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Camp Battles


MacReady

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4 hours ago, thrILL! said:

So did Micah Hyde.

And he ended up missing time due to injury and was really only a partial starter on defense: 62% of snaps on the season and only officially started 7 games in 2015.

2013 was the same deal. 40% of defensive snaps and 3 starts.

Those were the only two years he was full time back there. 

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21 hours ago, Shanedorf said:

No such rule exists, except in the minds of some fans.

MM and Zook talked about it in some detail during a presser last year. With the new style of Aussie punting, the coaches moved the line back, sometimes within the 5 yard line. They also give consideration to the time of day, opponent, field conditions, score, wind direction, coverage team for the opponent, hang time and  other variables. They may make one choice in Quarters 1, 3 and a different choice in quarters 2, 4.

So when fans rip on Davis, they are often doing it from an uninformed point of view. If you stop and think about it - that flexibility makes a lot more sense than a single universal rule. One more component is if the punt does hit the ground, one of the ST guys will often yell a code word telling everybody to stay away - including the PR.

And sometimes they tell the KR/PR ahead of time exactly what to do no matter what. Its clear that Davis had some PR whiffs last season, but the fulcrum you're using to flog the guy just isn't how it works in the modern NFL.

As far as camp battles, it seems like it will be Davis vs MVS in the PR role, but I'm sure GB will trot out some others as they have in years past

Your point that there needs to be flexibility, and that no such rule exists, is well taken.  And that we don't know what the coaches are telling him, or if they have any guidance or "rules".  But I have to be honest, my naive subjective fan-sense is that davis made an unusual number of poor decisions.   

It's possible that he and his decision-making would improve if they **did** suggest some "rule" (or helpful guidelines) to simplify things for him and make it easier for him to make good decisions?  

Obviously for any "rule", there can be special-case exceptions.  For example, maybe a general guideline is to avoid fielding a ball inside the 7; but perhaps that doesn't apply when you're down by >10 points in the 4th quarter.   Or for example, perhaps you have different set or adjusted set of "guidelines" with Rodgers playing and with the offense seemingly playing competitively, versus having really bad offense.  Obviously you can contextualize whatever guidelines.  

But yeah, I'm just thinking that perhaps giving Davis some more well-defined guidelines might really help him to avoid some poor decisions, and that perhaps it would be wise for the coaches to provide that kind of assistance to him.  

Ramble-tangent:  I admit I do kind of wonder whether ST coaches don't try to overplay their hands.  It's their job and their full-time career, of course, so understandably they would want to do something creative and dramatic.  Same goes for ST players, it's their one chance to do something and get notices, so they naturally want to do something amazing and attention-getting.  But to some degree, I wonder whether the overall effectiveness might be better off if ST simplified everything.  Don't mess around with tricky kicks and stuff, just blast it out of the end zone and let your defense play from the 25.  Don't give your wild ST guys a chance to make those penalties that give the opponent the ball at the 35.  Receiving, let the ball go into the end zone and give Rodgers the ball at the 25; don't try to be a hero and get tackled at the 12; don't run around heroically and get to the 22, only to have your wild-and-crazy ST guys to the classic block-in-the-back and get you pushed back to the 7.  (Note:  I think the frequency of clipping penalties on punt and kick returns and personal-foul penalties is really significant, and any analysis of ST effectiveness is misleading if it does NOT factor in the frequency of penalty-based loss-of-yardage).  Similar on punts; of course if a guy's career is punt-returning, he wants to make some plays.  But what if he just fair-caught 80% of the punts, and the ST-wildmen made no penalties on the punt-returns?  How many yards would you actually lose, when penalties are factored in?  (Fumble-avoidance is obviously part of this too....)  From the punting side, we've now added this big-legged punter.  Hopefully he's going to be booming tons of them, and getting lots of fair-catch punts.  (Another factor here, is how many injuries occur involving ST-wildmen?)  Still, when you've got a coach whose whole life is ST, and you've got a return guy whose whole career is doing returns, telling them to just do fair-catches and start-on-the-25 is not what they really want to do!    

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21 hours ago, cooters22 said:

Lot's of camp battles I'm looking forward too. Is McCray ready to take over at RG?(1) Are we now set at backup qb?(2) Are our young corners ready to go?(3) Can we get one receiver to step up out of the blue?(4) 

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Probably not, but shouldn't be the liability we've had there the past three years.

4. Definitely. It's a foregone conclusion...

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