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All right, here we go green and gold or recap in three two one It is time for another green and gold recap looking back at the Packers buck into your game
On Sunday this week, the Packers getting the win 17 to 14 over Tampa Bay.
I'm Jimmy Kuska alongside Greg Gunderson and Parker Olson.
We host the Make the Call program, which happens every weekend right here on the Civic Media family of stations.
And we are recapping this week.
You know, I don't want to call it like a I had to win or a must win or anything, but it kind of was in a sense because Tampa Bay is right there at the bottom of the standings and the Packers, you know, needing a win to keep themselves
Sort of a float here in the NSC north of the Vikings leading the way at 4 and L Packers currently at 2 and 2 This game was a win in the victory column But there were also some losses in this game and hate to be mr. Negative, but I think we need to start there because The Packers have been dealing with major injuries quite a bit the last few years and that comes back to get them again in this game guys
It
certainly does Edger and Cooper of course.
Well at this at this at the time of this recording not necessarily confirmed but Matt LaFleur made it all but clear that yeah Coops gonna be out for the season with his ACL barring some miracle Diagnosis second opinion kind of thing.
It doesn't look like there's really any chance he comes back But if you just listen alone to the bugs use me Achilles my bad there if you just listen to the buzz around edge Cooper he was poised to
to really break out you know he's been compared to Fred Warner more and more often recently and I think that's a fair comparison the way that he's diagnosing and flying around the field and affecting almost every play chasing runners down from the back so that offense
that that loss can't really be understated.
But you know, I'm honestly really glad that we've got somebody like Isaiah McDuffie who's got significant time as a starter to step into that position.
Not because he can replace Edgecoupe.
Nobody really can.
But because the defense should function at least for the most part, aside from the game busting plays where Coupe goes off script and pulls off an interception like he did in that game against Tampa.
McDuffie should still be a serviceable solid alternative.
And I don't think either form of defense run defense or
defense should necessarily take a huge hit.
Just some of the fancier moves won't be won't be in the toolkit.
That said, man, I, I sat there thinking yesterday, would I have taken the loss in exchange for keeping coop?
It was a good win.
There were some good things.
But yeah, that's the seasoning and ending injuries.
Zach Baca, but wayley, Jaden Reed, of course, Michael Parsons hasn't played yet.
Am I missing anybody?
At the moment, I don't think so.
But I mean,
Who knows?
There might be another one that drops pretty soon here, Gray.
Oh man, my heart sank at your tone there, Parker.
I wish that was a less realistic possibility at this point.
I mean, that's just kind of been the luck of the Packers the last couple of years.
I think I read 366 days or something like that is how long it's been.
They have a couple of these injuries really pop up that have been really severe.
And it's weird too, because a lot of these injuries haven't been like, ah, shoot, yeah.
But he it was just a scare so it's gonna be a three week to six week kind of thing No, no you're done.
You're done for the year kind of thing.
It's been really just brutal for the Packers I believe I can't think of who it was one of the offensive liners saying we feel like we got hit by a curse or something It's just so many guys are dealing with injuries, but The nonetheless we we met we have to head on and the Packers are gonna be trying to just keep it going and I think that they took an actually
solid step forward with their offensive line this week, Gray.
I mean, guys like Vita V, I don't know how many times I heard his name if I did it all.
They seem to actually perform pretty well on the offensive line yesterday, right?
Well, comparatively, absolutely.
And people will point to it still being below average and it was, but it's easy to miss that below average was still a massive improvement over the historically bad performances.
I mean, basic misdiagnosing and things.
So just the biggest blunders were removed and that's a big improvement.
I'll say this, too.
I mean, they allowed just two quarterback hits in this game.
Jordan Love got hit, I think, like 6,000 times in the first three games.
So no sacks and two quarterback hits.
I feel like it's a big win for the offensive linemen.
I've actually got that stat handy, Jimmy.
In the first three games, Jordan Love took 31 hits at a rate just over 10 per game versus Tampa Bay, two.
two hits so not necessarily a clean pocket and there were still some issues and misdiagnoses especially a penalty on lake in tomlinson for hands to the face which is pretty rough but the experience they added to the offensive line position group showed out as well as some of the i think some discipline there was a lot of talk last week about how competition was made a larger part of the practice tone and schedule and the theme of practice last week was one on one competitions because the floor was was and he said it.
directly.
He was trying to fire up his guys a little bit.
And frankly, I think it still remains to be seen whether LaFleur can instill a fiery passion within anybody.
That's just not the guy he is.
You know, he was, he's talking about one of the best teachers is the bench.
