Flynn Surprises but Packers Still Fall

We have a very serious “Love/ Hate” relationship with Packers Head Coach Mike McCarthy. Just when we are ready to write him off and be done with him he does something that gives cause to take pause. For example, we all knew he was thoroughly outclassed against the current resident genius of coaches when he faced Bill Belichik and the volcanically hot Patriots. No way does MM pull the hood over Hoodie’s eyes. Coaching? Gotta give that one to the Pats every day and twice on Sunday night.

Then MM does the unthinkable… he orders up and has his team execute a perfect onside kick to start the game catching Mr. Hoodie in a rare moment of being asleep at the wheel. The play is for naught unless somehow backup Matt Flynn, getting his first career start after Aaron Rodgers was out due to his 2^nd concussion of the year, can engineer a drive, which he proceeded to do and the result was 3 points.

Great coaches can be caught off guard by good coaches. The great ones take the blow and rise to meet the challenge.

Advantage, McCarthy. Packers lead. Can it be so? Are the Packers actually leading the Patriots? Surely the sky will fall in.

And yet Flynn somehow keeps the Packers ahead of the mighty Patriots. No one saw this coming. Flynn gets the Packers up and keeps them there, opening up a 10 point gap. We want to believe in McCarthy. We want him to succeed, to lead and inspire these Packers to great things. We hold out hope against hope that MM has seen the tape, addressed to the issues and cleaned it up in time for this game. We are ready to apologize for being so critical. Just when we are ready to say MM has finally arrived something will unfold that gives cause to take pause.

Like an unheard of 320 lb. offensive lineman from New England runs back a kickoff to the Packers’ 3… almost untouched.

How does this happen? More to the point how does this happen week after week after week after week? Are Special Teams really Special Ed.? How can one specific area of weakness be so glaring, so obvious and so overlooked?

This gift wrapped gaffe provides the Pats with the out they desperately needed and gets them right back into the game. A great coach recognizes the moment and seizes the opportunity. And then Flynn hands them a gift in the most literal of forms with a pick 6 that swings the dial all the way to the Pats side.

This is where any team needs its leader to step up and lead, on both sides of the ball and from both teams. GB needed it. New England needed it.

Advantage, Belichik.

The Packers were in it. They always are. They were never so far behind as to be whipped. That haven’t been all year. They are always in the game, always so close, always a play or two, a mistake or two or a blown Special Teams assignment away. Always ever so close. A break or two here and there and it is not out of the question to think the Packers could be sitting at 14 – 0. When added up the 6 losses are by a total of 20 mere points. The Packers are ever so close to being an elite team. But it begs the question – are they merely playing to keep it close or are they actually playing to win?

That distance, while on the surface appears ever so close, is becoming wider with every 3 or 4 point loss the Packers pile up. The distance between turning those games into Packer W’s is the exact difference between a good and a great coach.

And when the game gets down to the wire, with Packers playing their collective hearts out, something goes amiss on a far too frequent basis to be coincidence.

This time as Flynn is moving the Packers steadily down the field Belichik can only watch as Green Bay finds yet another way to move the ball, then load the gun, cock the trigger, and fire – right at their own foot.

With 30+ seconds left Green Bay somehow manages to maddeningly use all their remaining timeouts less than judiciously, and after a huge and costly sack gets a Donald Driver grab to set up 4^th and 1 with 24 seconds left on the clock, but no timeouts left to burn. Clocking the ball – taking a snap and firing it down to kill the clock – is not an option on 4^th down. Has this contingency been planned for? Are there multiple players ready to hit the field plays in hand– one if it is a first down, or another if the play is missed and its 4^th and long or one more if it is 4^th and short? Is there any advance thinking to be ahead of the circumstances dictated by the flow of the game? Are 2 plays already called? Has anyone thought that far ahead? If not, why not?

The enduring image of this game, and perhaps the entire season, will be that of Matt Flynn anxiously looking to the sideline, covering his ears to hear what the next play is. 22 seconds… the rest of the team is waiting for Flynn’s call.

Flynn looks to the sideline… 21 seconds… players aloofly gather in the vicinity of the line of scrimmage. NO call is coming.

20 seconds left. Where’s the play?? Has Flynn missed it in the din?

Flynn covers his ears... 19 seconds and counting… but hears nothing… 18 seconds. Flynn looks furtively to the sidelines… 17 seconds… he is all but begging for a play… 16 seconds. Flynn is imploring someone, anyone help him here. Flynn’s arms begin to wave. 15 seconds left. The receivers are on the wrong side of the field… 14 seconds. The clock is marching to its own metronome completely unconcerned about Green Bay’s plight. 13 seconds. Flynn is out of time, and out of options.

12 seconds. The play has to be a good one – they need a first down or it’s over. They also need a touchdown or they lose. Down 4! 11 seconds and counting... Gamble it all? Take what the D gives? 10 seconds. Oh, shit! The clock!! Time is relentless.

WHERE THE HELL IS THE DAMN PLAY??? 9 seconds. Tick… tick… tick…

Flynn scrambles up to the line. Has McCarthy sent in a play? Is Flynn on his own here? Did anyone even remotely think this game would come down to one single play? Was this not considered or discussed or prepared for? 8 seconds.

THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TIME TO GET 2 PLAYS OFF!!!! HOLY HELL, WE GOTTA GET A PLAY OFF!!!!

7 seconds… 6 seconds...

Time is marching in double time now... WE GOTTA GET A PLAY CALLED!!!!!

5 seconds...

Tick... tick... tick...

 4 seconds and the ball is snapped.

The line collapses.

The Patriots breach the line like a surging tsunami against a sand levee. The levee yields, and Flynn, trying to concoct magic out of mushrooms, is buried under a sea of humanity.

That red and blue sea finally gets to heave an exhausted sigh of relief. The fight is over. McCarthy stands in disbelief on the sidelines, hands over his head and now that the fight is over the second guessing can now begin.

Pats win. Again. Packers lose. By 4. Again. There are no answers to be found in a game like this.

In sports there are no such things as “moral victories”. “Ugly wins” fall into that category too. This game qualifies as both for those not bound by such mundane items as win/ loss records.

But know this – this game goes down as a Loss for the Packers, one more black mark in the column marked “L” while Hoodie and the boys chalk up another “W”.

The Patriots are not concerned one whit in how they looked or the fact that a back up QB damn near beat them. Flynn outplayed Tom Brady, a mortal lock for MVP this year. They got the win. Period. End of report. Case closed. On to next week. That’s what a great coach gets out of a team.

Good teams offer up reasons and explanations and excuses. Great teams just find a way. In the final analysis the history books will not see a close game, or a valiant effort. It is one more W and one more L.

So why do coaches like Bill Belichik get those Ugly W’s and coaches like Mike McCarthy get close but never quite get over that hump?

It had been said that Rodgers couldn’t win a close one. Harumph. Who has been at the helm for Rodgers playing career? Brett Favre certainly made MM look like a genius in ’08 with all of his derring-do and last minute heroics.

Let’s shoot a few notions early. Flynn played terrific for the most part, far better than expected. But he had his moments. An ill advised pick. A terrible case of ‘happy feet’. This is not at Flynn’s doorstep.

The running game worked and kept the Pats D way off guard. The onside kick worked.

A good coach prepares his team to play every week.

A great coach steals a couple wins for his team along the way.

Where is the difference?

To be a good coach, start with organization. Check. MM has this one down. He is a great organizer and is efficient in that process. MM is also a good teacher and has in most departments good coaches to fill in the details. We won’t go to the Special Teams quite yet. We are aware of that albatross. MM also scripts his opening plays with the best of them.

His teams are prepared to play. Even against Detroit the game was close. Keeping it to a 3 or 4 point deficit is not bad. But history will remember the New York Yankees as the best in baseball in the 90’s, but the winningest team of the 90’s, the Atlanta Braves, are permanently relegated to second banana status. Oh, the Braves had terrific seasons. They won the East year in and year out with one of the best pitching staffs ever assembled. But they will always concede the title "Best Team of the Decade" to the Yanks. Why? For all their bluster and thunder the Braves could only post 1 single World Series win, while the Yankees posted back to back to back Series wins and finished off more than one solitary season with the big one. And, for the record, in the middle of the Braves run the Yanks managed to put together the greatest season ever by a baseball team. And the Yankees also beat the Braves head to head for one of their 4 titles. That's how 'good' gets separated from 'great'.

The separation from good to great is like a NASA rocket jettisoning itself from the booster that got it into space. This is where, in that rare air, an elite coach makes all the difference.

In game adjustments. Clock management. Use of a challenge flag. Advance thinking. Situational matchups. Use of timeouts. Preparing for situations likely to arise.

In all fairness we lose MM in the mix right here, and it is in these areas Bill Belichik is at his best.

Motivators are overrated – it is a fleeting and momentary thing. Those leaders that inspire, however, can bring the players around them to a level even the player himself did not know he had. McCarthy motivates. Sometimes. Belichik inspires. Continuously. And the winners know who they are.

Dizzy Dean used to say “It ain’t braggin’ if it’s the truth.”

Stu Ungar, the only man to ever win the World Series of Poker Main Event 3 times once said “Show me a good loser and I’ll still show you a loser.”

Larry Bird upon walking into the NBA All Star’s locker room on the day when the inaugural 3 point shot contest was first held looked around and stared. Someone asked what he was doing. Bird replied “Just seeing who’s shootin’ for 2^nd place.”

Steve Shutt of the feared Montreal Canadiens in the mid-late 70’s once said of Head Coach Scotty Bowman “You hated that guy for 364 days of the year. On the 365^th you got your Stanley Cup ring.”

They talk it and they walk it.

McCarthy has mastered coach speak, especially when pressed about specific areas of horrendous play like Special Teams. No one is listening anymore. This isn't about 'pad level'. Or watching the tape. Or cleaning it up. When a large dog has done his business right in the middle of an alpaca carpet it is what it is - an unsightly mess that just plain stinks and no amount of cleaning can undo the damage.

The Packers Special Teams issues are nothing new and nothing special. New coach Shawn Slocum has failed to ‘clean up’ the mess of this unit. The poor tackling and coverages now have been under two different coaches and directly under MM’s watch. Giving up a near TD run by an offensive lineman is right up there with a 7 -3 Lions score. Forget the tape, forget cleaning it up. Pats OLineman Dan Connolly grabbed a squib kick and could have moved slower upfield only if he was walking. FB Quinn Johnson inexplicably turned his back at a point of impact when a tackle could have been made, and more to the point should have been made. Johnson has once again reinforced the notion that he is without a clue in too many critical situations. Charlie Peprah compounds the felony by merely swatting at the ball and giving up on the tackle. Call it what it is – lousy play tolerated by lousy coaching. This one gets hung on McCarthy and Slocum, and the special teams inability to adequately cover a kick of any type has to be placed squarely on the shoulders of MM as he has had ample time to see the tape, address the issues and clean it up. Ummm, Coach? The issues still exist, and they’re pretty damn messy.

The offensive line, Daryn Colledge in particular, is not very good at run blocking. Even Bryan Bulaga allowed 2 key sacks at the end. We have no doubt that Bulaga will turn out to be a good one, but the O Line continues to have run blocking issues and pass protection breakdowns. There seems to be no cohesion from one week to the next, no sense that the Packers are building towards an end goal. The consistency in these inconsistencies is they are repeated week after week, year after year in so many identical areas.

The Pats have almost as many injuries as GB does, yet no excuses are offered. Or tolerated. They routinely trade away disgruntled stars, like Randy Moss and even trade off gruntled stars like Richard Seymour before they lose trade value. In the process the Pats now have 6 picks in the first 3 rounds this year. And one other small detail. They simply keep on winning.

For our man Flynn’s debut Belichik brought heat from his beleaguered D and it was just enough to make the difference in this game. Belichek countered by playing his weakness – the Pats D – better against the Packs weakness – a new QB – to his advantage.

And when it gets down to nut crunching time Mike McCarthy has routinely let the Packers down. Recurring themes are sacks, kick coverage, clock management, challenges and some, at times, very vanilla and very bizarre play calling.

Leaving Flynn alone on an island at a time when Flynn and the entire Packers organization, from the players on the field, to the D on the sidelines, to the executives in the heated luxury box to the casual fan on the street, needed Mike McCarthy most is inexcusable.

After last week’s monumental disaster against Detroit and this failure to act MM’s shortcomings can no longer be ignored or glossed over. Everyone, from the players on the field to the opposition knows MM will play it safe and eventually bungle when crisis time hits. And when a leader is needed to step forward MM’s indecisiveness will be his Rubicon. The worst type of decision is indecision.

If Belichik rightly crows he was just waiting for the Packers to shoot themselves in the foot, who can blame him? He is right after all.

Vince Lombardi is quoted as saying “Winning isn’t everything, but it’s the only thing. In our business (pro football) there is first place, and then there’s everyone else. You’re either first, or you’re last. It’s a hard business, a tough business, but we strive to be winners every season.”

Nowhere in there is keeping it close or playing not to lose an option.

As for Mike McCarthy it is time for the Packers to seek and find a winner who has the gumption to be a leader and not content to be merely a casual bystander.