Packers are surprising, but House of Horrors awaits

The Green Bay Packers are 3-0 on the young NFL season and have won football games in each area. The win against the Eagles was won with special teams, the win against the Giants was won with offense and the win against San Diego was won with a combination of all three. The Packers have now won seven games in a row and seem to be gaining confidence with each one. I sat in row one behind the Packers bench against the Chargers and the scene on the sidelines was intense but never did the players show a sense of panic. This team might be for real.

I certainly hope saying that does not jinx them, because they do have some serious problems running the football and that won’t change the next two weeks with Minnesota and Chicago on the schedule. Hopefully Brett Favre gets some rest in practice because he will be throwing 40 times a game the next two weeks for sure. Favre is getting into a groove like we haven’t seen in years. I love the offense head coach Mike McCarthy has developed due to the lack of having a good running back. McCarthy has taken a page of Mike Holmgren’s playbook and simply uses the quick-hitter pass as a good as a run. Somehow Favre has bought back into it.

Favre’s six touchdown, one pick performance of the last two weeks is borderline ridiculous. The guy is weeks away from being 38 years old and is playing like he’s 28. McCarthy has found a way to connect with Brett that has him playing like one of the NFL’s best again. If this keeps up and his arm doesn’t wear out, the Packers will be in good hands, as they have been the last 15 years. Of course, they do need to develop at least a pedestrian ground game. Right now they simply stink at run blocking or they don’t have a running back. As much as I hate to say it this major flaw could haunt them big time come wintertime.

Watching Favre up close and personal yesterday after tying the record and the Nick Barnett interception was priceless. Packer fans are the luckiest fans in the world. Just think how the Bears feel after last night’s stellar (cough, cough) performance by Wrecks Grossman. Or how the Vikings or the Lions felt after their ugly losses yesterday. Clearly after three weeks the Packers are the favorite in the division, and division play begins this week with the Packers at Minihaha and Chicago at Detroit. Let the games begin. Right now I like Green Bay and Detroit.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Al Davis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Reid

    If the passing game continues to work, won’t that eventually open up the run? Teams will have to keep more defenders back to help against the pass and the runs should open up, when they aren’t 100% predictable. It seems the biggest problem with the run is that the defense knows before the play that it’s going to be a run. Heck, even I can tell most of the time when we’re going to run the ball.

  • Jake

    The Packers running game has gotten of to a very slow start but i think things are looking up a little bit. Deshawn Wynn had a decent game against the G-Men, and Brandon Jackson had much better game this past week with limited carries. The Packers as a team had fewer rushing attempts than the L.T. and one of those was Brett Favre’s kneel down at the end of the game. Wynn is averaging 5.2 yards a carry with 2 td’s this season. He has 30 fewer yards than Jackson with 25 fewer attempts. Maybe he is the answer to this pourous running attack.

  • Paul

    My thoughts are that TT and MM were banking on Moss playing the our green and gold, which would have dramatically opened up the running game. Without Moss, we have to be content with short passes. I don’t think that short passes will open up the ground game much, downfield coverage comes from safeties playing back; now, they can play up because that’s where the throw is going anyway.

  • Jake

    Even without moss they have the weapons to move the ball downfield. Getting Jennings back and his explosiveness is going to be a huge plus.