You know, I've, I don't know, I'd like to see Matt LaFleur get angry at this point, demonstrably Dan Campbell kind of angry.
I think that would just be a good thing for his guys to see that.
But it seems like what they coached in practice last week was more effective.
I mean, just by that number of hits, the number of QB
It's reduced on a per game basis by over 80%.
Almost 100 yards of rushing offense generated, which is more than double what they accomplished at any game at this point so far.
So we went from totally non-functional to still a lot to improve.
And it's easy to, again, look at that and say, hey, they still have a lot to improve.
They're doing a lot wrong.
Sure, but they put together a serviceable version of it.
You clean up those penalties that took place on first down, I think three or four times.
They started first in 20.
Eliminate that and some
security and all of a sudden you've got 25 32 points that you're you're like actually in a reasonable a reasonable status as far as an offense goes the defense was still a little bit leaky that was one thing that I think does bear mentioning but what I love to see was Jonathan Gannon
adjusting and finally treating Jalen Daniels like an undrafted free agent rookie quarterback.
All the fourth quarter Blitz Blitz extra rushers pressure this inexperienced guy and it finally started to work.
Huge shout out to Evan Williams for having a monster game.
I don't think he actually notched a sack but he basically prevented any comeback opportunity there near the end of the game.
He pulled off an interception right on the sideline.
Oh man I'm loving watching Evan Williams get the job done the way he has been these last few games.
It's nice to point to bright spots, guys.
We can look at bright spots and say, hey, look at that.
Yeah, Evan Williams finished with two quarterback hits, a sack, a couple of pass knockdowns in the pick you talked about.
I do think, though, for the Packers in this game, there were definitely some positives that you can look at.
I do think, too, though, that...
The future schedule is going to be a little rougher than playing the Jets, the Buccaneers.
Now you're going to start getting into the meat of it.
You're going to start seeing offenses that have a little bit more dynamic to them.
You've already seen one of the best defenses, so I don't know if the defense ratchets up, but certainly offensively, the Packers defense is going to be contending with some top teams here, here in the middle part of the season.
They absolutely are.
It's about to get a lot tougher.
Believe it or not, it's still gonna get tougher against the Bears with a, I don't know, third string quarterback, is that what they're playing right now?
It's still gonna be a challenge for them, I think, honestly.
But we are seeing, I'm gonna go back to great, we are seeing some bright spots.
Tucker Kraft, we're seeing him get the ball some more.
That said, always room for improvement.
Tucker...
He announced it after the game his drop rate is really bad right now.
He's had a couple of pretty bad drops I think he cost himself a pretty important catch Just checking where his feet were I think I don't know necessarily that he came back from his injury too quickly But it certainly feels like his head isn't exactly where it needs to be and there's a lot of It's one of the beat writers I saw
I'm saying about how some people have said that this has been bad football by the Packers.
It's not been bad football.
It just hasn't been mentally sound football.
There's a lot of, we already talked about penalties, 10 penalties for 68 yards.
Those are mental errors for the most part.
Drops, those are primarily, I think, mental errors, especially on something like that when you're just trying to think about your feet.
There are bright spots everywhere, but as you said, Jimmy, when we get into this tougher part of the schedule, it's going to be harder to improve on those things because you're planning to cover opponents, right, Gray?
Well, exactly like you said, Parker, if it's Rust with Tucker Kraft, for example, four games a month of Rust is a long time to take shaking it off.
That doesn't mean he can't get his act together, but I really hope he does because the offense flows differently when he's there.
And when you have that thread of the run, they were finally able to produce against Tampa Bay each.
aspect of the offense really plays against the other one.
And that becomes the bottleneck, I think, at this point.
If the offensive line continues to improve, if Kevin Zeitler plays, if Mackay Bechton contributes meaningfully, all of a sudden, we've got a serviceable model.
You can get that running back by committee strategy begins to get off the ground a little bit.
But still, I don't think anybody had more than 50 yards rushing yesterday, if even that.
I'd have to double check the stats there.
But really, nobody's shown through.
Chris Brooks lacks burst.
Lloyd lacks a little bit of vision unless he's a receiving threat.
So it just, there's still not somebody who's demanding that they get more carries.
And right now, I think we need that.
I think now that offenses are, excuse me, now that opposing defenses are going to have to adjust to some level of run game, they'll have to, but it's not going to be exceptionally difficult to do so.
So it's still going to be on the offensive line to stand up longer than they should really have to, even though they are doing better.
It's, and of course,
Offensive line Russian game.
