My first thought was QB Brett Favre is blaming his teammates when I read this:
"I'm sure there were some guys on our team who thought, 'What did I get myself into?,"' Favre said. "I don't think anyone knew what we were up against from a weather standpoint. And I think being a real young team, it probably was a little bit of a shock to them."
But in the end I think he was trying to make some of his young teammates from feeling too bad about how they played at Chicago. It was a fluke game because it was the worst cold weather he had ever played in.
"It was like zero, three degrees, something like that," Favre said. "But there was no wind, and yeah, it was cold and they won the game, but I think we would be much better suited playing in something like that than the wind.
"The wind to me means everything. Shotgun snaps were moving, punt snaps were moving, the ball, it was a tossup -- I throw it here, it ends up over here."
At first I didn't think much of this comment because the weather didn't seem to effect QB Kyle Orton as much as Favre, but although Chicago didn't turn the ball over they weren't very good on offense either. With the Packers playing man coverage, Orton just needed to wait for one of his receivers to get a step on a 10 yard route out-and-turn and didn't have to worry about linebackers or lineman on a zone blitz dropping back to play the passing lanes on a quick pass.
Despite the losing season, Chicago's run defense remains excellent. The Packers tried earlier in the game to put an extra run blocker in the backfield and RB Ryan Grant got nothing on those plays. Where Chicago's defense has really struggled is in the pass defense especially at the safety positions. Also, Chicago plays a cover-2 defense which generally is attacked in the soft spots in the coverage past the linebackers but in front of the safeties. But the wind was so bad that Favre couldn't get any touch on his passes to those spots. Mike McCarthy still deserves a lot of the blame for not having a good offensive plan for bad weather, but the bad weather did help Chicago's defense a lot more than it helped the Packers defense.
