Attribution: All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Dave S., Mark M., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter
We need a tag for Jordan Love. J-lo? Taken. J-Love? Long and not subtle, but I guess it’ll do.
He throws a gorgeous, and increasingly accurate spiral. I love the deep drop back for (3) reasons. Name them:
1.
2.
3.
Time’s up:
- Allows his stable of skinny, fast, one-syllable last name, rookie receivers to operate “in space”.
- Tires out those 350+ lb DTs.
- Gives J-Love more wiggle room, ability to scamper for those first down markers or, ala Colin Kapernick, (r.i.p.–his NFL career collusion wise), much more.
Said stable: Reed, Heath, Wicks, Doubs…Watson—a “2 syllable-er” is a rail as well—(as was Davante…they tend to fill out once they hit 27). Reed literally jogged past the Charger secondary last week—32 yd end around TD scamper–has a what, 24” waist?
J-Lo needs to work on the long ball. Cannon he’s got. To date he’s too long or too short to some wide open—did I mention “in space”?—dudes. I’m confident he’ll dial that in.
Plus the nature of any team on the rise is hunger…take nothing for granted. The Lions are good…to go in there and have it not even be close was a big win. (Plus Watson was interfered with on a sure TD play. Pure bullshit—right before half in case you were distracted by the cranberry sauce.)
Finally, we have a good return guy.
Sober: Not at all confident in our kicker.
Wait…which ‘bot was all high and mighty… “No Football on the Brain” this summer past?
-D
True dat. Don’t forget the D-line is starting to wake up and that the second string secondary—Ballantine and Valentine (It’s a love fest), is doing a lot better than we have any right to expect. Give us a healthy Aaron Jones and the Pack will be formidable.
What about Big Love or Mighty Love for a nickname? Puppy Love?
G
I have been impressed by the speed of Reed. I think I’ve seen two occasions where he made a catch, a hit was put on him, but he wiggled away and acCELerated. You can’t coach speed. You can only draft it.
Love & the rookie TE Musgrave didn’t connect on a TD last week. The TE looked to his right, but that’s where the coverage was. Love instead threw it back shoulder to his left, and it fell harmlessly. He was hoping/expecting that Musgrave would look that way. (This analysis is courtesy of the JS. I am not that smart.)
I guess that demonstrates how receivers and QBs need to work together to get on the same page. I think the connection becomes instinctual. It is not reasoned out step by step.
Let me give you a non-football example of instinctual behavior. Early on my bike trip, on my new bike, under load & on hills, I was having a terrible problem with the gears shifting on me. Here I am, straining up a hill, pushing hard, and without warning the chain slips to a different gear. Shit! It actually hurts the nut sack.
After a while, without really thinking about it, I was able to adjust my use of the front & rear derailleurs to virtually eliminate the problem.
…Then Professor Pete explained that I needed to stay away from “cross chaining”, e.g. small (easy) inner front chain ring with one of the small (hard) outer rings on the rear cassette. That inner to outer reach is subject to skipping. And I realized that is what I had been instinctively doing.
BTW, none of this matters until the bike is loaded with 40-50 lbs of gear. Without a load you can do whatever you want.
Mark M.
The young Packers are impressive. If they get some of their injured players back, they might do something.
Then there’s the old Packers. Do you remember this guy? I vaguely do, perhaps because he played during the darkest period of Packer football, the 70’s. He has (sort of) notoriety for starring for two teams named the Packers. The South St. Paul Packers and the Green Bay Packers. Kind of a Gopher sandwich.
“Former Gophers running back Jim Carter passed away Thursday, the Pioneer Press confirmed Saturday.
Carter, 75, was the U’s leading rusher on its last Big Ten championship team in 1967. The South St. Paul native had an eight-year NFL career at linebacker with the Green Bay Packers and appeared in the Pro Bowl in 1973.
For the Gophers, Carter played football from 1967-69 and hockey from 1967-68. He was a captain on Murray Warmath’s team. He was inducted into the “M” Club Hall of Fame in 2013.
“’I played with such great guys and great players,” Carter told the U for an article about his induction. “I was never the best player on any one of my teams. It was never about me. We had great teams and I was lucky to be a part of them. I’m honored to be among the great guys and ladies to be in here.’”
Mark O.
Yes, the Jerry Tagge/Rich Campbell/John Hadl years. When the Packers wandered through the desert like the Israelites searching for manna.
The name is vaguely familiar. Played football AND hockey. Ah, for the days when men were men
Mark M.
The dead-arm Bart Starr years: Scott Hunter, Jim Del Gaizo… The horror!
