McGinn takes Ted Thompson to the woodshed

[TW]

How come McGinn at the end of TC had no problem with the state of the CB positionm? On another Packers' forum someone posted a link to an article by McGinn at the end of TC and he spoke in glowing terms about our CBs. I find it disingenuous of him to blast Ted for not addressing this position when everyone thought that was one of the few strengths of the defense going into the season! I suppose Ted could have made a trade to bolster that position after it was ravaged by injury but nobody knows if he tried or not. In season trades are about as rare as hen's teeth.

I, for one, never believed we were set at CB before the season started. I thought we were going to come up short at both CB and safety. There was a lack of continuity of play carrying over from last season, from what I had seen.

I think one of the reasons McGinn and others thought it was all well was because everyone wanted to believe our younger DBs were going to mature. I wasn't confident of that because I saw no growth in them through the previous year.

I think the big problem has been that the Packers coaching staff believes they can "create" good CBs from players, when reality says that you need to start with speed and footwork to even consider a guy. That's never seemed to be at the top of the "requirements list" according to the Packers.

 

[Dubz41]

I find it a bit disingenuous when a newspaper hack, who contradicts himself regularly, compares things armed with only hindsight. McGinn loves to roast people after the fact. Now he is riling people up comparing one set of leadership (Harlan, Wolf, Holmgren) vs another (MM, MM, TT). Guess what? Both sets only won ONE Super Bowl. (losing to Denver in the SB was as ridiculous as the Seattle loss two years ago)
Group one did it with great QB play AND a great defense. Group two did it with great QB play and an opportunistic defense. Neither did it twice.
The article makes a few good points. You'd definitely like to see TT at least appear to try to improve the team with more than just the draft. McGinn notes some players TT 'could' have gone after. Then shoots himself in the foot again by including Tony Gabriel. Really? I don't think I could find one single person on this forum who even mentioned the name 'Tony Gabriel' ever.

Anyway, I like this forum because it doesn't spend too much time in hindsight and has some well thought out steps moving forward. So....who would you like to see signed in FA before we hit the draft?

 

[rpiotr01]

Dubz, I understand where you're coming from but how else can you judge a season besides after it plays out? What McGinn is saying is that there were opportunities to improve the team in FA this year, some obvious and some not obvious. He's saying unlike us, the common fan on a forum, TT has essentially unlimited cash and staff and data available to him, and any number of player evaluators who are all paid specifically to find players to improve the team. These people either didn't do their jobs, or they did and TT just chose to sit on his hands and do nothing. Those player moves were made by other teams. They worked out for other teams. Other GMs didn't just luck into those moves, they saw things better than TT saw them. In that way TT failed at a part of his job. Someone has to hold him accountable for that failure, even if it's just part of the whole.

The shame and devestating part of all this is that no one with real power will hold TT accountable for these kinds of failures. Bob McGinn is the only one, and he's not a hack for doing so.

 

[eyecatcher]

From the article

It wouldn’t have taken much to put the Packers over the top this season. It won’t take much for them to get over the top next season.

This is my take as well. The Packers do not need to rebuild the entire D to contend next year.

 

[GBP4EVER]

From the article


This is my take as well. The Packers do not need to rebuild the entire D to contend next year.

They need a new scheme. Capers has a hard on for blitzing. It's clear we don't have the players to blitz as much as he likes to. So since we are stuck with Capers perhaps he needs to actually use what he's got in the right way instead of trying to force them to play his style of D.

 

[eyecatcher]

They need a new scheme. Capers has a hard on for blitzing. It's clear we don't have the players to blitz as much as he likes to. So since we are stuck with Capers perhaps he needs to actually use what he's got in the right way instead of trying to force them to play his style of D.

They aren't getting a new scheme but they still can improve without one. The Packers need DBs that can cover. They get a couple and it is a different defense immediately. How did you want Capers to use what he had this year? Tell me what he could have done that would have made a difference. The DBs on the field were out of position more often than not. That wasn't scheme. It was technique, footwork, and speed.

 

[Half Empty]

This is my take as well. The Packers do not need to rebuild the entire D to contend next year.

In any other forum, I'd probably have to go after the 'entire' reference, but, here, I think I understand. To give us something to work with, how much of a rebuild do you think is necessary? Oh, 'contend' is another word that merits discussion, since they did a whole lot more than that with 2016's D, but, again, I think I understand. So, what would your defensive lineup look like?

 

[Dubz41]

Dubz, I understand where you're coming from but how else can you judge a season besides after it plays out? What McGinn is saying is that there were opportunities to improve the team in FA this year, some obvious and some not obvious. He's saying unlike us, the common fan on a forum, TT has essentially unlimited cash and staff and data available to him, and any number of player evaluators who are all paid specifically to find players to improve the team. These people either didn't do their jobs, or they did and TT just chose to sit on his hands and do nothing. Those player moves were made by other teams. They worked out for other teams. Other GMs didn't just luck into those moves, they saw things better than TT saw them. In that way TT failed at a part of his job. Someone has to hold him accountable for that failure, even if it's just part of the whole.

The shame and devestating part of all this is that no one with real power will hold TT accountable for these kinds of failures. Bob McGinn is the only one, and he's not a hack for doing so.

Agree and understand with the whole post, except...McGinn is still a hack. Not just because of this article.

 

[eyecatcher]

In any other forum, I'd probably have to go after the 'entire' reference, but, here, I think I understand. To give us something to work with, how much of a rebuild do you think is necessary? Oh, 'contend' is another word that merits discussion, since they did a whole lot more than that with 2016's D, but, again, I think I understand. So, what would your defensive lineup look like?

Lets put it this way. Two good CBs this year and the Packers probably win 2 or 3 more games. Maybe have home field and could be playing this Sunday for all the marbles. I'm don't have a crystal ball to tell you what next year's D looks like but it must have some better CBs. How far away from winning it all do you think they were this year? What do you see them needing to do in order to make a serious run?

The fact that they were one game away from the Super Bowl with the D they had is why I said what I said.

 

[rpiotr01]

The D they had this year was good enough because Rodgers played out of his mind, the OL was healthy and Jordy rounded back to form. What are the odds that all happens again next year? Maybe the D just needed to be a little better THIS year but I think it will have to be a lot better going forward. Need starters and depth at every level of D. Up front continues to be a problem. I would like to see them approach this as a multi-faceted fix and we can hope it's good enough to get them over the top next year.