Analysis: Green Bay Packers defeat Bears 21-15

made the difference …
The Bears bought the run fake hook, line and sinker. Vasher got smoked by Jennings, he lost his footing a bit, but Jennings would probably have burned him anyway. 98,9% of my credits for this play goes to Greg Jennings.

The MVP for the Packers Sunday Night ? Jay Cutler ! :-) Well, jokes aside, I think only the third int was mostly his(although it was a forced throw by pressure). The first was the wr, combined with a great read from Collins. Second was an awesom headsup play by Jolly recogniceing the screen set up. The fourth was split 3 ways with Culter (should throw more outside) his wr and Al Harris making a veteran play.

Clearly, our MVP was Cullen Jenkins, he made a lot of big time plays, and he disrupted Cutler in the pocket.
The rest of the D-line and Backers also did a great job. I hope the Hawk haters will be a bit quieter after this game. No, he wasn’t great this game, but he played solidly, didn’t make a lot of tackels, but he’s always around the ball, he also made some key plays. I’ll give him a B.
Our secondary had some problems with coverage (that should improve) Collins made a late read on the TD pass, but otherwise he was very good.

Our offense still has room for a lot of improvement. The recievers were a bit sloppy in this one, about 5 dropped passes is not very good.
The offensive line was “ok” except for Allen Barbre, he was horrible. How’s Tauschers knee doing ??
John Kuhn made some key blocks to open up a couple of key runs.
Aaron Rogders …. well, congratulations on your first comeback win !
But he still has things to learn. His decissions are very good (although late sometimes) but he’s still not doing a good job with pre-snap reads. He should have seen the blitz that caused the safety, and he could have adjusted his protection several times knowing the right side was leaking. There was also some plays he could have changed the play, don’t know how much McCarthy allowes him to do that, but there were definatly some missmatches out there which “that other guy” would have exploited. But Rodgers is young, he’ll learn (I hope..)

Oh, and thanks to the Bears long-snapper for makeing that bone-head puntfake adjustment !

Still hate him. I will give you that this was one of his better games in a long time. I think that’s mostly a result of other guys soaking up blockers and crappy line play from the Bears. He looks slower than ever. Are his legs getting shorter? His stride looks funny.

“What was the story on that second interception, was it a bad throw or did you just not see Jolly there”

Cutler-
“Sarcastic Sigh….yeah, I didn’t see him.”

I saw 4-5 plays where the opposing receiver was embarrassingly wide open. I assume its because of the move from man to zone protection schemes, but that can’t happen. Its bad if there are one of those a game, but I saw several. Better teams will pick that apart. There’s a lot to clean up after this game, but two cream-puffs (knock on wood) are up next, so they’ve got some time to work on it.

Brian Urlacher (dislocated wrist) said he appears to be out for the season.
There’s no official word from the team yet, but it doesn’t sound good as Urlacher had to have a dislocated bone put back in. It’s a huge blow to the Bears’ defense, who will either shift Lance Briggs to middle linebacker or try to use veteran Hunter Hillenmeyer to fill the gap. Urlacher now officially has an “injury prone” label.

 Big loss.

Derrick Brooks is still unsigned and St. Louis Rams released linebacker Chris Draft.

It was a tough battle for both teams.. You can say the fake punt blew the game for the bears but then again the bears should have never been in the positiion with the lead late. Their scoring drive, 3rd down and harris gets flagged for aVERY VERY questionable 5 yard illegal contact and better yet NBC showed Hester was off the line and should have been illegal formation. The penalties have to be limited. We only had 6 but they were big plays. A couple of holdings and the illegal contact..

Mitchell_M wrote:

But you HAD to go and mention Favre, didn’t you? ;)

Yes, I did ! People will contiune to compare Rodgers to Favre for as long as he plays for the Packers, and then they will compare the next guy to Favre as well, so get used to it :-)
I was not very impressed with Rodgers performance yesterday. Based on yesterdays game he has made little improvement from last year.

bizzle4… I agree the illegal contact on Harris was a ticky-tack call, the FJ (or SJ.. don’t remember what side it was) will probably get a downgrade for that one.
As for Hester being off the line ? no I don’t think so, then it would have been flagged. The game anouncers are not excactly rules experts (often they have no clue what so ever…) wether or not a player is on the LOS or not is not based on the lines on the field, or the ball (which is were the officials feet are) it is based upon an imaginary line through the belt of the snapper, if any part of a the player brakes that line, he’s on the LOS. and usually officials give offensive players the benefit of doubth, unless the DB is in press coverage.

Chris is an ex-NFL player, and he has no clue to the rules? Most of the announcers are ex-NFL players, yet they have "no clue what so ever" to the rules? Are you an expert in the rules?
I admit I’m not an expert, but somethings are plain to see, and that one was.

