Defensive staff looking good

Since the firing of defensive coordinator Bob Sanders a week after the Packers’ 2008 season ended and following a long search for a new coordinator, the defensive staff head coach Mike McCarthy is putting together is starting to look pretty good. First Dom Capers takes the defensive coordinator job and this week he brought the additions of outside linebackers coach Kevin Greene and safeties coach Darren Perry. In the words of Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, Perry is “the best defensive back coach in the league” and “they’ve really got a great defensive staff.”

Now we will see what the staff can do with the players the Packers have and the ones they will acquire this offseason.  Speculation is running wild about who will play here and who will play there. I’m not going there just yet. For one, Capers said at his introductory press conference that we might not even see the 3-4 this year, he is going to play the defense his players can play and go from there.

I know Greene will bring intensity to the linebackers and my guess the defense in general. Perry will work with cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt Jr. to improve an already good secondary, but a secondary that can take it to another level as well. I don’t believe the thought that the Packers will move Charles Woodson to safety, but I guess anything is possible. It didn’t work all that well last year, though.

I am really looking forward to the minicamps and OTCs. This is going to be fun to watch and I believe the Packers defense will be better in 2009. How much better remains to be seen, but it will be new and it will be something the the other NFC North teams will not be used to seeing twice a year from the Packers, so for at least this year it will take more game-planning time. Even then, as the defense evolves it will probably be changing every week, making it even harder to prepare for.

So sit back and enjoy what should be an entertaining off-season. I’m going to chime in Friday or Saturday with my Super Bowl pick, I think the game has the makings of a classic, great storyline anyway with the Whisenhunt factor and all. More to come…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 9:28 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.

  • http://myspace.com/themiz34 Armand in NJ

    i am very excited to see what the offseason will produce now, this is what was needed…all we need is that D to improve to a marginal 10th ranked D…and we’ll be well on our way!

  • http://www.scotrstone.com Scot

    I agree. This has been a good start to our off-season. Getting the right coaching staff in place was critical. I have a lot more faith the defense will make improvements from last year. If we can just get at least one good defensive player through the draft, and one through free agency, we could be set. Then we need to turn our attentions to with that offensive line, which needs an overhaul, too. Rodgers needs guys he can depend on so he’s not runningfor his life every other snap. We need him to stay healthy. McCarthy has done his part, now let’s see if TT can match that. Now’s the time to step up and finish what he came here to do. I think he’s done a reasonable job of clearing out Sherman’s mistakes and adding good young talent. Now let’s finish it off and complete this squad, and give the coaches something good to work with. I don’t mind developing players, but not ALL of your players should be in development.

  • Jeff

    I’m good with the changes to the coaching staff. I am VERY happy to hear some of Capers’s statements, but I’m tempering my enthusiasm. Coaches don’t tackle. Coaches don’t shed blocks. Coaches don’t remember to get their heads around and find the ball. Coaches don’t select angles or time their leaps.

    Sooner or later, it’s about the guys on the field. Our corners are aging. Our linebackers have sometimes seemed invisible. I only see one really good D-lineman, but you could make an argument for Pickett. Collins came on this past year, but I always got the feeling those guys just weren’t really together back there. They got burned way too often, and it seemed more a matter of miscommunications and mental lapses than anything else to me.

    Hopefully, better coaching will improve that. It sure was good to see Schotzy go.

  • Pack4life

    Outside of the Packers, only 2 playmakers reside in the NFC north C Johnson in Detroit and the Vikes Running Back thats it. Philly blitzed the Vikes every down and they wilted under the pressure. No one in the division has enough offense to make a gambling defense pay. Capers & Co will get this squared away pretty quickly.
    My worry in on the other side of the ball, where stats are misleading. When the Pack needs tough yards where are they going to come from? We have no lineman that we can count on every down. Thats where improvement must happen.

