injuries, how we get through the season. The good to great teams will just eat us alive.

I'm going to say it right now. If/when Clifton comes back, it's not going to help.

Clifton was having a bad season before he got injured. And although Colledge's better position is Guard and Spitz's position of choice is center, they're still bad at those positions. All 3 of those guys were playing bad before Clifton got injured. And then let's not forget Sitton and Barbre.

Sure there may be a little more familiarity among the line when Clifton coming back isn't going to be our saving grace. They won't be able to hold back the Williams' with or without Clifton in the line. Our guys play like backups because they are backups.

Until McCarthy starts going back to those quick slant, passing plays. Rodgers will continue to have 2 seconds to throw the ball.

How much do you think that a vet, cut in Spring needs to play this year?? I think GB can sign him for very little with incentives and a Roster Bonus for next Spring...

In terms of the salary, I'm only going with what I've read elsewhere. I've seen the mention of starters salary mentioned a couple of places -- obviously I don't know how accurate that is.

The guy was a high draft pick and played for eight years, so he got a high initial salary (that I can't find immediately) followed by a $30m extension. Taking that into consideration, it seems likely that this is a situation where he doesn't have to play if he doesn't feel the team is making it worth his while.

He'd probably get the vet min or close to it. Guys that still haven't signed this late into things aren't in a great position to be bargaining if they actually want to play.

Inserting Lang now would be a disaster. He's a promising project, but nowhere near NFL-ready. He needs a full season in the film room and the weight room. Playing him now risks shattering his confidence. Playing him alongside the rest of the line as it is currently constituted will set him back months. It would be the equivalent of putting Alex Smith in at QB in his rookie season behind an abysmal line. Mike McCarthy would never contemplate such a ridiculous idea.



You're exaggerating aren't you? Of course it will help. It won't be a magic cure, I agree. But it will at the very least allow Colledge to return to the position where he has played the last three years and spent the entire offseason preparing to play.

Bruce- I have trouble with the statement about one injury exposing the problem. While true that it has caused recurrent shuffling, the line play was bad prior to the injury of Clifton. It is not like Clifton shut down Odom and then Colledge gave up 5 sacks. Chad will go down as a legendary packer player, but I can't help but feel he is no longer capable of the top performance. Even when he has been in there, pressure has occurred from his assignments as well. The failure here is not that he has aged or gotten hurt, but that there has been no effort to bring in a legitimate heir to his position. If Clifton tears his ACL, who plays left tackle this year, or even next year? There has been a general failure to recognize the beating that Chad's body has gone through and that he will eventually wear out.

It is not fair to Colledge to say he does not have the tools to play LT. He keeps getting put in that position as a last minute change from guard. If he had spent serious time as a tackle, he might be in a position to show something. He was a pretty good left tackle at Boise state. In my humble opinion, it isn't a smart move to have the left tackle backed up by the starting guard. The starting guard will be at a disadvantage when moved to tackle simply because of being "rusty" with regard to the techniques and assignments involved. It is troublesome to me that we draft tackles to play guard, and tight ends to play tackle, and then expect the guards to go back to tackle as back ups.

We still suffer from the previous notion that we needed smaller athletic lineman to run the zone scheme. Any nfl team needs fast strong lineman with good technique. Barry Alvarez ran the zone scheme for years with huge road grader offensive linemen. The mistake of small and quick has caused us to invest all of our resources in the guard and center position, with limited success, leaving us too thin at tackle, and unable to create push in the run game.

The loss of Clifton is just a continuation of issues that have been present for years now. Unfortunately, as one can tell from this rant, I'm very frustrated with the team's approach to the offensive line over the last several years.

I think Lang would do better than Moll would have at LT.Clifton and Tauscher played as rookies. This preseason was different at LT , Clifton played with the starters and then sometimes Moll came in with the first unit for the last series or two. Moll then preceeded to play into the 4th quarter and then Meridith and Rudolph played the rest of the 4th.It seemed as GB was auditioning Moll for a trade in the preseason. Moll was not very effective on the left side , he was barely adequate on the right side as a backup.

