Packers, Favre exposed on MNF

By Os Davis  |   Wednesday, October 04, 2006  |  Comments( 0 )

Green Bay Packers
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Once again, everything was going the Green Bay Packers' way and once again, it all fell apart.

While the defense was porous enough to let Donovan McNabb drive his Philadelphia Eagles into the red zone twice, fortune (and Correll Buckhalter) favored the Pack well enough to fumble twice. "Hey," as they say in this game, "luck is the residue of skill."

With the ball, no one would mistake this team for, say, the 1995 Green Bay Packers: This is no fast-paced high-flying offense, Donald Driver or no. However, the Packers' QB - heretofore to be known as "Brett" or "Brettfavre" in deference to Joe Theisman's pronunciation - moved the team to the tune of 15-for-26 passing, 126 yards and zero interceptions.

At halftime, the score was 10-9, and if you squinted you could imagine that maybe, just maybe, these young Packers are as talented a team as Brettfavre's ever been on. You could imagine that the youngest team in the NFL just might gel before season's end and that all these guys needed was a win against a beat dog like the Detroit Lions to give them confidence. You could start thinking crazy, figuring the Pack to beat up on Detroit and maybe the Vikings a few times, a few upsets here and there, and suddenly Green Bay's in the playoffs and with Brettfavre at quarterback anything can happen...

Except the wheels came off in the second half. Brett threw two picks on passes reflecting ill judgment while containing all of the speed of the old Brett, but little of the accuracy. Both interceptions turned into relentless drives that the Green Bay D simply couldn't contain. A couple of long strikes to Greg Lewis later and the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Next thing you know, Aaron Rodgers and Jeff Garcia are in the game. Final score, 31-9.

The Eagles exposed, with hardly surgeon-like precision needed, the weaknesses in the Green Bay game. Though Brettfavre found Greg Jennings four times in the first half, they connected just once in the second. Old favorite Driver only caught five passes the entire game. With very little deep pressure, the supposedly injury-decimated Philadelphia secondary showed just how thin the Packers' receiving corps is in the last 30 minutes. Brett was 7-of-18 in the second half.

Meanwhile, the Packer D continued to show its incapability to stop the big play, allowing Donovan McNabb to run for gains of up to 15 yards when not giving up long completions to Lewis. The MNF trio ranted about how poor McNabb "had to do it all himself" for the Eagles, but it didn't take long for his teammates to rally 'round for devastating attacks in the second half. The secondary was shabby all around again; rebuilding efforts that have taken place essentially across the roster need to happen here, beginning with some way of traveling back in time in order to nullify that ridiculous seven-year, $52 million contract Charles Woodson got.

And then there's Brett. In the lead-in to the Monday night game, this writer predicted a 31-7 Eagle victory and the readers were generally livid, most proclaiming that holding the Pack to single figures would be impossible.

But the weakness that should have been most apparent to the national television audience was Brettfavre. In QB rating, he's 23rd right now, in the neighborhood of Brad Johnson and three places behind Daunte Culpepper. He's 21st in completion percentage, and his five interceptions put him tied for 24th (with soon-to-be benched Kurt Warner) in that department.

Folks, this is an average quarterback. In the first half of this game (plus the first quarter of the New Orleans Saints game and the Lions game in general), when America was squinting, this team did look good, but it's no longer on Brett's shoulders. And the truth is that this team does have talent - maybe lots of talent - but not enough to be a threat in 2006. This Packers squad is becoming a bunch that, should it succeed, will do so in spite of its inexperience and in spite of Brettfavre's now middling abilities.

See the Green Bay Packers develop on RealFootball365.com.
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's...
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