  • Roy Jamison

    Great points by Jeff and Pack. And Al, you gotta be kidding me about Capers using anything but a 3-4. Where is any pass rush with the present cast of characters? There is none. It’s waiting time for personnel moves, but that’s where we are. If we could find players like Greene and Perry were, that would be a giant help. TT is on the clock. And that clock is ticking.

  • Dan

    One of the things I’m looking forward to the most is watching our offense become more physical. Sanders defensive philosophy was vanilla, so our offense never practiced against 90% of the packages used.

    Look at Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Both teams have o-lines that understand physical play because they face it in practice. A couple of good fights between an offensive lineman and d-lineman would be a good thing to see during training camp.

    If you practice soft, you play soft. Capers, Greene, and Perry won’t stand for that. The question will be whether we have offensive players who step up to the challenge.

  • Oconomowockid

    Roy you are right the clock is ticking for TT and MM. Perform or get prepared to see the door!!

  • ScottS

    The Packers may be among the youngest teams in the league but they are not among the least experienced. Which players on the defense could you say are not now veterans? Add a great coaching staff to a team of experienced young players and you have a recipe for a long-time winner. I believe that Thompson’s window of opportunity is now open. What he built should now be paying off. I hope going 6-10 will motivate this team never to allow that many losses again. They have the youth, the talent, the experience and now the leadership.
    And since I’m feeling so optimistic today, I’m going to predict that Justin Harrell will flourish under Capers. Or is that going too far?
    GO PACK GO!!

  • Jeff

    Keep up that optimism there, Scott. Personally, I think Harrell is a total bust, but I would be so . . . so . . . happy to be proven wrong. Who knows? It took Collins until his fourth season to show up. Driver wasn’t much to write home about his first three years either. Kampman had 7 sacks total in his first three seasons. My recollection is that I didn’t think much of Aaron Rodgers after two years either.

    That said, he really does need to show some promise this year – at the very least, he needs to get healthy and play in a number of games so we can see what we might have in him.

    As for Thompson’s window of opportunity – This will be his fifth season. We need to compete for a playoff spot or I’m going to be hard-pressed to remain patient.

  • iccyfan

    ScottS Says: January 31st, 2009 at 9:38 am
    “And since I’m feeling so optimistic today, I’m going to predict that Justin Harrell will flourish under Capers.”

    I don’t think that’s a bad prediction at all. Coming out of college, Harrell was not a renowned pass rusher. He’s a hold the point of attack lineman who’s supposed to eat up multiple blockers trying to move him out. You need those guys in a 3-4 and I hope he steps up and plays a big role! I don’t know that he’ll ever play up to the expectations of his draft position, but he doesn’t need to be a total bust!

  • Roy Jamison

    I’ve been a big critic of the “selection” of Justin Harrell as a number one pick. Based on his injuries, there was no way a competent organization should have chosen him in the first round. Either let someone else do it, or gamble he’ll tumble to the fourth round or so. Even “if” Harrell can get healthy, I am wondering where you put this guy in a 3-4? Maybe his role will be backing up Pickett.

  • JeffN

    I wold have to think Harrell would best fit at defensive end in a 3-4 based on his size but I suppose you could put him at either if he get’s healthy. There is no doubt in my mind he would be a fine player if he was healthy. Some players are just injury prone. In any case tho if you are going to criticize this draft pick you have to criticize all the first round picks that Wolf busted on as well. That’s the way I see it.

  • Jeff

    Though I think the Harrell pick was a bad one, it’s not one pick that makes me want to bust on Thompson. It’s the fact that, after four years, he’s managed to bring one reasonably effective lineman in through the draft.

    Yes – with Wolf there were Ross Verba and John Michiels, but there was also Mike Wahle, Earl Dotson, Adam Timmerman, Mark Chmura, Aaron Taylor, Tauscher, Clifton, KGB over nine years. (I’m just dealing with linemen here)

    But it comes down to results. If the team wins, he’s a freaking genius, and I’ll sing his praises. If the team comes back with another klunker ass season, not so much. It’s his fifth season coming up here – if Thompson wants to be compared favorably with Ron Wolf, his team needs to be competing strongly against the class of the NFL in the next year or two.