Wells is a guy who practices well knows his assignments etc and is a consumate team guy but he just does not have the size or wingspan to holdup. But MM has a great team guy who was the first guy in line to run during practice setting a example so he has a problem passing over Wells to play a rookie. I was for keeping Wells around this year but I am thinking that he should have been traded to Seattle or whoever for anything but a seventh.

It looked like GB was trying to hide Meridith to stash him on the squad by not playing him much. They should have been playing him earlier as well as Lang to get him up to speed to back up both positions on the left side if Meridith was not a player.I think right now barring a vet pickup that Lang should be # 1 of the bench on the left side and leave Colledge at LG.As others have stated let the four guys stay put and go through the growing pains and give the new guy some help and move on.Maybe a few years from now Colledge will be able to slide over in a injury situation but not yet.

The offensive line was playing just as bad before Clifton got injured. Clifton himself was doing bad.

Like I said, it'll be nice to see guys in their normal positions but it's not going to help anything. Our line is bad no matter where they're at and the only way to aide it is by calling more short-passing plays, runs, play-actions, QB roll outs, and shotgun formations.

I think that GB has brought some guys in with a little nastiness to them in Barbre , Lang , Breno and even Moll which is what is needed to play the lines.What I think is happening through the coaching is these guys are getting pounded on being assignment sure and they are being nutered from their nasty side so they can play within themselves. Give these guys to a Larry Beightol type and he would allow the mean streak to be developed along with the mental game in fact he would demand it!!!!!!!!!. I dont think that Campmen is a motivational/ natural leader type guy he may be a good assistant line coach but not the man to coach the line and these guys need full time motivation not just part time motivation that MM may be providing.

If only he were still here...

From my understanding he hasn't coached since 2007.

Yep, not trying to bring Beightol back is something I will never understand. Regardless of how familiar he may or may not be with zone blocking, he was certainly able to teach pass protection infinitely better than the current staff.

68 Gary Brown - decent
72 Earl Dotson - very good... a lil' hard at hearin'
77 John Michels - just yuck
75 Ken Ruettgers - perrenial pro bowl snub
64 Bruce Wilkerson - servicable
65 Lindsay Knapp - nope
73 Aaron Taylor - knee injuries... a damn shame... he still fought through it...
63 Adam Timmerman - One of Wolf's Pro Bowl 7th rounders
67 Jeff Dellenbach - again... servicable
52 Frank Winters - Doughnuts anyone?

Yes... this is the Super Bowl 31 O-line. Just tryin to point out that we don't need athletes. We need O-lineman. Ugly, fat, stinky, grind you, hold you, maul you, trash you... Linemen! DOWN SET!

We got a bunch of kids out there playin a man's game right now. We need veteran help. Levi's experience would be welcome and Green Bay would be a breath of fresh air I believe. Sign him... get him in here, get him up to speed, and let's wreck the Vikings.

Nice post Bruce, I read every PC post and response since '06. The Favre thing aside, I believe the lack of urgency or the belief in the importance of a solid, cohesive offensive line is Thompsons main shortcoming.

I agree. Despite being shorthanded at OT due to Clifton's injury, trading Moll and losing Meredith to Buffalo from the PS. Thompson just signed an OG and cut the only OT on our practice squad. That leaves us with only 3 OTs on the roster including Clifton, who is injured. I just can't figure it out anymore. It makes no sense. We don't really have a development prospect at LT at the moment. That's pretty scary to me. That tells me that Thompson must be thinking of drafting an OT in first or second round in the 2010 draft or that they think Colledge is the LT of the future. I am just tired of all these tweener OL guys that they draft. They have a bunch of guys that can play G/T at a mediocre level but there just aren't any standout guys at any position on this OL. They are always looking for versatility but don't utilize it properly. If our guys are so versatile then why do we always have to shift things around so much. If we truly have backups that can play multiple positions we shouldn't need to shuffle the line around when one guy goes down. Having to switch 3 position players due to one injury is ridiculous.

