Mike McCarthy during yesterday’s presser:
We have a lot of work to do. I say it all the time, and I mean it. We’ll correct it with the players tomorrow. It’s important to get it corrected. We don’t ever sweep anything under the rug around here. That will never change, because we feel like we’re going to go into a hornet’s nest up there in Detroit with their home opener.
He’s right of course. The Packers’ performance during Monday night’s game was hardly optimum, on any level. In fact, about the only two players you could grade out as having nearly perfect games were the two Aarons – Rodgers and Kampman. And even their efforts can be improved upon.
McCarthy has a long list of things he wants to work on, I have no doubt, but if he’s looking for suggestions he could do worse than BratsandBeerGuy’s suggested To Do List. It covers the major points that the team needs to address, the most important of which is the inability of the defense to get off the field on third down. Where I would differ with my esteemed fellow blogger is item number 4 – Opening Up the Playbook.
B&BG writes:
Overall it was a pretty conservative gameplan MM used last night, an understandable strategy given it was Aaron Rodgers’ first start. Next week against Detroit I would expect to see a little more variation and more aggressive play calling leading into the Dallas game.
I understand the impulse, but I think following it would be a mistake. Perhaps we’ll see a few more multiple receiver formations, but as I wrote last week, McCarthy needs to keep things tight and heavy formation-wise the first couple of games. The Packers don’t need to open things up against Detroit to win. Now Dallas and Indianapolis? That’s a different story.
