AG20 Random Rambling Thoughts About the Packers

[AlexGreen#20]

Wise NFL General Managers understand that luck is a huge factor in NFL success. They also understand that the talent available to a coach frequently matters more than coaching ability. In this way, their own job performance makes or breaks their subordinates. How do you properly evaluate the job that someone is doing producing a product when so many hands are touching it and the ingredients of that product have minds of their own? The best coach in the world with crap talent is going to have a mediocre unit. How do you judge?

It’s impossible to truly isolate the one variable that is coaching when examining a unit of an NFL team. Just on the field you have 11 players and around 4 key backups assuming no injuries. Add in the health of players, positional coaching, scouting and drafting of talent, random *** luck of a bouncing football or the opposing team’s kicker, and any number of intangibles like team chemistry, and the equation rapidly spins into various dimensions of complexity. There are so many aspects involved, all tangled up together that making changes is frequently a matter of throwing a different number into a spot and hoping that the equation spits out something better. You can evaluate and try and discern what a number is doing and whether changing it out with a different number will work, but frequently the best guess is still only a guess. It makes pulling a trigger difficult. Typically, the only way that such a thing happens is when the current results are so poor, it’s hard to foresee the unit being worse with a different man at the helm.

Installing new schemes, particularly on defense, often takes time. Even if a coach is coming into the rare situation where his inherited unit is talented, he still has to teach an entirely new scheme and system. An NFL system is a language, and that entire set of vocabulary has to be taught even before the complexities are learned. It frequently takes veteran units two offseasons to completely digest a scheme. In almost all instances there are significant growing pains.

Even beyond the confines of the field and the building, NFL franchises are often like extended families. NFL GMs know the personality and the families of the men they hire and spend so many draining hours with. Wives know each other, kids play together. There are deep emotional connections formed. Frequently coaching staffs will travel a career together with seven or eight positional coaches all operating as the support staff of one Head Coach or Coordinator.

When taken into combination, making the decision to move on from coaches or long tenured players are often the hardest choices that any NFL General Manager will make in their career. In such instances, the best that a person can hope for is that the person being let go will understand that such a decision was only business, and not any kind of judgement of perceived personal failing.

All of these points are brought up to emphasize that firing coaches isn’t a task that is done easily. It’s not something that should be done rashly or on an emotional whim. It’s something that needs to be done after serious film study and conversation with the major players on the defense and the team in general.

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With all that acknowledged, it’s time for the Packers to make serious changes with their staff.

One of the reasons that it has been so difficult to evaluate Dom Capers over the course of his career with the Packers have been the injuries that have dogged this team at every step. It’s understood that players are going to miss time in the NFL. The NFL is a gauntlet that is going to destroy people’s bodies, but injuries continue to derail this team in the post season. Even without the overall missed games counts being middle of the road, the team stacking injuries at the same position is unsustainable.

It was last year in the playoffs when the Defense couldn’t stop the Falcons. The CB rotation of Damarious Randall, Micah Hyde, Ladarius Gunter, and Quinten Rollins was awful.

·         Sam Shields was out for the year and career with another concussion.

·         Rollins was barely in the game with a spinal cord and ankle injury.

·         Randall couldn’t even line up in a proper CB stance with an injury to his groin.

·         Micah Hyde is no longer a CB, having moved to Safety full time after being signed with the Bills.

·         Ladarius Gunter is barely in the league playing zero snaps on defense and 37 snaps of Special Teams on the year for the Panthers.

Ladarius Gunter was matched up against Julio Jones in the playoffs. That actually happened because every other player was injured. If that were an outlier, it would be one thing, injuries can derail seasons, but this year is just as bad. It’s week 16 and our CB injury report consists of the following:

·         Davon House on IR with a shoulder and back injury

·         Kevin King on IR with a shoulder injury.

·         Damarious Randall questionable with a knee injury.

·         Quinten Rollins on IR with an ankle injury.

 

The Packers are about to play the Vikings with a CB group of: Josh Hawkins, Lenzy Pipkins, and Donatello Brown. Read those names. I don’t even know how you can get mad at a General Manager when he has 4 NFL caliber CBs on the roster and they all get hurt. Most Packer fans at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Milwaukee couldn’t name those three players if you put $100 down on the bar. These problems have extended back as far as recent memory. Even the Super Bowl season featured a shocking number of starting contributors down for the season.

Medical staffs tend to come part and parcel with an organization. Barring ownership changes or a team relocating, they tend to stick around forever. Without a disastrous misdiagnosis or an unsuccessful surgery, it’s hard for a layman like a football coach to make any sort of educated judgement of a medical professional.

In June of 2015, the Packers made changes to their staff by promoting Pepper Burruss to the newly created position of “Director of Sports Medicine Administration” and promoting Bryan Engel to the role of “Head Athletic Trainer”. Considering the injury woes the team had faced in previous seasons, internal promotions seemed (even in real time) to be an unambitious choice. In hindsight the decision looks even worse.

While it’s probably unfair to lay the blame for the Packers injury woes exclusively at the feet of Pepper Burruss, Bryn Engel, and the rest of the Packers Training Staff, the team has been injured to hell for a long time. Nobody reading (or writing) this piece has the sort of medical knowledge and familiarity with the Packers staff practices to judge their performance, but something needs to change. Considering the roster has been almost completely turned over and the problems still exist, the only constant remaining is the medical staff.

It’s been such a consistent issue for so long that it’s gotten to be logically impossible to continue supporting the current group. Something needs to change. The Packers medical staff led by Pat McKenzie seems to be alright, and he has the support of the players, but the group responsible for injury prevention seems to have completely failed.  Too many Packer seasons have died on the training table. A new direction needs to be found.

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Even with the devastating injuries that his units have faced. Dom Capers also needs to be let go.

The defense has completely collapsed in the last two seasons. Part of that has been the injury problems that have gutted the secondary and the pass rushing units, but a lot of it has also been a failure to pull positive performances from talented units.

Nick Perry, Mike Daniels, Kenny Clark, and Blake Martinez is most of the way to a complete front group. Even Clay Matthews and Jake Ryan are talented enough to be key reserves on a good defense. Still, the team has been dreadful and unable to generate a pass rush. 

Morgan Burnett, HaHa Clinton Dix, and Damarious Randall are all talented players in the secondary. Davon House was an effective starter for the Jaguars. Kevin King has even looked the part in spots. It just doesn't make sense that the defense continues to underperform.

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Probably more to come.

If anybody wants to try and edit this into something coherent I wouldn't mind suggestions.

[{Family Ghost}]

I think Capers is as good as gone ... hire the best DC money can buy and let him decide who stays and who goes when it comes to coaches.  I do not want to see MM hire from within ... time for some fresh ideas and a fresh persepective to come in here and seriously grade the talent on hand.

 

[Pugger]

2 hours ago, {Family Ghost} said:

I think Capers is as good as gone ... hire the best DC money can buy and let him decide who stays and who goes when it comes to coaches.  I do not want to see MM hire from within ... time for some fresh ideas and a fresh persepective to come in here and seriously grade the talent on hand.

 

I hope so.  If McCarthy keeps Capers for another year it might be time for HIM to go too.  Loyalty is nice but not in this business.   I wouldn't be opposed to a hire from within IF this new DC implements a different scheme.  But you are right, it might be time for new blood to guide our defense going forward.