Monday, October 8, 2007

Chicago 27, Green Bay 20

It seems as if the Football Gods were sick of Wisconsin teams winning every week. Thus, the state of Illinois has one weekend of bragging rights over the Dairy state. Dammit! The Packer game immediately goes into "kick in the nuts" territory. We could have practically ended the Bears season, sending them to 1-4. Meanwhile, Green Bay should be 5-0 with a 2 game lead on everybody else in the division and 4 games up on Chicago. Here's what happened:

The Good:
-What’s that, a running game? DeShawn Wynn gashed the Bears in the 1st quarter. GB finished with 121 yards rushing on 22 carries (5.5 ypc). Kudos to the O-Line, if for only one night. Teams now at least have to think about the run.
-The defensive line completely obliterated the Bears running game. How does 33 carries for 82 yards sound? Pickett, Williams, Kampman and Bigbie played especially good vs the run.
-Favre's first half numbers: Basically 19-20 (minus the two spikes). Holy crap.
-Ryan and Crosby must have received my letter as Hester was basically a non-factor.
-Barnett was once again all over the place.
-3rd Down defense. Chicago was just 3-14 on third downs conversions. GB was 6-14.

The Bad:
-The second half offense. They had, what, like 340 yards before halftime? Only about 90 after. GB's strength is spreading it out, chucking it around, and sprinkling in the run. (See the last 14 quarters of football). Here was the play selection immediately after half (without punts): Pass, run, run, run, run, run, Interception, run, run, run, Kick Return fumble, run. Whaaaaaaaaa??? We are well into the 4th quarter at this point and the lead is now down to zero.
-James Jones and his rock hands. That cost GB anywhere from 6 to 14 points. To be fair, those were two great plays by Tillman. That's how they teach it kids, that’s how they teach it. Still, he’s got to hold on.
-Penalties. Good Lord. 12 penalties (4 resulted in first downs) for 93 yards. Stupid penalties too, just stupid. That penalty on the FG that they took off the board was strange. That gave them 4 extra points.
-Is Jennings related to Sheets?
-Brady Poppinga in pass coverage.
-I'm ashamed to admit I was hearing all kinds of good things about Jarrett Bush, and was promoting it. Last week he couldn't cover, this week he couldn't tackle. That's not a good combo. He whiffed on a couple of plays that should have been short gains.

Last Word:
This one hurts. It should have been like 27-7 at half. It wasn't. It doesn't matter who you play, 5 turnovers and 12 retarded penalties are gonna be hard to overcome. The Redskins come to town next week. They're 3-1 and looking pretty solid. Going into the bye at 5-1 sounds a lot better than 4-2 with a 2 game losing streak...let's get those Redskins!!!!

3 comments:

woziszeus said...

For some reason, this game doesn't bother me that much. I think its safe to say that we proved to the league that we were the dominant team last night, even though the final score said otherwise.

You just can't turn the ball over that many times. It really is that simple I think.

Anonymous said...

As I said before, this team does not have a very large margin for error. They played about as bad as they could have (5 turnovers, 12 penalties), and lost by 7. I guess that's a silver lining.

Mike McCarthy was coaching scared in the 2nd half last night. Playing not to lose, rather than standing on their throats.

The worst thing? This outcome cost be a bottle of Grey Goose to Tony. !@@!$#$

Anonymous said...

Matt, I agree. They did play awful and were a few inches away from tying the game...that Hail Mary was pretty close to ending up in Driver's arms.