Tony – Yes Chris has no clue about the specifics of the rules, he and the rest of the annoucners have very little rules knowledge, they know holding is illegal, they know grabbing and twisting the facemask is. Other than the obvious, they know nothing. This particular case is not a dificult rule, but I bet you no one has ever told them what the requirements are for a player to be on the LOS, go back and check my last post, that should tell you the requirements. I’ve seen the play over a couple of time, and I still think Hester was on the LOS in that situation.
Do I consider my self an expert ? well, at least a semi-expert, I officiate football at lower levels, but in difference to you, Chris and most other fans, I’ve actually read the rulebook ! If you still don’t agree with me, please write an email to Mike Peireira, (he’s VP of Officiating for the NFL), and ask him about that specific play ! I bet you a lot of money he agrees with me on that one.

400meters… this was not a stab at Rodgers .. I only said, I was not impressed by his overall performance this game, if you check one of my previous posts in this tread, you’ll see I actually write some positive about Rodgers. The improvements I look for him to make are the pre-snap reads (that comes with experience you know …) If he does his pre-snap reads better, he can adjust his protection, so he doesn’t have to run for his life, he can adjust a wr’s route to get rid of the ball quicker, or he can change the whole play. If you go and look at games with Favre or Peyton Manning, pay more attention to how they act before the snap, then compare that to Rodgers. They do a lot more checks before the snap, then try to see how the defense lines up, which DB is covering what wr and so on …

Other than that, Rodgers is great QB, but he also has a very strong wr corps to help him, something Favre was missing for most of his years.

Brandon, how many times have you heard annoucners, after a Referee has explained a ruling on the field go "Really ?? I didn’t know that " (sometimes the NFL officiating department even calls up the announcers and ask them to correct their comments if they are way of on the rules, much more off than this one ofcourse…)
If you want to learn the rules, listening to Collinsworth and his fellow announcers is not the best way, they know only the basics, they don’t know all the finer details, exceptions, interpretations and so on. The best place for fans to learn more rules is to watch “official review” on nfl.com, a segment where some calls from each week are explained by Mike Pereira.

To break down this situation from the Packer game once more:
The illegal contact by Harris was, like I said a ticky-tack call, first of all, I think the contact is insignificant, it didn’t impeed Hester in any way, second it’s made at excactly 5 yds from the LOS, the depth perception could have been an issue her, as the SJ who makes the call, is probably about 25 yds down field. And I think the SJ will be given a downgrade for this call by his supervisor. The one argument that would favor the SJ in this situation, is that his angle for seeing contact is better that the tv cameras, sometimes a play looks very different from the tv pictures than it does for the officials on the field.

The requirements for a player being on the LOS is like I said, has nothing to do with the ball, it is based upon an imaginary line that goes through the belt of the snapper. To be on the LOS, a part of the players body (except his hands) has to break that line, from the camera angle I got the best view, I think Hesters helmet breaks the beltline of the snapper on this play. The red line that TV put out there indicated the forwardmost point of the ball, if Hester facemask was “on” that red line, he would have been in the neutral zone, and it would have been an offensive offside (the Bears were flagged for that earlier). The other possible legal position for a player (other than QB under center) is to be in the backfield.
To be legaly in the backfield, is not based on the ball, or the snapper, it’s based upon the nearest lineman, and an imaginary line through his rearmost part (except legs or feet) in this case, that player would be the left tackle, who also is quite far back of the ball, but his head still breaks the beltline of the snapper. Hester is extremly close to parallel with the LT in this case. If I was to be very picky, Hester could arguably be in what’s called “no mans land” on this play, but since Harris was lined up about 6 yds of the LOS, it really doesn’t matter if Hester is a few inches behind the beltline of the snapper, if the HL (in this case) thinks he’s close enough to be considered on the LOS, he IS on the LOS. Now, if the officials are that picky about minor things like this, the games would be an extremly boring flag-fest, it would be the officials deciding the game and not the players.
If Harris had been in press coverage, this might have been ruled different, since it would then benefit Hester to steal a few inches of leverage, to avoid a bump.

So to try to end this, if this had been ruled an illegal formation, all it would do is offset the illegal contact by Harris, and the down would have been replayed, so we’re really getting into a would-have, should-have, could-have situation, The Bears could have scored on that replay … bla bla bla ..
My point is, the games was called the way it was. No camera angle shown had anywere near the angle the HL had to rule Hester on the LOS or in the backfield, to put any blame on the HL in this case is just plain stupid, sure officials are just humans, and humans make mistakes, but NFL officials are way to good to blow a simple call like that.

I assume you’re refering to the Ed Houchili situation …A fwd pass vs. fumble is not a simple call
That call has to be made in a split second, and is along with pass interference, the most difficult calls to make in football, and probalbly among the top 3 most difficult calls in all of sports.
It might look easy from your couch, when you can watch the play over and over again with nothing else going on around you. Put your self on the field when enormous football players are flying around at full speed. The ref also has to watch other action, like things regarding the safety of the passer at the same time.

BTW… the simple call I was refering to, was a player being on the LOS or not.