Mark O.
Dan Devine anyone? Chester Marcol?… I remember Sports Illustrated doing a ‘fall from grace’ story on the city of Green Bay—the inference, (logic? hogwash speculation?), being hard times were due to the Pack’s nadir.
I remember Carter for his car dealership…somewhere up north…I thought Wausau, and that is partially correct but Wiki informs me that he started in Eau Claire—close to his roots in the cities. I bet most bots are unaware of his “1988 dealer of the year” and other brushes with dealer fame.
After retiring from the Packers, Carter bought a struggling Ford dealership in Eau Claire, WI.[1] He commenced operating Jim Carter Ford in February 1980. After building the dealership back to profitability and respectability, Carter went on to acquire numerous other automotive businesses around Wisconsin: Bob Johnson Chevrolet-Mazda in Wausau, Car City Honda in Chippewa Falls, Borum-Dyer Volkswagen-Audi in Eau Claire, and Ken Loesch Cadillac-Pontiac-Oldsmobile in Chippewa Falls. He branded them all with his name and operated award-winning dealerships for 25+ years. He was named the Greater Eau Claire Area Small Businessman of the Year in 1987 by the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce; he was named Wisconsin Dealer of the Year in 1988 by the Wisconsin Auto and Truck Dealers Association; he was one of the five national finalists for the Time Magazine Quality Dealer of the Year in 1988. Carter sold all the dealership operations to his long time manager (and protege), Keith Kocourek, in 2005.
-D.
“J-Lo” just might stick for Jordan Love. It’s like just so right there that we gotta run with it. J-Lo and the Pack sure enough pulled their shit together as they crushed the mighty Lions; do we dare to dream that the Pack has struck quarterback gold yet again? J-Lo (yep, I’m trying to make that stick) seems to have the arm, the confidence, the athleticism, the brains, and the leadership skills–and now he’s gaining some hard-earned experience; it’s been cool to watch him get a little better with each game.
I can’t help but contrast that with Randy Wright, Packer QB during the Dark Times. Remember how he always looked like he was going to crap his pants before every snap? And Rich Campbell? He was a first round draft pick out of Cal– a proto A-Rod. He might have actually been pretty good if he had decent coaching. And Jim Carter? RIP. Not a bad linebacker at all, but the fans booed him all the time because Dan Devine benched Ray Nitschke to put him in–Jeez. Dan Devine. His poor fuckin’ dog.
OK. MarkM was talking about instinctive reactions between the quarterback and the receivers. I agree. For sure it’s a thing–almost a sum is greater than the parts thing. Lazard went to the Jets with Rodgers because of that instinctive understanding–and now he’s been benched because he doesn’t have that connection with Zach Wilson.
But shifting to bicycle gears and cross-chaining and bruised nutsacks–I wouldn’t know much about that because I have balls of steel and always stay on the big front chainring. Hmmm… I instinctively sense MarkM calling bullshit right now–perhaps because he recalls what he thinks were sounds of tortured weeping and sobs of agony from behind him as we cranked up the endless, but oh-so-scenic, hills and ridges of the driftless region. Ahem, those were actually, like, tears of joy, man.
DC
Don’t forget Lynn Dickey and the old mantra, “You can lick the Pack, but you can’t lick our Dickey.” And I can’t forget Randy Wright–though I try. I remember Jim Carter, number fifty—he was good, not outstanding, a very capable Kenny Jay sort.
Geoff
I found this on his Wiki:
In 2016, USA Today named Wright the worst starting quarterback in Packers’ history.[2]
Whoa, I beg to differ. He was the off-and-on starter for fours years in the late 80’s and one might say that he mentored the Majic Man, Don Majkowski, who finally led the Pack out of the wilderness into our current epoch. Wright and Lynn Dickey at least gave us flickers of hope in the 80’s and were much better than the series of bum quarterbacks we had in the 70’s, including, to repeat:
The dead-arm Bart Starr years, Scott Hunter, Jim Del Gaizo… The horror!
MarkO
Whoa…the ripped school teacher flexing some sports insights… I missed (or repressed) the fan shooting Devine’s pooch episode. Actually, a sign of a civil society—compared to Colombia where upon his return home, they shot the player in ’94 for giving up a goal at the World Cup. The Wiki—normally stable—must’ve had an editor under the weather for this entry:….was shot 12 times in the head which led to his death”. Perhaps it makes sense. Jordan Blake in Kenosha took 7 in the back and survived, shortly after the George Floyd killing.
As usual my googling led to more—was trying to find out what kind of dog Dandy Dan, (not Don), had. No luck, but serendipity as I found a story giving hope to normal human existence in Brown County (psssst: Let’s keep this quiet lest they are rooted out by the local GOP posse). A group came to his support and offered or did buy him another pooch. Sadly the story also tells of other decrepit evils heaped upon Dan Devine’s family…I’ll spare you. Disgusting. I firmly believe there is a high correlation of arrested development football and Nascar fans to agent orange. Our society needs to turn that around. Idle minds are the devil’s workshop.
Half-full: Devine went on to a very successful run at ND—(3) Sugar Bowl wins and a sterling W-L record over about 5 years. Last, a collection of Packer cartoons popped up on same search—Lyle Lahey. I think I saw one of the Nitschke benching Dennis mentioned—though it had Lombardi in the image. Re: LL: Daily Cardinal vet and respected environmental author—if you trust the wiki.
Packer Cartoons
Lyle Lahey: Wikipedia
I’ll disagree partially with that WR/QB zen thing. More often it is relentless practice and both agreeing the cut, (or hard stop), will occur at exactly 7,11,15…whatever…yards. This is the case since the QB often lets it rip before the WR makes his(her) cut. Instinctual adjustments here risk a pick six But I do agree instincts surface on many plays—if a DB is draped then the back shoulder makes sense (Jordy perfected that, including the imperceptible nudge of the DB to assure separation)…if there is separation, time to light the afterburners, (none of this back shoulder crap)…and of course when the play breaks down…time to find “space”—but also understand which way the QB is rolling and what throw is possible—ton of instinct…or in AI terms: machine learning.
-D.
Interesting. I will be honest, however. The humor didn’t translate for me. I looked at a dozen cartoons and didn’t get a yuk out of any of them.
Mark M.
Agreed. I only looked at a few…like old sitcoms, timing is everything with comedy. And if anything I first felt disdain for Lyle—assuming he was feeding the fire of fan frenzy toward Devine and his family…but that is not fair to Lyle—20/20 hindsight judgement 50 years later.
Wait….50?….yeesh.
Re: Licking Lynn….he did have an arm and coupled with Lofton and John Jefferson (and a good center in Larry McCarren), they did have a few good years in the 80s. I knew Majik had a short bloom but did not know he led the league in passing one year as a Packer.
D.
Lynn Dickey was a gamer. Got seriously injured on multiple occasions but always struggled back.
Mark M.
MarkO may be right, Randy Wright may not have been the WORST Packer quarterback ever–there’s a lot of competition for that distinction–i.e, Tagge and Hunter, and let’s not forget poor old John Hadl. It depends, and that’s the word that springs to mind when I think of Randy Wright–Depends. Like I said earlier, he always looked like he was about to crap his pants when he got the ball. As I vaguely recall, his O-line was a sieve and QBs were more brutally sacked in those days–and so the poor incontinent bastard became so gun-shy that he’d fling that ball away as fast as he could; it didn’t seem to matter where…
Dennis C.
Back to nicknames—Air Jordan?
G
Trademark violation. We’d have to pay a royalty to damn Nike every time we used it.
I don’t feel any urgency at this time to crown Jordan Love with a legendary moniker. He hasn’t quite proven himself to be the next Favre or Rodgers, yet. Maybe a year from now I could commit to that. Currently I don’t think he compares to those two in terms of 1) pocket presence, and 2) long ball accuracy. Hopefully those will develop with time.
MarkO
Ah yes. Definitely valid points, MarkO, about JoLo’s/J-Love’s/Air Jordan’s/J-Money-Love-Machine’s pocket presence and long ball accuracy. Time will tell.
DC
(Exchanged after the December 3rd Kansas City game)
Looks like a year went by in a week’s time—J-Lo ascension wise…re MO’s comment.) I’ll be tickled if we don’t stumble and make the playoffs—everything went perfect last night—can’t count on that.
Observations:
- FPFS: Jet sweep to Reed for 9. Great call—make sure the D is aware of our new element (liquid mercury).
- Kicker was flawless.
- J-Lo was flawless—so cool to see so many WRs WTFO…in space. And lest we forget these are the FSSSLN WRs…(I forgot one below: Wicks (Dontavian), had 3 catches last night—now corrected along with a typo or two. Great job spreading the ball around by L & L. Could be a match made in heaven. J-Lo is young enough to learn and trust…(unlike our former drama queen qb).
- That high arcing pass on 4th and short, where he dropped it amongst a host of defenders to Doubs, was amazing. One of those: “No, No, No…..Yes!” plays
- Spurs of the NBA have had lady luck by their side and with a good coach, (Greg Popovich) have turned David Robinson and Tim Duncan into multiple titles—(5). Now they have a 3rd lottery pick, Victor Wembanyama. Our Pack may be in similar straights—Favre, A-Raj and now J-Lo. Though 5 coaches and fewer titles. Ray Rhodes (1 failed season) and Mike Sherman—(6 so-so seasons). We coulda-woulda-shoulda had more rings out of Favre had Holmgren not bolted. I wonder what the backstory was there? Not wanting to raise his (4) girls in Brown County? Now that would be a great headline—GOP kept Packer trophy case barren.
- Watched the condensed version, (they only show a handful of replays and I watch all sports with the sound off—goes back to having Uke on the radio and sound off for Brewer games…) Thus I am aware of but one awful call. Valentine mugged ex-Packer MV-S. Slo-mo makes those calls obvious. Can’t figure out what the rule on that is…looks like they scrapped it being reviewable?
- I think rushing 3, especially against a good QB is beyond stupid. Mahomes easily scampers forward and finds guys wide freaking open on 3rd and long. The field’s too big, arms are too strong…the WRs always find space. It’s shocking how wide open guys are after the play breaks down.
- I’m fine with Jones being out of the line-up—explosive? Yes. Fumbles?—Yes. Too much dancing and too many TFLs?—Yes. They are better w/out him. Give him a number in the 80s and reinvent him as a “possession” slot receiver ala Jonathan Edelman or James White was to Brady. BTW: “possession” receiver means just enough for a first, usually on 3rd down. Cris Carter of the Vikes persecuted packer fans for years. Jones is much tougher for a DB or a safety to take down, than he is for the front 7…against the latter he turns to dancing…not running north-south. Can’t say I blame him. Running back is a gladiator trade. Short careers, tons of hits to the head.
-D.
FPFS: First Play From Scrimmage
L & L: Love and LaFleur
WTFO: Wide The F Open
FSSSLN: Fast, Skinny, Single Syllable Last Name
TFLs: Tackled For a Loss
Good analysis of the game, Dave, peppered with um, unique acronyms. (“FSSSLN” – how sticky is that?) And you made a wise choice by watching the Packers-Chiefs game with the sound off. Announcer Cris Collingsworth’s non-stop, sycophantic prattle about Patrick Mahomes was nauseating. Even when Green Bay had the ball and Mahomes was, of course, off the field, Collingsworth would eschew analysis of the plays in favor of statements like, “Green Bay better hang onto the ball as long as they can, because once the ball is in Mahomes hands, the Chiefs are gonna score,” or, “Green Bay got into the red zone quickly on this drive, maybe too quickly for their own good — because once Kansas City gets the ball back, Mahomes will be unstoppable.” Etc, etc. This went on and on for the entire game – even after Mahones threw an interception. Plus, Collingsworth thought a good nickname for Jordan Love would be “Love Actually”. Get the hook.
DC
Collingsworth has disgusted me for years…”that obvious to me tone”. Take comfort in knowing I once made him step aside as he was blocking a door at a small bakery somewhere in Florida—jabbering to someone about what his wife was doing. I was imperceptibly polite. Arm strength: Mahomes’ dad pitched for the Twinkies. Thought about those FSSSLN WRs while doing my victory dance in the wife’s panties.
D
The other obvious bad call was a couple of plays before the missed interference call. The future hall of famer Mahomes was running toward the sideline, just at the first down line (aka “line to gain”), and he was rudely but legally met by Packer DB Owens and knocked short. Totally unfair Unnecessary Roughness was called! Pathetic. If we can’t tackle the QB, dress him in a skirt (paraphrasing Jack Lambert).
It almost seemed that the missed PI was a makeup non-call.
MM
With all these dark memories of the seventies Packers that have cropped up, I have a sense of foreboding about the rest of this season. The Pack really looks as if they’ve blossomed, but… I can’t help thinking about a pending disaster.
My anxieties aside, they’re really looking good. Nixon was a steal–he’s a shrewd and fearless player, and the team has adjusted through a series of injuries.
We should mention that LeFleur (even though he looks like a sixteen-year-old high school team manager) is a great coach. I can’t think of too many other guys who could have done what he has with these kids this year. Kudos, Matt. And get those towels.
G
That thread was so much fun. Much more fun than bantering about Ukraine or Palestine. Thanks.
Yeah, it’s nice to get away from all the pain and strife out there–and to take a quick jog down memory lane. Don’t thank me… this is a total bot effort.