Pack just not that good?

The problem isn't that Brad Jones is a scrub, the problem is that the defensive coaching staff believed he was a starter.  Hell, I can't count endless times on this board where I and several others attempted to convince ourselves of it.  Getting completely ****ing destroyed in the first game was enough of the 3 years of hoping and wishing.

Agree Henry. B. Jones ain't bad on ST's but that's really all he is. A special teams player.

Was the coaching staff actually "hoping & wishing" Jones turned into a solid MLB?!?! It seems that way but we'll never know for sure. If true, that's ridiculous.

And yes, I will say that TT is culpable when it comes to the scrub parade.  But he did bring in talent at LB and it took MM to say, "how about we play the guys that can play?".  Kooky. 

I'm just firmly entrenched in the belief that Capers is the defensive Norvening and his abilities as coach are poor.  Let him consult and scheme but he is not in touch with what he has for talent on the field. 

Maybe Capers is an ageist? Though Hyde last year and HaHa this year have played a lot.

The common thread with the poor ILB play (pre by-week) is Moss. I wondered before but maybe that is why Greene wanted to spend more time with his family? He saw the football players he had and understands Capers attacking schemes yet Moss didn't want to hear it?

Whatever, the change has been made and so far the results are fantastic.

Completely agree about Moss.  That's one decision that MM definitely has skin in the game.  He made that cogbot Asst HC.

That's pure nonsense. Capers' ability to coach is poor? Then hell, McCarthy must be the stupidest coach in history keeping him on the staff so long.

I prefer to believe that in the off season, they came up with a plan. Thompson and McCarthy are not reactive managers as you seem to want to suggest. While balancing a long list of factors, they make calculated decisions/risks that are culminating each and every week. Waiting until now to roll out the Matthews position change is evidence that they came up with a plan long ago. They aren't brainstorming on the fly- they're executing a plan that is being implemented progressively.

This is how you maintain the level of success this team has enjoyed during their tenure... We're not talking about sand bagging... just an implementation of a long range plan.

Yes, MM definitely deserves criticism for Capers ongoing Capering.  But if you pay attention you would understand that MM realized there was a issue (3 years of schit) and stepped in this year and what you have is a vastly improving defense along with the implementation of more talent from the draft with Hee Haw.  Not that this hasn't been hashed out ad nauseum on this board for months. 

Yes, long range plan.  I can see The Wizard and MM in 2011, "We'll drop the 2014 opener is such fantastic fashion the rest of the league won't know what hit them!  Has Brad been practicing his deer in headlights look?  Great!  We're right on schedule!".

Idiot.

The thought that Cap'n Slappy brings that the Packers were so carefully lulling their opponents into false security by getting their asses kicked is laughable.  Look at were the Packers are at and they are still having to fight for a playoff spot and home field.  If the coaching staff is so cavalier about dropping a game here and there as a "extended preseason" they either have titanic brass balls, which has not been evident on the defensive side of the ball for 3 years, or MM stepped up and said, "This is broke". 

This sums it up perfectly.  

There was no "lets roll this out week 8" plan from the get go.  That is ludicrous.   The difference this year is two fold.  One, they have more confidence in Perry / Neal / Peppers than they did Perry / Neal / Whoever last year.   Two, MM, as stated he was going to do, is more involved in that side of the ball and pulled the trigger. 

Waiting until now to roll out the Matthews position change is evidence that they came up with a plan long ago. 

Waiting until now is not the evidence. McCarthy stating they had planned moving CM3 around way back in April is the evidence. Waiting until now to implement it has two factors, in order.

a - craptastic run D and ILB play opposite Hawk

b - Neal, Perry, and to an extent Peppers ready to handle the OLB duties and the ILB duties when they move CM3 to Outside-OLB. An adjustment/extension of the NASCAR.

The plan (way back when) to move CM3 around was likely not an attempt to fix the ILB initially, but more so a way to optimize matchups. Hindsight says they were very wrong thinking Jones could play ILB the way he did in the handful of games back in 2013 and 2012. Have no idea what they saw in TC this year to perpetuate the idea he was a starting ILB. I'm putting the lions share of that on Moss.

The "this plan was put in motion long ago" chatter is laughable. 

