Don't need defense?

rmontro

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I saw this clip on "Cowturd" and I really couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Brady Poppinga was talking about after the Packers had won the Super Bowl in 2010. And he said Ted Thompson called him into his office to cut him from the team. He said Ted told him that one of the reasons he was cut was because with Aaron, they weren't going to worry so much about stopping teams with defense, they were going to outscore them.

Funny thing, that's almost exactly what happened in 2011. But if this is really what Ted said, and not simply the bitter ramblings of an ex-player, then it's no wonder we never returned to the Super Bowl.

It was such an unusual thing to see last night, watching the defense win the game for the Packers. Normally you get the feeling Aaron Rodgers is the only guy out there, and you have to depend on him to pull something out of the hat. This is strange and wonderful, but it shouldn't have taken so long.
 

Mondio

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I think Poppinga is full of ****. They drafted defense heavily, brought in defense like Peppers etc because they weren't going to worry about playing defense LOL
 

Heyjoe4

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I saw this clip on "Cowturd" and I really couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Brady Poppinga was talking about after the Packers had won the Super Bowl in 2010. And he said Ted Thompson called him into his office to cut him from the team. He said Ted told him that one of the reasons he was cut was because with Aaron, they weren't going to worry so much about stopping teams with defense, they were going to outscore them.

Funny thing, that's almost exactly what happened in 2011. But if this is really what Ted said, and not simply the bitter ramblings of an ex-player, then it's no wonder we never returned to the Super Bowl.

It was such an unusual thing to see last night, watching the defense win the game for the Packers. Normally you get the feeling Aaron Rodgers is the only guy out there, and you have to depend on him to pull something out of the hat. This is strange and wonderful, but it shouldn't have taken so long.
Poppinga sounds a little bitter. I don’t believe for a minute that TT would say something so stupid.
 

sschind

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I think Poppinga is full of ****. They drafted defense heavily, brought in defense like Peppers etc because they weren't going to worry about playing defense LOL

I was thinking the same thing but I read all the replies this time before I made the exact same post. Now I can just give you an agree rather than make an unnecessary post of my own.




Oops. Well I could have.
 

Heyjoe4

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And defense wins championships. There have been 6 SBs pitting the #1 Defense against the #1 Offense. The defensive teams won 5 of those games, the lone exception being one of the Montana-led 49ers. The best part about finally having a respectable D is that Rodgers doesn’t have to do it all. That clearly hasn’t worked. In the 2010 SB win, they had a good D.
 

LetzBreel

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Maybe I'm up in the night but I found Poppinga to be insightful and informative. I didn't sense at all any sour grapes or ignorant remarks just for the sake of making them. What did **** me off was the way Cowturd agreed with Poppinga on almost every opinion about 12. He is obviously too gutless to stand by his usual ********** of 12, when he finds it necessary to kiss up to guest. Have the nads to stand by your opinion Cowturd! Speaking of sour grapes, that goes for Greg Jennings too.
 

Do7

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What are you talking about rmontro? Cowherd was saying that The Packers should've focused more on building a defense instead of building an offense. Poppinga didn't sound like he was saying sour grapes and considering how poor the defenses have been doing over the following years, there may be some validity to what he was saying in how Ted Thompson saying how they were going to focus more on the offense and try to outscore people.
 
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LetzBreel

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I really do get that you have a problem with most of my comments DO7. You make it pretty clear. But I swear that I said what you just said. I liked what Poppinga said. What am I missing?
 

Do7

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I really do get that you have a problem with most of my comments DO7. You make it pretty clear. But I swear that I said what you just said. I liked what Poppinga said. What am I missing?
I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to @rmontro. If I was talking to you, I would've quoted you. No disagreements here.
 
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rmontro

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What are you talking about rmontro? Cowherd was saying that The Packers should've focused more on building a defense instead of building an offense. Poppinga didn't sound like he was saying sour grapes and considering how poor the defenses have been doing over the following years, there may be some validity to what he was saying in how Ted Thompson saying how they were going to focus more on the offense and try to outscore people.
Okay, first off I didn't say anything about Cowherd other than that the clip was on his show.

Second, I did not say that Poppinga was bitter. But I anticipated that someone in this forum would say that he was cut and that this was sour grapes. So I said IF these aren't bitter ramblings, then that is what Ted told him. I have no idea if he is bitter or is telling the truth. I agree he didn't seem bitter.

Probably given a choice between cutting the defense or the offense, Ted chose to cut the defense. There was a school of thought at the time that NFL rule changes were favoring offenses, so maybe the defenses weren't as important as they once were. Just a school of thought.