They are the one to punch that makes half of the half of the strategy, if you will, but one of them has to show out and kind of overperformed to make up for the other right now and neither is poised to do that.
So if the offensive line continues to improve at its current rate, yeah, we're a threat.
But if not, I don't think we're a postseason team and I certainly don't think we're a make it out of the wildcard division team.
If we do get there right now, that's what I'm looking at is like a, Hey, do we make it?
And if so, who do we lose to in the wildcard round?
That's where I'm feeling right now.
We have a big stretch coming up as far as talking about the Packers because this month, just in this month, they still have four more games in October to play.
And all four of these teams present different challenges for the Packers.
And we're going to look forward a little bit.
I'm not going to go too far down the road and we're going to focus on the next opponent, but this month it's Bears.
It's Dallas.
That's those are the home games.
Then they're at Detroit and then they host Carolina on a Thursday night game.
So two prime time games and two and you know, three of them played on Sunday.
There's a lot coming up.
Carolina showed out on a Sunday night football last night as we record this on Monday morning with Bears Cowboys Lions.
I think each one of those brings a really kind of a unique storyline to each one and how those might transpire.
But let's just look right now at Chicago and what they're able to do with
You know and if I say 38 years as old as a quarterback would dig myself into service because I'm still slinging the rocket 41 in a high school football practice So I don't feel too old yet, but in the NFL the context NFL.
Yeah, 38 is pretty old They're still able to win and move the ball with backup quarterbacks is the point and Chicago on top of all that is you know, it's a rivalry so
Pretty much anything that you would hope to analyze kind of in a vacuum might be out the window just in the sense that when you take on the Bears, weird things happen.
I don't think anybody expects this game to be one-sided or anything in either direction, but I think there's a little bit of anxiety going into a divisional matchup this week, just with the fact that the Packers haven't really put together a full four-quarter game yet.
No, and the the thing really that stands out to me Jimmy is that the Bears regardless of who they're starting case Keenum It's probably going to be beige and technically it was Keenum yesterday I think just because Ben Johnson was upset that news circulated about starters before he announced it So he pulled a little a little bait and switch on them.
That was pretty pretty sweet starting Keenum for one play before bringing Baygent in I love Ben Johnson, honestly But that that's something that is going to have to be dealt with because in order to get through the division
Even to get a good enough record for a wild card, you've got Ben Johnson right there to contend with, and our defense is not going to be able to do against even Tyson Bajant what they did against Jalen Daniels.
They don't have an undrafted rookie free-aging quarterback.
Bajant may be at a similar skill level to Jalen Daniels, but he's got better coaching support and a better surrounding cast to make up for those deficiencies.
I think Bajant's going to keep calm enough that...
The Jonathan Gannon fourth quarter strategy of just bring extra pressure and that'll be enough won't be enough against Chicago and then looking at Minnesota.
I mean
Brian Flores scares me.
I am terrified of that man.
He does wizard-like things that I'm just that it's a major obstacle, even if they don't have the offense to put points up on us.
Likewise, we can't put points up on them the way it looks right now.
Detroit might be the only surmountable obstacle between us and a decent divisional record, but we only play him twice, so we can't rely on them to give us any sort of boost, even by them playing badly.
So long story short, the bottleneck has moved.
There is still a bottleneck though.
When Chicago is
controlling the ball as well as they did against the Jets.
That was wild, by the way.
They had more first downs than the Jets had offensive plays.
That's historically quality execution, which.
like Jimmy pointed out is done with backup quarterbacks every step of the way.
By the time we see them the second time, we expect to see Caleb Williams back.
So yeah, the Packers still have a lot of improvement to do.
The one thing it looks like they might actually be capable of that improvement.
They still have to absolutely maximize their potential.
If you ask me for the rest of the season to make that happen.
I do get shades of Malik Willis running the Packer offense a little bit when you see a Bears.
a backup quarterback for the Bears with Ben Johnson at the helm.
It does just kind of feel like, yeah, he's going to have the playbook exactly what he needs and he's not going to ask for too much.
It could get funky on Sunday.
Let's just put it that way.
We're not quite looking at the standings yet, but right now the Packers are among five teams.
Tied for the final wildcard playoff spot.
So, uh, yeah, things in the NFC, a little crowded in the early going, but hey, it's a long season to go.
Um, Packers get the bears, uh, this weekend, a game that was, by the way, uh, the first flexed game of the season, the Packers will now play at noon on Sunday on many of these same civic media radio stations.
This has been our green and gold recap.
You can follow us along on make the call on the weekend here on civic media on several of these civic media radio stations.
But for now we say goodbye.
We'll see you this weekend.
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