IMO, I think the bye week was MM's ground zero. I don't give a rats ass when the decision to cut bait on Jones was made or letting Hawk languish next to Lattimore and Barrington. I'm just glad someone nutted up and forced the issue. 

The point of GB needing Neal / Perry / Peppers to get up to speed is the strongest argument thus far and probably pretty close to spot on. Just going to have to wait for Peppers to address this in the Americas Game DVD. 

The misnomer about the position is that we’re stuck to one side. On paper, it’s going to say "left outside linebacker" or "right outside linebacker." Really, those positions are interchangeable, so the faster we can get (Perry) up to speed, the faster we can have some fun moving him around, flying around and making some plays together.

This was said in 2012, when the Packers drafted Perry. Matthews confirmed they started working on it in training camp. The following week after the Bears game, Matthews talked of how they have to react to the Eagles now that it isn't an un-scouted look.

At the midpoint of the season, they roll out a new look. Seem familiar? Jonas Gray doesn't see the field until week 7, then runs for 200 yards and 4 TDs in week 11 against an AFC rival. Teams do it all the time- they implement new looks and plot when they are going to throw a new wrinkle into the gameplan to keep teams off balance. This is not a foreign concept (unless you're reading x4 apparently).

Matthews' move to me is no different. I don't disagree with the idea that it gets the best 11 on the field, but if it is that simple then it would have been done a long time ago. No, it's a plan. halfway through the season we see something no one had seen before. The rest of the NFL now has film on it, so we'll see how they adjust and accordingly, how the Packers will re-adjust. Capers a poor coach? That's the only part of this discussion that is laughable...

So what part of that genius planning includes the losses?

I bet DuJuan Harris is scheduled to rip off 250 yards in week 14.  Raji will have a miraculous healing and have 5 sacks against Detroit.  

Here's the Wizard in the booth.

Idiot.

LOL... if that's your outlook, you'd be easy meat in a game of chess or poker, (Edit by Boris: fuc*head.   Knock off the name calling! 

And that's a good analogy. Win or lose, there is a rollout to the team's gameplan that involves several layers and practice time to implement. A season takes turns on its own with injuries, ineffectiveness... and everything evolves accordingly. These are smart men running this franchise. Much smarter than you or I.

Thankfully....

Yes, football coaches, the pinnacle of intelligentsia.  So smart they are actually planning for all possible outcomes in the mulitverse, hence the losses.

You forgot one thing, the human element.  You actually have to understand the skill sets and potential of the individuals you are creating mind bending, inception like game plans for.

 Slowcouch.

Great minds think alike, Chilli, was musing about that this morning!

Yes, the guys at the pinnacle of this profession? You friggin' bet they are. They have to be, or they get left behind. The successful ones better know how to get an advantage. How to stay a step ahead. It's management 101. There are some who can do it, and can look at their profession with a progressive outlook and a mind towards managing scenarios to alleviate problems. They have to be to be successful. And I see it that way- that's what they're doing.

It's not surprising that you would find all this threatening. Trying to quip your way out of it like some class clown. Oops, there I go name calling again...

You talking in circles is threatening?  I love how you seem to believe that attempting to prepare for all eventualities, which any coach would do is somehow a fully contrived plan to roll out and somehow lull other teams to sleep.  A plan that includes blow out losses and failure to understand the talent you have on the field in the first place. 

No, this was a gut check and MM adjusting, an adjustment that Capers is incapable of making anymore.  But you keep your nose in those management books and spewing completely unoriginal thoughts.  

I can't wait for your next installment of completely out of context management pablum that you're trying to pass off as intellectual depth.  

So if the Packers started this Mathews at ILB as some have suggested in training camp, it had to be those times when it was inside the Hutson Center and closed to the public. There were enough X4 posters at camp on a daily basis that somebody would have posted, "Whoa, I saw CM3 playing ILB today!"  That never happened as I recall.