As for Cowherd, he readily praises Rodgers' talents, but does not like his leadership style. He also thinks that a QB who follows the coach's game plan is more effective than a QB who likes to improvise (Brady vs Rodgers, for example). But he did pick the Packers to win the NFC North, so he will probably be a bit more kindly this year. One thing he said today I agree with is Rodgers needs to throw the ball away quicker or he is going to get killed.
 

gbgary

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I saw this clip on "Cowturd" and I really couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Brady Poppinga was talking about after the Packers had won the Super Bowl in 2010. And he said Ted Thompson called him into his office to cut him from the team. He said Ted told him that one of the reasons he was cut was because with Aaron, they weren't going to worry so much about stopping teams with defense, they were going to outscore them.

Funny thing, that's almost exactly what happened in 2011. But if this is really what Ted said, and not simply the bitter ramblings of an ex-player, then it's no wonder we never returned to the Super Bowl.

It was such an unusual thing to see last night, watching the defense win the game for the Packers. Normally you get the feeling Aaron Rodgers is the only guy out there, and you have to depend on him to pull something out of the hat. This is strange and wonderful, but it shouldn't have taken so long.
saw that. pretty damning but not surprising knowing how they were from that point on.
 

Mondio

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Yeah, let's revisit 2011 and ask ourselves why players like Nick Barnett, Brandon Chillar, Justin Harrell, and Brady Poppinga were released. Because they weren't going to play defense? or were they released for the same reason our long time anchor at RT (tauscher) was released?

and in 2012 they drafted Nick Perry, Mike Daniels, Casey Hayward, Worthy, McMillan, and Manning ALL defensive players with their first 6 picks in the first 5 rounds and you really want to believe Poppinga LOL

some of you are hilarious. Ted decided they weren't going to play defense anymore LOL I'd say you can't make this **** up, but then that's exactly what they do you and you fall for it
 

Do7

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Yeah, let's revisit 2011 and ask ourselves why players like Nick Barnett, Brandon Chillar, Justin Harrell, and Brady Poppinga were released. Because they weren't going to play defense? or were they released for the same reason our long time anchor at RT (tauscher) was released?

and in 2012 they drafted Nick Perry, Mike Daniels, Casey Hayward, Worthy, McMillan, and Manning ALL defensive players with their first 6 picks in the first 5 rounds and you really want to believe Poppinga LOL

some of you are hilarious. Ted decided they weren't going to play defense anymore LOL I'd say you can't make this **** up, but then that's exactly what they do you and you fall for it
I have no reason not to believe Poppinga especially considering out of those names 2 of those draft picks proved to be solid players. On top of that I think you're missing his point. It's like he said Ted and company decided they were going to rely more on Rodgers trying to outscore his opponents rather than keep build a solid defense around him. Yes they drafted some players, but they could've made some splashes in free agency but chose not to. I think the point is they could've done a better effort on focusing more on the defensive side rather than fall asleep on the wheel and leave everything to Rodgers.
 

Mondio

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I have no reason not to believe Poppinga especially considering out of those names 2 of those draft picks proved to be solid players. On top of that I think you're missing his point. It's like he said Ted and company decided they were going to rely more on Rodgers trying to outscore his opponents rather than keep build a solid defense around him. Yes they drafted some players, but they could've made some splashes in free agency but chose not to.
it doesn't matter what they turned into, their first 6 picks in the draft were defense. They just won a super bowl on a home grown team, FA's weren't really a priority. A team not interested in playing defense, but building offense doesn't use their first 6 picks on defense.

Chillar, Barnett, Poppinga, Harrell weren't released because GB wasn't interested in defense, they were released because they personally couldn't play. Poppinga doesn't have a point. He's full of ****.
 
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And defense wins championships. There have been 6 SBs pitting the #1 Defense against the #1 Offense. The defensive teams won 5 of those games, the lone exception being one of the Montana-led 49ers. The best part about finally having a respectable D is that Rodgers doesn’t have to do it all. That clearly hasn’t worked. In the 2010 SB win, they had a good D.
I’m not going to start an entire debate that’s already been beaten to death. But I’ve done my own extensive research on that and I can assure you that “well balanced teams win championships”. The average ranking of a D modern winning SB team was like 7.something. The average ranking of the winning Offense was 8.something. With a moderate degree of error being around ~+-3% of 32 teams... it’s still arguably directly in line with going dead even. That’s using every winning SB team in a far bigger sample size.

If you flipped a coin 51 times?
26 times comes up D.....................25 come up O.
It takes both sides to take care of business.

