2015 OTA Thread

Interesting>

A year ago, the Green Bay Packers were quietly installing a "Quad" 4-3 defense they planned to unleash in a blaze of glory against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1.

That didn't work out.

This summer, players say Packers coaches have cut back on the number of plays in the playbook. They want young players picking up the scheme faster. Coach Mike McCarthy has been involved with the defense like never before, popping into various position meetings. And this addition of subtraction in the playbook could be one way the team is trying to get off to a faster start in 2015.

“I feel like this off-season has been better than last year’s," cornerback Demetri Goodson said. "We’ve cut down on our plays just to clean up stuff. So when we’re going into the regular season, it’s not as sloppy. I feel like this off-season, everybody as a group knows what they’re doing.”

“Last year, we had a lot of plays that we didn’t call during the season. But you still had to learn them. This year, I feel like we’ve cut it down to where we’re going to run the plays that we’re running right now. So there’s no extra plays floating around in your head.”

So the Packers are taking a lesson from the late Vince Lombardi: Less is more.

"That’s what it’s getting down to," Goodson said. "And I feel like it’s a lot easier for the people just coming in, the rookies and free agents, they’re learning a lot faster than the people who had to do it last year.”

Inside linebacker Sam Barrington has been extremely encouraged with what he's seen in the Packers defense as a whole through OTA's and minicamp.
The one manning the middle of the defense says the chemistry has picked up right up from last year, adding it feels "like last year was just yesterday."

And while acknowledging that the Packers have cut back on the number of plays, Barrington said the emphasis has been on adjusting to what the offense does pre-snap.

"So it’s less plays but more adjustments," Barrington said, "which is good because during the season that’s what we’re going to get. We’re going to get a lot of stuff to adjust to. But our offense is phenomenal so being that we get to practice against that every day we shouldn’t have any excuses come game time.”

The Packers hope it all leads to a fast start in September. They've started 1-2 in each of the last three seasons
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Tomorrow is the last day of OTA. Then we hit the real dead zone of NFL news. This is when everybody in the organization goes on vacation, so no one is even doing interviews.
 
This summer, players say Packers coaches have cut back on the number of plays in the playbook. They want young players picking up the scheme faster. Coach Mike McCarthy has been involved with the defense like never before, popping into various position meetings. And this addition of subtraction in the playbook could be one way the team is trying to get off to a faster start in 2015.

“I feel like this off-season has been better than last year’s," cornerback Demetri Goodson said. "We’ve cut down on our plays just to clean up stuff. So when we’re going into the regular season, it’s not as sloppy. I feel like this off-season, everybody as a group knows what they’re doing.”

“Last year, we had a lot of plays that we didn’t call during the season. But you still had to learn them. This year, I feel like we’ve cut it down to where we’re going to run the plays that we’re running right now. So there’s no extra plays floating around in your head.”
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In some ways it helps but in the NFL you damn well better get home playing simplified schemes because if not a hot QB will carve you like a Thanksgiving turkey.tc(
 
The Packers defense had a similar motto during last year's off season when coaches were talking about using more different personnel groups but less scheme during the 2014 season. I would be in favor of simplifying the defensive scheme but let's wait and see how that works out.

I thought it was interesting to read that McCarthy is heavily involved with the defense and provides an offensive perspective to the positional meetings as well as offensive coaches teaching defensive players about tendencies of offensive players.

As a side note I would like Demetri Goodson to stop talking like he's a leader of this team. During this offseason he was already bragging about intercepting Rodgers several times while on the scout team and now he criticizes the defensive coaching staff for their complex playbook. Yet it took Randall and Rollins all of two weeks of OTAs to move past him on the depth chart and McCarthy wasn't even talking about expecting anything out of him as a corner anymore.
 
The Pack's offense has been good to great during MM's tenure. The special teams and defense have fluctuated between seasons of good, mediocre, and awful production with the latter two categories applying all too often.

Hopefully Ryan will help at ILB some, but with the departure of Williams and House, and the fact that we really don't have obvious outside players available to fill the position - that could prove to be a big learning curve, with a lot of swearing at the TV as our young and less than ideal CB's try to learn on the job.

That said, I have no faith that Capers can get this done with a straight up scheme. Part of his MO is sending pressure from different directions with multi looks behind it. Can they get the same result running a bare bones defensive scheme ???
 
Bigcheese said:
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That said, I have no faith that Capers can get this done with a straight up scheme. Part of his MO is sending pressure from different directions with multi looks behind it. Can they get the same result running a bare bones defensive scheme ???
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i don't know, i heard "simplified", not "bare bones". according to one of the player interviews i read earlier this week, there were a lot of plays in the playbook last season that were never ever used, but that the players were responsible for knowing. i think that's a lot of wasted effort. better to focus on a smaller playbook (that can still have a multitude of looks) of plays that will actually be used at some point. as the season moves along, you can install a few new unscouted looks as needed to keep it fresh. that's my take, but then again i've never been an nfl coach so wtf do i know?
 
They should have the flexibility on the back end to just have 5-6 guys playing "defensive back" instead of LC, FS, SS, RC, etc... and in theory that should simplify the playbook, guys will just need to remember what they're supposed to be doing out there on a given play.

The problem with DBs is that they need to communicate a lot, but can't necessarily do so effectively. It's a trick of saying a lot to each other, but not giving anything to the other guys.
 
We will see. It gets old seeing veterans who know what they are doing like Tramon and Burnett looking confused and having simple coverage breakdowns 13 weeks into the season because the defense is so complicated.

It seems like every year they talk about the "great adjustments" and every year we see the same old D emerge.
 
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