You have to take into account improving from within. Just because you don't change players, doesn't mean you don't get better. The 2007 Packers added Frank Walker, but ended up hosting the NFC Title game. Meanwhile, the 2007 Bears made zero changes and they missed the playoffs after going to the Super Bowl the year prior. Nobody will convince me Frank Walker was the reason for the five game swing.
The Packers have a lot of upside at key positions. Whether or not they improve enough from within will determine how far they go. You look up and down the team, there are plenty of players that should get better and not that many that will regress.
"Rockmolder" wrote:
Of course. Especially on a team like ours, we need our guys to make a leap from year 1 to 2. You can't survive without that when you sign the amount of FAs we do.
It's just that you have Brad Jones and Clay Matthews at OLB. Jones looks like someone who has to be 280 lbs of nearly pure muscle before he can take on a RT. And that will get to your speed.
Now, I'd be thrilled if he went from 240 to 250 in the weigth room, got stronger, learned some moves from Greene and gets after the QB this year, but I think that he'll still be a rather onesided guy. And someone who's not that amazing at those speed rushes, either.
And the same goes for Clay. Get a HB or TE to chip him, get him off his route and let the LT engage him. The battle is pretty much done from there. I think that the fact that teams had to double Cullen Jenkins had a lot to do with his outstanding rookie season, as well.
I found these numbers pretty interesting. Our OLBs got 1 sack between them on bullrushes. Matthews; 1, Jones; 0.
We really have a finesse rushing corps out there and that's just not always going to work. We're losing the battle against teams with beefy O-lines like Minnesota, just imagine what an athlete-filled zone team would do against us.
"porky88" wrote: