Decipher this quote (paraphrase)

I kind of took the comment by the announcers as a tongue and cheek comment from Bulaga and to me it was meant to be funny.  I don't think it is a sign of turmoil or anything like that.  I really don't think it is a case of AR and MM working against each other I really think it is a case of AR (and the Manning comparison is excellent) that he knows this offense so perfectly and knows exactly what to call in each situation and MM knows this.  MM has his warts as a coach (they all do) but I do think he knows when to get out of AR's way because that is what good coaches do when they have a talent like AR and other super stars like him.

As for the "do your jobs and leave the rest to me" comment that isn't an indictment of MM being a crappy coach it is again an example of MM knowing AND the guys on the field knowing that AR has this and he will lead us to a win.  You could see in the Bears game a quick glance that AR and MM had and AR smirked and I think MM KNEW at that moment #12's legend was getting ready to grow a little more.  

One thing about MM he has had our team in the very thick of things almost every year (last year being an ugly exception) and I don't think it is time to send him packing just yet.  Now I will say how this season plays out will go a long way in seeing what MM's future is but if he can weather the storm with a one legged QB and get us back in the thick of things in the playoffs shouldn't he get some credit for that?

If needed he can use the one legged QB as a get out jail free card.  I truly hope it is not needed.

Two things.  McVince keeps them in the thick of things with Rodgers.  McVince's system was on full display last year and it ****ing sucked.  Hundley sucking balls was a big part but again, who is responsible for Hundley not sucking?  You can only do so much with talent the player has but it was the preparation that was horrible too.  

Or Rodgers keeps them in the thick of things with McVince. 

Hundley sucks - The fact McVince kept him around for 3 years & said "The QB room is fine!" is what I have a problem with.

What Bulaga said might be funny but it's true. Rodgers pre-snap reads are every bit as good as P. Manning was. So it stands to reason McVince & Rodgers are going to have some disagreements with the play call. I'm willing to bet Rodgers is correct on his play call 95%-99% of the time.

Announcers in the game said 20-30 things that were mind bendingly dumb. Most notable being Charles Davis saying the PI call on Graham was “a good non call” followed up by saying Adams did extend his arm for offensive PI on the next play.

Not putting a lot of stock in anything they had to say. 

I fully trust Rodgers to change into or out of a play depending on what his presnap read is. He’s probably changing to the right call over 90% of the time. I think the best evidence of this would be Hundley and Kizer running plays as called and getting little accomplished. 

Rodgers keeping the ball on the OT read option however wasn’t one of those times he checked to a better option at a pretty critical moment. He’s great. But it’s pretty clear MM, AR, and Philbin are still a work in progress this year. 

That read option play had me scratching my head.  I guess it's genius if it worked, but it didn't.  It failed miserably at a very critical time in the game.

The play wasn't necessarily bad.  The execution was.  No MIN player caused that play to fail.

Not to be a Rodgers testicle cleaner, but I remember him saying after the game that if he runs the play cleanly and doesn’t fumble, it’s at least a first down, if not a bigger gainer that sets Crosby up for a very makeable field goal. A lot of “what ifs” and hindsight, but it sounds like the play called was the right one just effed up in execution. **** happens if they run the ball there too. Does anyone remember watching the replay of 30 running the ball earlier (maybe on same drive) and bobbling the ball and almost losing it in GB territory?

Not unlike most football marriages I think AR and Doc McStuffins may be in need of a change (see Brady and B.B. latest news). The question will be (as it seems to be every year) is whether they play well enough to prevent that change from happening, or whether it’s going to take a huge ass dumpster fire to make that happen. I’ve got $100 on both options right now.

Tavis Smiley posted:

Not to be a Rodgers testicle cleaner, but I remember him saying after the game that if he runs the play cleanly and doesn’t fumble, it’s at least a first down, if not a bigger gainer that sets Crosby up for a very makeable field goal. A lot of “what ifs” and hindsight, but it sounds like the play called was the right one just effed up in execution. **** happens if they run the ball there too. Does anyone remember watching the replay of 30 running the ball earlier (maybe on same drive) and bobbling the ball and almost losing it in GB territory?

Not unlike most football marriages I think AR and Doc McStuffins may be in need of a change (see Brady and B.B. latest news). The question will be (as it seems to be every year) is whether they play well enough to prevent that change from happening, or whether it’s going to take a huge ass dumpster fire to make that happen. I’ve got $100 on both options right now.

Do you have a link to the play so we can see it?

Henry posted:

  Discuss. 

Don't tell me what to do.

jerk

All plays are good if they work

Bart didn’t need Vince to call plays and Arod doesn’t need McNucklehead  to call them either.  Get rid of the damn helmet mics and man up. 

It is all happening again. I suspect it ends the same way.

AR is not going full sandlot, so at some point these are all McCarthy's plays. MM calls the play before the defense shows their hand, Rodgers adjusts the play after the defense adjusts to MM's call. Hence the on paper vs what AR wants.

I expect Rodgers is retired or (more likely) McCarthy is gone before he and AR get to a Sherman/Favre type arrangement.

Henry posted:

Two things.  McVince keeps them in the thick of things with Rodgers.  McVince's system was on full display last year and it ****ing sucked.  Hundley sucking balls was a big part but again, who is responsible for Hundley not sucking?  You can only do so much with talent the player has but it was the preparation that was horrible too.  

Brett Hundley sucked and was obviously trying to do an Aaron Rodgers impression by scrambling and holding the ball forever...I don't think the system called for him to hold the ball for an hour and, based on what we've seen this season against better defenses, I find it very hard to believe there were no open receivers. A more reasonable explanation is that Hundley kept sh*tting his pants every time he had to drop back and all the preparation went down the toilet. Rodgers famously is a stickler about preparation and practice, so I doubt he would let Hundley prepare poorly. MM should have demanded a veteran QB that he clearly wasn't being given, which is fukk up. He's not a perfect coach, he does make mistakes, as all coaches and players do. The system was on full display against Chicago and Minnesota this year because Rodgers couldn't do the scramble drill every play (or any play). Rodgers and McCarthy have both confirmed/acknowledged Rodgers executed called plays against Chicago, there wasn't much improvising with that bad knee. 

My answer is that the exciting, scramble drill, big play offense is Rodgers improvising. The methodical WCO is more McCarthy. It doesn't have to be all AR or all MM, it's a collaboration. MM is smart enough to trust his HOF QB to call plays (game winning TD against Dallas in '17) when necessary and Rodgers is smart enough to have mastered a good offense and put his own twist on the execution. You can't put improvisations like that on paper, he takes what the defense gives him. 

I wonder if there are any stats on the number of times AR broke from the pocket and "sand-lotted" it in say, his first three years vs these last three years? I suspect it has increased, but I'd like to see if that's true. MM does like a more West Coast offense while it seems AR likes a "calculated wing-it" offense. 

I keep going to the stat from the Vikings game that AR was 21 of 23 if he throws in less than 2.5 seconds. That's what the WC is built on: short, quick passes, and let the YAC pile up.

That's not to say that AR can't go deep or do some sandlot plays but it seems that when he breaks from the system too often, he makes bigger -- but fewer -- gains, and the offense has more three-and-outs, which also puts the D on track to get gassed. It's more of a high-risk, high-reward system that can lead to AR getting more injuries as he's out of the pocket, especially at this stage of his career. I'd like to see him play more within the system, but add some designed rollouts/sprintouts and play-action deep throws to mix it up. 

What you said.

I'd say he had a better line those first years thus the need to scramble/wing it was less

Lets's be clear. Aaron Rodgers isn't learning anything from any coach at this point.  He's so far beyond what anyone can teach him about playing QB. No NFL coach get's what he get's at QB. It's on the coaches to give him a plan to eviscerate a defense. That's all he needs. He will do the rest. 

  Eviscerate 

whooooooahhhhhhhhhh,, if thats like to remove an internal organ,( disembowel )

that should be done to those queeen fans on the vikings sucks thread 

I"ll  help.....if needed,,  I have alot of sharp knives....

I don't know if anyone else saw this but on the 1st drive there were 2 incomplete passes right at the start. After both of them Rodgers was shaking his head in a no fashion.   I thought it was a poor show on his part. But what I would really like to know was he displeased with the play call, the routes the receivers ran  or his own execution.  I doubt if we will ever know. 

The first 15 plays are generally scripted and I’m sure he collaborated to create that script, so I don’t think the frustration is probably with MM as much as just the fact that it didn’t work or the execution was bad.

Grave Digger posted:

Henry posted:

Two things.  McVince keeps them in the thick of things with Rodgers.  McVince's system was on full display last year and it ****ing sucked.  Hundley sucking balls was a big part but again, who is responsible for Hundley not sucking?  You can only do so much with talent the player has but it was the preparation that was horrible too.  

Brett Hundley sucked and was obviously trying to do an Aaron Rodgers impression by scrambling and holding the ball forever...I don't think the system called for him to hold the ball for an hour and, based on what we've seen this season against better defenses, I find it very hard to believe there were no open receivers. A more reasonable explanation is that Hundley kept sh*tting his pants every time he had to drop back and all the preparation went down the toilet.

I agree but here's the problem I have with that.  Hundley could handle one read and he was usually eyeballing the hell out of Adams hoping and praying his security blanket would bail him out.   But here's the thing, Hundley is a backup.  He better be doing what McVince is calling in and if that was the case, seriously, WTF?  How many games in did it take McVince to realize he should be using his 3 young RBs ALOT more?  They actually put up some decent production.  Game winning production?  No, but with a competent QB they would've been in some of those games.  

So again, who is ultimately responsible for Hundley being so completely and totally unprepared?  If Hundley was running his own **** trying to be Rodgers then who in the hell didn't reign him in?  If Hundley was running what McVince was sending in then I'll say again, WTF?

Yep, Rodgers likes the offense.  McVince's management ****ing sucks.

We all know how I feel about McVince but some things with this team seems a bit odd.  I know there's quite a bit of adjustment and who the hell knows what's going to happen next year.

Maybe it's because I really didn't like how Murphy had to crack this organization open as well as the fact of how he did it.  Feels "Goodell" to me and it never should've come to that in the first place.

ammo posted:

I don't know if anyone else saw this but on the 1st drive there were 2 incomplete passes right at the start. After both of them Rodgers was shaking his head in a no fashion.   I thought it was a poor show on his part. But what I would really like to know was he displeased with the play call, the routes the receivers ran  or his own execution.  I doubt if we will ever know. 

I guess that is what I was trying to say in my post we as a bunch of dorks on a forum site can only speculate what is going on in the meeting rooms, on the sidelines, and on the field.  

To me Chilljon nailed it.  The coaches put together the offensive game plan and the basics of what they want to do and #12 will take it from there.  To me that isn't a bad thing you have one of the best to ever play the position and he is so intelligent you roll with it.

Henry posted:

I agree but here's the problem I have with that.  Hundley could handle one read and he was usually eyeballing the hell out of Adams hoping and praying his security blanket would bail him out.   But here's the thing, Hundley is a backup.  He better be doing what McVince is calling in and if that was the case, seriously, WTF?  How many games in did it take McVince to realize he should be using his 3 young RBs ALOT more?  They actually put up some decent production.  Game winning production?  No, but with a competent QB they would've been in some of those games.  

So again, who is ultimately responsible for Hundley being so completely and totally unprepared?  If Hundley was running his own **** trying to be Rodgers then who in the hell didn't reign him in?  If Hundley was running what McVince was sending in then I'll say again, WTF?

Yep, Rodgers likes the offense.  McVince's management ****ing sucks.

I agree with you to an extent, but I presume they went through practice and meetings and Hundley said and did all the right things. He seems like a smart guy and probably when he has the red jersey on in practice he doesn't panic. The average ranking of defense he lossed to was 9th and that's counting Detroit's 21st ranked defense also. I'm not making excuses for BH, but that was going to be a brutal stretch even for Aaron Rodgers and it shouldn't be surprising he blew chunks. In my mind MM knew that teams were going to be teeing off on the run, so trying to commit to the run would have been a fools errand, it was going to be on the backup QB to win games or at least keep the defense honest enough to get some production from the run. We weren't going to refocus the way our team was built overnight, we're a team built around Aaron Rodgers...becoming a team built around 2 rookie RBs and a converted WR at RB that plays defense just wasn't realistic. 

I don't know what went into the decision making for not getting a veteran QB in place, but it was a failure across the board. Rodgers went down on October 15, the trade deadline was October 31, there HAD to have been a veteran QB available that could have executed the gameplan better. 

If a coach designs and calls plays that get receivers open, a HOF QB will get them the ball without having to scramble for 10 seconds.

Tom Brady and other immobile QBs repeatedly throw to open receivers.

The scrambling/sandlot stuff is absolutely an additional skill that AR possesses. The fact the we see it so much is a result of either poor play design / playcall, or AR not being disciplined to take what the defense is giving him and bypassing open receivers for a chance at a bigger play after a scramble.

It doesn't have to be either. We've seen in it many times before where it's been pointed out that Rodgers bypassed easy throws to wait for something to develop. It can be a good scheme that gets guys open AND Rodgers improves on it by waiting for big plays to develop. Tom Brady understands his limits, he can't hold the ball forever, Rodgers doesn't really have limits. And I don't think it's a lack of discipline by Rodgers, I think he sees something on film that he can exploit. I think he's waiting to exploit a lack of discipline by the defense, at some point the D will make a mistake and he will rip off a big play...same as the quick snaps when the D has 12 on the field or free plays on offsides. He's all about trying to catch the other team in a lack of discipline. 

Only issue I have is his tendency to go sandlot looking for the bigger play instead of taking the smaller one that's there. He needs to be a bit less greedy and just take what the defense is giving him.

GD, agree that I am sure that is what is going through AR's mind.

But I think it increases the chances of injury and penalty (holding).......and I think that it probably makes it harder to be a teammate of a QB who is always doing his own thing. Whether you are a receiver or a guy pass blocking, I am sure at some point they would just like to run the play as designed. As the quote that inspired this thread alludes to IMO.   Bulaga: "There's what's on paper and there's what Aaron wants to run". 

The next problem I foresee is the day when everybody else can see that AR is no longer physically able to to pull off some of these plays be he still thinks he can. That is when 12 becomes 4 and MM becomes Sugarbear.

"AR not being disciplined to take what the defense is giving him and bypassing open receivers for a chance at a bigger play after a scramble."

This

Didn’t see this article posted anywhere and I think is relevant to the discussion whether you agree, disagree or are indifferent.....

http://www.espn.com/blog/green...aaron-rodgers-thrive

I agree it causes problems. I don't know if any place keeps track of stats on who gets charged with sacks, but I would wager AR should be charged with the majority of sacks over the last 5 years. He takes too many hits because he's waiting for things to develop, which on one hand is a bad thing, but can we really argue with his results? The problem is the punishment he takes and the fact that it's feast/famine...he's either burning Dallas for a game winner or we stall out and put the defense on the field again faster than we should. 

I'm in the same camp as many of you, I don't care if we dink/dunk our way down the field as long as we score....boom or bust big play offense is more fun, but the downside is worse than a more controlled style. I don't think AR will ever become 4, Favre never had the discipline that AR has. AR isn't gambling, he doesn't want to risk turnovers, he'd rather take the hit than make a killer mistake like that. 

Tavis Smiley posted:

Didn’t see this article posted anywhere and I think is relevant to the discussion whether you agree, disagree or are indifferent.....

http://www.espn.com/blog/green...aaron-rodgers-thrive

Great piece, thanks.  I could read about that stuff for hours.

FreeSafety posted:

GD, agree that I am sure that is what is going through AR's mind.

But I think it increases the chances of injury and penalty (holding).......and I think that it probably makes it harder to be a teammate of a QB who is always doing his own thing. Whether you are a receiver or a guy pass blocking, I am sure at some point they would just like to run the play as designed. As the quote that inspired this thread alludes to IMO.   Bulaga: "There's what's on paper and there's what Aaron wants to run". 

The next problem I foresee is the day when everybody else can see that AR is no longer physically able to to pull off some of these plays be he still thinks he can. That is when 12 becomes 4 and MM becomes Sugarbear.

This is why I'd like to see the start of a defensive team, including HC, to be built.  

I'll say it again, but I thought we were told AR never gets tired of throwing the easy pass.

Henry, you usually come into topics with fists flailing and spit flying. But topics that you create can be some of the best thought-invoking subjects for discussion.
This is one. 

My feeling is that there's not a rift between McCarthy & Rodgers, although I do think ARod can get frustrated with plays called, how long it may take to get that call (limiting pre-snap time), and clock management in crunch time.
I'm also willing to bet he runs the plays as called the majority of the time, but has complete freedom to change any play based on pre-snap reads. However, more often than not over the last 3-4 years, an OL breakdown happens so quickly, it forces improvisation and that's the source of Baluga's comment.

ARod's "...leave the rest to me" comment I see as purely motivational, like a General rallying his troops for battle.
I don't know how much, if any, stock I put into the playbook "being scrubbed". I think they may have fine-tuned some plays and/or formations based on the loss of Jordy, as an example, or not maximizing the use of more complex route designs to help the rooks get integrated into the rotations ASAP, as another.
But excluding plays based on 'just because' or speculation? Not buying it.
FWIW, I haven't seen any radical changes in these first 2 games that would indicate changes to the playbook. "We do what we do".

The link that Tavis posted above has the most relevant comments and quotes that give insight to the dynamics between Rodgers and MM. However, I find this comment from the author quite interesting as well:

"Still, Monday and Tuesday -- the big game-planning days -- weren't easy. McCarthy, offensive coordinator Joe Philbin, run game coordinator James Campen and pass game coordinator Jim Hostler had to set the course for the week..."

I read that as AROD isn't as involved in game-planning as I assumed. There is a later comment about MM and ARod meeting on Fridays to discuss the plan/plays, but adjustments are more of a multiple choice as opposed to thumbs up/down.
That's not to say MM would refuse Aaron's input, but I thought offense game-planning would be done mostly by MM/Rodgers/Philbin, and the coaches like Campen and Hostler implement that in meetings and practices. It would certainly be a surprise (at least to me) if they actually have input into play selection.

My take on their relationship is that AR really respected MM for having the balls to dump Favre & go with him. However as time has passed that indebtedness has worn off some. Although some forms of intelligence are not as obvious as others, AR appears to be much brighter than MM. Sometimes this can be problematic in a longterm relationship.