I’d slightly prefer a #8 ranked D and a #8 ranked Offense VS a lopsided #1D and #15 Offense. Coincidentally, I believe GB could rank around #10th in both this year.
 
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rmontro

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and in 2012 they drafted Nick Perry, Mike Daniels, Casey Hayward, Worthy, McMillan, and Manning ALL defensive players with their first 6 picks in the first 5 rounds and you really want to believe Poppinga LOL
Poppinga was released in 2011 so his alleged conversation with Ted would have taken place then. And that year GB selected offensive players with five of their first six picks. So that philosophy may well have been in Ted's mind at that time. He may have had to rethink his strategy after the defensive debacle the team put on that year.

My guess is that what Ted really said was a little softer than how Poppinga phrased it, but maybe still conveyed the intent to focus more on offense at that time.
 

Mondio

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Poppinga was released in 2011 so his alleged conversation with Ted would have taken place then. And that year GB selected offensive players with five of their first six picks. So that philosophy may well have been in Ted's mind at that time. He may have had to rethink his strategy after the defensive debacle the team put on that year.

My guess is that what Ted really said was a little softer than how Poppinga phrased it, but maybe still conveyed the intent to focus more on offense at that time.
and if we know anything about Ted, it was his tendency to jump ship, change directions, and quickly devise new plans at the drop of a hat... :)

History has proven many times over, that Ted was a man of a lot of thought and evaluation and then trust the evaluation and let the plan play out. Right up to the end. The odds of him drafting 6 defensive players in the first 5 rounds because they were not interested in playing defense any more in the very next draft was probably less than zero. Poppinga misinterpreted him. He likely said, you can't play defense for us anymore.
 

weeds

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Regarding Brady Poppinga ... can I just add that my impression of the guy, based only on his interviews is this: BATEMAN - what an adult with untreated A.D.D. looks like.

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HardRightEdge

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it doesn't matter what they turned into, their first 6 picks in the draft were defense. They just won a super bowl on a home grown team, FA's weren't really a priority. A team not interested in playing defense, but building offense doesn't use their first 6 picks on defense.

Chillar, Barnett, Poppinga, Harrell weren't released because GB wasn't interested in defense, they were released because they personally couldn't play. Poppinga doesn't have a point. He's full of ****.
Barnett: went to IR after game 4
Harrell: went to IR after game 1
Chillar: went to IR after game 11
Poppinga: out then IR after game 6

None of those guys participated in the run. While Barnett might have been a starter for the duration were he not injured, those other 3 guys were bit players even when healthy, and Harrell rarely was.

Jettisoning Barnett was addition by subtraction especially after Bishop's solid 2010 season. The key loss from that defense was Cullin Jenkins who signed with Philly in free agency. Mike Neal had been drafted in the second round in 2010 to replace him. Bigby departed as well, but Burnett was already set as the starter before he went to IR.

Going into the 2011 draft, the one defensive question mark, and the one position where many observers expected a day 1 or 2 pick, was the Matthews "bookend". Instead, Thompson decided to roll again with what I referred to as the "Combo", Walden/Zombo. Thompson then went offense with the first three picks.

In short, with the exception of Jenkins, Thompson decided in 2011 to dance with the defense who brung the year before, a not unreasonable stance. He needed an OT: Sherrod. He needed a #2 RB: Green. About the only choice that favored offense over defense might have been Cobb in the second round instead of a bookend. Then again, Nelson had not yet broken out, Jones was OK but not great in 2010, Finley was coming off season ending knee surgery.

It's implausible Thompson would make such a comment even if he believed the "just outscore 'em" story line, a story line implausible on its face given the facts. If anything was said along these lines it would have been that resources need to be applied to the offensive side of the ball, again a not unreasonable stance. Whatever was said, it would have a been a polite way of saying, "we don't have plans for you."

Of course the 2011 route-jumping, pick-happy, historic-yardage-surrendering pass defense proved to be an accident waiting to happen. The permanent loss of Collins was a major blow. The 2012 draft was all-defense in reaction to the gross miscalculation.

I don't know why anyone would think a roster assessment after 2010 would be the same as after 2011, or from any one year to the next. I don't find it reasonable to point to the 2012 draft as evidence that Thompson was not in "just outscore 'em" mode. The other facts are sufficient on that score.
 
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HardRightEdge

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Good argument there HRE.
Thanks OS. Consider it a public service announcement. ;)

Poppinga may actually believe that's what he was told. People often believe what they want to believe, remember what they want to remember. What he actually heard was something like, "blah blah playbook blah blah released blah blah locker blah plane ticket blah traveling secretary".
 

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