This rabbit hole is actually much, much deeper than any of you moron's can fathom.  CMIII have been in the playbook at MLB since 2011, Dom just needed conditions to finally fall into place before unveiling it to the world.  Think about all those games Clay missed to "injury."  That was to give him more time with the playbook.  Those playoff losses?  Just setting up the draft picks (and ultimately Julius Peppers, though I think the Peppers plan wasn't truly hatched until 2012, and the context was actually significantly more around the punt game than the defense at that time, but that is another topic) was pretty complicated, but completely orchestrated.  Rumor has it Dom even had a countdown clock in his office (which he never leaves so he can protect his fingernail clipping collection) for the last few years just counting down, down, down to the time when Clay could be unleashed at middle linebacker.  

There is more to the story, but I have to go to work.  Needless to say, it involved Justin Harrell, Olivia Munn and Maria Bamford, "Guardians of the Galaxy," and ebola.  

I see you've been reading your Zig Ziglar CIA management books.

Urlacher was a mole.

I've probably said to much.

I did not have the Maria Bamford connection. Nice work Al-Ka-Haig.

April of what year?

Go back and look at MM's comments in January after the season ended. Pretty obvious he was upset about the defense and stuck his boot up Dom's ass.

Paraphrasing, "I'm setting the vision for the defense, Capers' job is to implement it." MM has stuck with that theme since, be it in OTAs, pre-season, or regular season. That qualifies as putting your foot down to me.

The question advanced by Henry and others in the Norvening thread, if I might be so presumptious, was whether this was just talk from McCarthy or if he'd consistently keep pushing for results on the defensive side of the ledger and demand that the necessary steps or changes, if needed, were taken to implement his vision. None of us know what conversations are happening inside 1265 but it sure looks like MM is doing that, to me.

Jeebus Christmas, thank you.

What is utterly laughable to me is this ludicrous idea of a  "planned rollout" as the defense gets their asses handed to them in the first third of the season.     

I don't doubt The Wizard and his ****ty henchman Moss may have had concerns about the readiness of a future HOFer in Peppers, because that just makes sense.  They obviously view every player in the LB corp as Carl Bradford, the next 4 year project scrub.  And that is where they fail fantastically as a coaches.  Coach = teacher/mentor/understanding the person and the player and what they actually can and cannot do on the field.  They can scheme all to hell but the Wizard and MossBot are BAD coaches and that is more of an indictment of Moss than even the Wizard considering that is his main duties.  

I'm all for the Wizard being a tactician and consultant.  He is still great at creative defense but it's time for a DC that is more aware of the whole of the defense.  I would envision someone that has worked/played with Capers and understands what he's trying to do but actually has a grasp on positioning his players for greatest success.  

Right now, that's MM.  I applaud him to no end for it.  I also think that it could stretch him thin.  The idea in general when Capers came on board was he would be commanding the defense, that's just not happening anymore.

MM: "Hey Wizard, you know that stuff we talked about in April?  How about phucking using it?!  Oh, BTW, has Brad come back from his PTSD treatment session yet?"

I remember in the film Wildcats Goldie Hawn refused to use Finch all season. Thought he was lazy and unprepared for game time action. In the City Championship game with the game on the line and Goldie's team on the brink of defeat, she decided to insert Finch on the d-line in order to block the game winning field goal attempt. For those of you who saw the film, the rest is history and Finch goes down as the hero and his team is City Champs.

No big deal right? Fast forward 20 years and I saw an interview with Nipsy Russell where he admitted the play was in the first game of the initial script, and the directors decided to wait until the last game to run it for "artistic" effect. Not as uncommon as some here might think.

You see Tavis,

Life isn't a script. The ending can't be edited and re-shot after the celluloid is in the can. That's film lingo by the way. 

Originally Posted by Henry:

Bet I wasn't the first person to think of

but that's me being sentimental. Would never happen plus KG isn't ready.

I think it's also useful to distinguish between those coaches who can teach players technique, fundamentals, and other skills needed to play their position, and coaches who are better at integrating player piece parts into a whole. The former being position coaches and the latter coordinators. What has made MM great is his position expertise (QB) and ability to coordinate an offense. We've also seen his leadership skills in the way players respond to him. He's showing another aspect now now by leading his staff into positions where they can succeed.

You completely miss my point Jon. Who would you rather be right now, Dom Capers, Nipsy Russell or Bill Cosby?

Honestly, I'd kinda dig being Finch. 

Just like fungi -- conditions determine life-cycle.