I take affront, Ken Ruttgers is one of the most hansome men to EVER wear a Packer jersey

Well in my opinion something has to give. Either we have to get amazingly better on the oline in a very short time or MCarthy has to stop calling 80 yard bomb passes every play.

You can hide bad oline play at least when it comes to the passing game. Quick 3 step drops/ shotgun formations/roll outs all can help protect oline play. But we seem to want to do 7-8 step drops and have long developin passes which hurt us. Also I dont know if Rodgers is holding the ball to long or he has to because the play calls for it. But what happen to the classic WCO? We have amazing WRs why not play to that strength?

Either way Ted Thompson's greatest downfall is not being able to put together a good oline. Interesting enough his great success was Wolf's greatest downfall (getting weapons for his QB). I can't blame Ted for not getting a great Dline because lets face it he has spend 4 first rounders on the front seven of the D. (Hawk, Harrell, Raji, Matthews) So he at least is trying, just bad luck with some for those guys. But the oline depth is bad.

I agree with strat1080 the fact that we dont have a LT of the future with Clifton so close to being done is amazing. I mean what good is a great QB and WRs if they dont have the time to do what they are paid to do? We are going to see how tough Rodgers is this year. He is going to take a pounding until the coaches either change something to scheme it where they protect the oline or the oline finally has something snap and they are amazing.

Im fully expecting the same nightmare we saw last year in MIN to play out again this coming monday. And if im right then im hard pressed to pick GB to leave with a W this week. Hopefully McCarthy schemes the heck out of this game.

I wish I could find the press conference where McCarthy said AR's strengths were not in throwing slants. In 2007 the QB didn't have much time to throw (2006 either for that matter) so we went with quick hitters in the spread formation Driver, Jennings, Jones and Martin. 2006 Bubba was kept on the line so the QB would not get killed, Bubba also lined up in the backfield to block. So where have we had a good (not great) or just plain average offensive line after Wahle and Reveria left. 2005 we had TT's patchwork line because TT thought Guards were a dime a dozen. This offensive line should not surprise anyone. M3s judgement of line talent keeps me scratching my head, every year we hear about all the promising youth Coston comes to mind. I just hope Barbre and Sitton become good players.

Now you know why some of us had heartattacks when some wanted Craptree, this is why we want a OT with the first pick instead of Rajji.

There is nothing West Coast about this offense.
It looks like Daryle Lamonica Cliff Branch and Fred Biletnikoff and please don't say who or you will make me feel old

Dont worry 66 Ray im pretty young but I know what your talking about.

Thats my point if I didnt know any better I would say this was a Al Davis offense. Unless defenses have been scheming so much to stop those short passes it doesnt make sense for all the long drop backs. And even if they are scheming to prevent the short stuff correct me if im wrong arent slant extremely hard to defend? Unless you man the WRs.....like all game long?

The problem with the offense seems to be we are trying to get too cute and thats making the oline look worse and its putting pressure on the WRs to make amazing catches and Rodgers to make perfect throws.

No they are hard to defense that is why so many of them were called, was to keep Favre's interception ratio down.

Ignoring the line problem for a moment - there's not much to add to what's been said and it's clearly a very, very serious problem...

But regarding scheme. Is it possible, just possible that MM has deliberately avoided that spread out, quick delivery, short pass offense for the first three games in preparation for the very game coming up? So maybe the Vikings wouldn't have film on a scheme that he hasn't shown this year? Possible? I dunno, but it seems that strategic decisions across a span of games is not outside the realm of possibility. I wonder. And I guess we'll all see in a few days.

Ray, in the presser you're referring to, I think the way McCarthy phrased it was that Brett's strength was throwing the slant, Aaron's was some other route or routes.

I've noticed several posters saying we should be throwing slants, etc. I agree that there should be shorter passes as well, but Aaron specifically mentioned the Bears were taking away the slant routes in a post-game presser. I would think other teams have been doing that as well. And you don't need corners playing man to take that away, LBs and linemen in those throwing lanes (if the OL can open them that is) will also take that play away.