Monday, November 26, 2012

Packers Slaughtered on National TV

Before Sunday night's Packers-Giants debacling, I sent a tweet imploring my favorite football team to not get embarrassed on national television.

Truth be told, it's been years since Green Bay was handed a defeat like what we saw Sunday when the lights are turned on for national television. It was a thrashing so sound and so complete that it made last January's 37-20 playoff shellacking look like a nail-biter. 38-10 doesn't tell the whole story, because the big blue foot was off the gas for most of the second half and the entire fourth quarter.

Eli Manning threw virtually wherever he wanted and whenever he wanted. The Giants ran roughshod, gaining nearly 150 yards and -- again -- doing what they wanted, when they wanted.

Green Bay was completely dominated at the line scrimmage both offensively and defensively. The offensive line was nothing short of offen-sieve. Marshall Newhouse clearly needed help at left tackle, and head coach Mike McCarthy never gave it to him.

McCarthy morphed into Mike Martz on this night, constantly refusing to max-protect and failing to recognize the awful game his left tackle was having. Three-yard passes on third-and-loooong became the norm, because the Packers took either a sack or a stupid penalty on the way to third down, then had no chance of setting up a longer play because of the job being done by the line in front of Aaron Rodgers.

Defensively, I'm not going to say the Packers quit, because as evidenced by the 59-yard screen pass to Ahmad Bradshaw on the third play of the game, the Packers never started playing defense in this game. Hard to quit something you never start doing in the first place.

No pass rush, no coverage (made worse by the lack of pass rush, because the secondary would even get exposed on plays it covered well), no tackling, no gumption. Nothing.

It was a terrible performance for Green Bay. Naturally, McCarthy said afterward he would have to look at the film before getting too in-depth into what went wrong.

I don't know why anyone would want to subject themselves to that. Burn the film and get back on track against the Vikings. Think too much about this, and Adrian will run for 275 on Sunday.

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