Packers Packers continue writing a new script for winning games

[News Bot]

The Green Bay Packers headed to the halftime locker room Sunday down four points, with an undrafted free agent taking over at right tackle and a defense unable to stop the game’s best running back.

When Mason Crosby booted the second-half kickoff out of bounds, and Adrian Peterson continued his assault on the Packers defense with a 48-yard run on the very next play that thrust Minnesota into the red zone, panic could have ensued.

Such a word does not exist in the vocabulary of a Mike McCarthy football team.

Morgan Burnett’s interception in the end zone two plays later flipped the momentum, rookie right tackle Don Barclay handled his business and the Packers grinded out another ugly but effective win by outscoring the Minnesota Vikings 13-0 over the final 30 minutes.

Yet, despite being just a year removed from a 15-1 season, Sunday’s script should not feel foreign to the Packers. McCarthy has said countless times that this team is different from last season’s, and he’s exactly right.

No longer do the Packers win pretty or with an unrelenting barrage on the scoreboard. Once a team of flash and style, Green Bay is now a grind-it-out, win-whatever-way club that relies on more that just a video-game quarterback and opportunistic defense.

A season ago, the Packers won 15 games mostly because an offense that averaged five touchdowns and five extra points a game and a defense that finished tied for the league lead in takeaways.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers put up numbers that now rank alongside the very best in the history of the position, which helped fuel an offense that scored a franchise record 560 points.

The Packers won games by outscoring their opponents, and not in a literal sense—of course that’s how football games are won—but by putting up such ridiculous numbers on the scoreboard that most teams couldn’t keep pace.

Only four times out of 15 did the Packers win a game with less than 30 points. Six times, Green Bay won games with 40 or more points. The Packers’ final point differential of 201 points, or 12.6 points a game, was second-best in the NFL.

Despite most of the same faces on offense, this Packers team is being forced to win in different ways.

Only once have the Packers reached last season’s average point total of 35 points. Week 6’s 42-24 win over the Houston Texans represents the lone game over 12 this season that you could realistically say the 2012 Packers felt like last season’s version.

Five times already this season, the Packers have won games by scoring the equivalent of four touchdowns or less. Green Bay now averages 24.7 points a game (a pace of just 394 for the season), which ranks 12th in the NFL. A point differential of just 37 points and 3.1 per game (while skewed slightly by a 28-point loss to the Giants in Week 11) also ranks the Packers 12th best in the league.

Rodgers, who won exactly one game last season with less than 250 yards passing, has done so on four different occasions in 2012.

The defense still makes its share of plays, but the Packers are on pace for just 24 takeaways in 2012. That’s over a third less than last season’s defense.

Stats and numbers never tell a complete story—context is needed in every circumstance—but there’s no denying what these figures scream out. The context only increases the volume.

Contained are the offense’s big plays (35 passing plays over 20 yards through 12 games this season, an NFL-high 70 in 16 games in 2011), mostly because defense after defense is utilizing a two-safety shell designed specifically to take away the Packers’ vertical passing game.

Back is the injury bug, which mostly took a vacation from the Packers offense in 2011. The only significant injury you could point to last season is Chad Clifton, but this season’s team has had to deal with Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, Bryan Bulaga, Cedric Benson, T.J. Lang and a host of defensive players missing significant time.

An offensive line with only one new starter to open the season—37-year-old center Jeff Saturday—has already allowed Rodgers to be sacked more times in 2012 (39) than all of last season (36).

The result has been a football team that has needed to grind out ugly wins. And grind out wins they have.

Victories over Chicago, Jacksonville, Arizona and Detroit were far from offensive masterpieces. A season ago, the Packers might have lost such contests.
Sunday’s win over the Vikings was the complete opposite of a 2011 decision: Rodgers **** and dunked his way to 286 yards, the Packers defense held a passing game completely in check and Green Bay essentially sealed the win with an 11-minute drive that included eight called runs and exactly one play over 10 yards. The Packers ended up with more rushing attempts (36) than passing (35).

By any stretch of the imagination, Green Bay’s win Sunday wasn’t explosive or pretty. But it was effective in accomplishing the only real goal, winning a football game.

The 2011 Packers might have exposed the notion that not having a grind-it-out win or two on the résumé can hurt a football team come playoff time. The Giants grounded the flashy Packers into the ground in their own backyard last January.

This club has a basket full of gut-check wins. A handful more over the last four games will give these Packers a chance to put their new winning script to the test in the only games that really matter.

Source: JSOnline.com