He had a deer in the headlights type look at the start of a couple of plays when he didn’t like how the defense looked and he was frantically trying to get everything set up. But, once the ball was snapped that look was gone.
I disagree with LindsayBluth and think Rodgers made his teammates look better. He threw well placed balls (that were occasionally dropped through no fault of his.) He threw it away when he was in trouble, instead of trying to force something. And, he was able to pick up defenders coming at him and drop the ball to receivers for short gains. He didn’t make many mistakes, and he did a lot of things right.
Also, Nadir, if you are going to be gracious and say the opposing team won fair and square you might want to omit the “They got lucky” part of the game rundown. It’s absurd. This was a close game. If the Steelers had been able to drive down the field in the final minutes and score they wouldn’t have been lucky to win, and neither were the Packers. They put up an excellent defense that was able to stop the Steelers when needed and force a couple of turnovers. This defense along with Rodger’s play made the Packers the better team last night. Luck didn’t have much to do with the outcome.
oh. And, I was impressed with how well Legursky did. All of the talk before the game made you think that Ben was going to spend most of the game on his back. I think he was sacked once, and hurried a few times. But, it wasn’t the worst OLine outing I have seen. I think a bigger factor in the pressure is that the Packers were able to use that spy player a few times to keep Ben in the pocket and unable to run up the middle.
No tears here. We really have no right to be bitter. I’ve been fortunate enough to see my team win two championships in my short life thus far (26 years). That’s a lot more than millions of fans of other teams (not just football) may ever get to experience.
That’s why I root for teams like the Saints or the Patriots (in 2001) when my Steelers are no longer in the running. I’d also love to see the Cubs win a series in my lifetime.
The numbers do not tell you everything. I can show you lots of games with the team leading in stats gets their ass kicked. Running between the 20s will give you nice numbers and no real threats. Game stats need to be analyzed .
The packers were threatening to kill the Steelers when the injuries slowed them down.
I thought the O-line looked much better than we ever could have hoped a few weeks ago. Legursky was fine. Heath Miller didn’t look like his usual self though, in blocking or running routes. Maybe it’s just me but I thought he seemed off somehow.
My favourite whipping boy has been Bruce Arians for so long now that I can barely bear to bring him up again but the playcalling was terrible. He was doing so much better when he was calling plays to cater to Ben’s injuries. Back to his old ways last night. The quick outs are OK for forcing the DBs off the line of scrimmage but where were the screens to Mendenhall? Why oh why oh WHY will he not design plays to get Ben out of the pocket once in a while? The good protection almost hurts Ben because it forces him to be something he’s not - a pocket passer. He doesn’t read zone coverage well. Sorry but it’s true. He needs that pump fake to force the D to tip their hand, he needs to get out of the pocket to force them to take their guys downfield. He’s not Montana or Manning or Brady, he’s Favre/Elway and he needs to improvise either because the D forces him to or because the play design forces him to.
Green Bay played the right coverages and made him look bad. Kudos to them. We were outcoached as well as being outplayed.
That’s misleading, because when the Packers intercept a ball and take it in for a TD, their offense does not get “a chance” to gain any yardage, yet they do get the (much more important) 7 points. Then on the 2nd interception, they had a short field to operate with, and so, again, they couldn’t gain more yardage.
I absolutely agree with Hentor. The Packers actually seemed to stop “trying” to pressure Big Ben in the 2nd half. They were burned by a big run for a first down, which made them start using Matthews as a spy. I think that was poor strategy on GB’s part, and made the game closer than it should have been. Especialy given Big Ben’s “gimpy” ankle, I think a better strategy would have been to go after him. But GB won anyway, so what the hell do I know?
It was at that point that everything Nadir had written previously was flushed down the toilet. Of course they got lucky – they won a football game! All the game planning, all the practice and preparation, all the film study, all the contact drills – every bit of that is done for one reason: So you can make the play when you get lucky.
Luck doesn’t play a major role in every play, but it plays a major role in just about every play that matters. It’s what you do with that luck that separates a W from an L.
Any time someone says “awww, they just won because they get lucky”, they’re playing the sour grapes role and sounding like an idiot. Of course they got lucky. And when they got lucky, they capitalized. When the other team got lucky, they didn’t. End of story.
I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of coming into this thread and gloating, but Airman has generally been a class act and it’s his thread, so I won’t.
But boy it felt good watching the Packers beat the Steelers.
Maybe instead of attempting to formulate flawed semantic arguments, you two would care to simply explain how the terms “fair and square” and “lucky” are somehow mutually exclusive. Is that what you seem to be claiming?
The Pack was beat on paper. They got lucky on the field and won the game. Fair and square.
I’ll watch your ideas float around in the bowl for awhile, if you don’t mind Briston. Yawn.
Turnovers don’t go on paper? Penalties don’t count on paper? Average yards per play don’t go on paper? How about touchdowns, do those go on paper? Field goals? Missed field goals? 4th down conversions? Those don’t go on the paper? How about the final score? Does that go on paper?
Yeah, the Steelers had 14% more yards and 6 minutes time of possession. Those must be the only things that go on your magical “paper”.
Seriously? So if you hear that so-and-so QB threw for 465 yards on 66 attempts, you think to yourself, “Wow, with those amazing numbers, his team MUST have won the game”? Because when I see those numbers, I’m almost certain that his team was playing from behind the entire game and most likely lost.
Numbers don’t mean as much as you seem to think they do (except for the score, of course.)
You seem to think the Packers were “lucky” because the numbers were in favor of the Steelers (and not by that much FFS). You think the Steelers won “on paper,” but not in reality only because the Packers were lucky. That’s giving the stats a lot, lot more weight than they should be given.
You cannot say that the Packers won because they were lucky. They made the plays and the Steelers didn’t. Now, if someone is arguing that the Packers dominated, then it makes sense to look at the stats and the scoreboard and so on. One could also say that they were fortunate that Ben sucked so bad, but I think that in this case there’s a big difference between fortunate and lucky.
The Packers won the game by making the plays they needed to. The Steelers lost the game by failing to make the plays that they needed to. The score is reflective of the game - it could have come out very differently if only one or two things happened differently than they did, but they didn’t. Saying that the Packers were lucky sounds like sour grapes. “We don’t live in Seattle,” to paraphrase Bengals coach Sam Wyche.
There are very few situations in which I would say that a team won a football game by “getting lucky”. One example would be a fluky Hail Mary pass at the end of a game. First of all, almost every team that wins a championship needs some degree of good luck anyway. You can always point to some individual plays during any game that could be considered good luck for one team and bad luck for another. And this is pretty much true for all team sports.