    If we aren’t there, regardless of dissecting the drafts, Thompson will fall short of the mark in my opinion.

  • ScottS

    6-10 is a klunker ass record but if you think about it, the Packers season wasn’t a klunker. I expected the Packers to win every Sunday and they were in it until the final minutes nearly every game. That’s exciting football. And that’s what it’s all about. The Packers did compete strongly against the class of the NFL but came out on the short end more than we wanted them to. You can bet that every team they played this year went into the game expecting a battle. Nobody underestimated the Packers. They all knew they would have to play their very best ball to win and that’s what they did. I never felt opponents were looking past the Packers to their next game. And I don’t believe they will be looking past them this year either.

  • Jeff

    Sorry Scott – you either win or you don’t. 6-10 is 6-10. Competing strongly means winning at least as much as you lose. We didn’t do that. Like you, I am encouraged that we didn’t get blown out a lot, but that don’t pay the freight. Exciting football just isn’t all that exciting when your team is losing that often. I’ve been around long enough that last year wasn’t the first losing team I’ve pulled for, but I won’t claim to have enjoyed the 70s and 80s all that much.

    If the team shows up 9-7 this year and competes for a wild card spot, I’m good with that. I’m not an all or nothing kinda guy – steady progress is acceptable. But if we’re going to compare Thompson to Wolf, we need to accept that Thompson has had one winning season in his first 4 where Wolf had 8 winning seasons out of nine and helped bring the team to a pair of Super Bowl appearances.

    My point was that Ted has a ways to go before we start making that comparison regardless of what we think of their drafting skills.

  • ScottS

    Jeff you are absolutely right that winning matters most. Therefore, to compare Thompson and Wolfe based on any other factors is pointless. There are simply too many variables that go into building a winning team. Each manager is faced with so many different situations and scenarios at any given time that to compare them based on anything but their records could never be done objectively. I just hope that in four more years it will be Thompson with the better record.

  • JeffN

    Very good point on you don’t judge a GM by one bad pick. I totally agree with that. Everyone agrees that JH was a bad pick but still has 1 season to prove all of us wrong and none of us think he will. So what’s there to debate about in that? Nothing, we all agree.

    Now as far as games being close… I give the NFL and the salary cap concept that is implemented more credit for that than I do any GM.

    In the end winning does matter most that’s true. So TT and MM have this season and next to prove themselves. In my opinion the Pack is going to be pretty good this next season making some offensive improvements but most of the improvements will come on defense. I think they have more talent on D than they do on O with the exception of the defensive lineman. However now that they have a D-coordinator that is going to know how to use this talent their going to be pretty good.

    Blaming MM for Bob Sanders is fine that was his mistake but what’s more important is how this team moves forward right now and their headed in the right direction.

    As for comparing Wolf/Holmgren to TT/MM from a results perspective. We will see if they get there or not. I think it’s important for fans to consider that TT and MM will get there a different way than Wolf/Holmgren did. The times are different and the situation is different than back then.

  • Jeff

    I didn’t figure the debate was about Harrell so much as how his pick reflects on Thompson and our comparisons of Thompson vs Wolf – an intellectual agrument to be sure, but what else do we have at the moment once we’re done reading about our new strength coordinator?

    My suggestion is that Wolf brought in significant line talent in spite of misfiring badly on guys like John Michiels where Thompson’s only solid line acquisitions in four years have been Colledge and Pickett. I don’t think our current staff has been very good at bringing in or developing linemen on either side of the ball, and with our tackles aging and our defensive line looking weak in all phases, I’m concerned.

    It’s entirely possible that I’m suffering from cranial-rectal inversion, but that’s the way I see it. Yep, it’s all about results. I don’t much care how we get there, but if we’re going to make the comparison, here goes. Ron Wolf’s fifth season started a run of three division titles and two Super Bowl appearances. I would love to see our team surpass that record, but unless we see some significant improvement on both sides of the line, I am pretty doubtful.