Maybe part of it is keeping DD healthy and ready if/when he is needed the most. It's a long season, and at his age i don't want to see him burned out early in the year.

Rodgers and McCarthy abandoned the dink and dunk passing game that seemed to be Favre and Rodgers' bread and butter in their early years with the system.

Under that philosophy, Driver especially shined. Now that we've gone to a more vertical passing game and McCarthy has gotten all exotic, the bigger receivers have to see the field.

Holy f^@# is this a ridiculous statement. If Jones catches his ball, it is highlight reel material. The only reason Driver got one to the bread basket is that Rodgers looked off the safety long enough for DD to get his old ass into the seam.

Obviously Jones and Finley will always be whipping boys, and DD shits golden turds with some of you.

The reason DD gets much fewer snaps is because he has fallen down the depth chart, and that's really what it is all about.

Can you go through and show drop by drop the down and distance for the two? I'd be really interested in seeing those stats.

bitter doesn't become you. [-x

You know you love Donald.

I'll use a picture to illustrate one answer.

JJ has been a beast as of late.

As had been said, it's a long season and we may lose players to injury and DD is great to come in and there would be no drop off in performance.

This will probably be DD's last season anyway.

Obviously I remember drops more than pedestrian catches, but it seems like DD's been dropping a lot of balls this year. Might be a result of much less playing time, but overall I really hope Driver does not try to extend his career another year... Leave on a high note, Donald. Or make me look like an idiot and be Mister Clutch for the next 3 years, either way :)

Nah. and Driver will have a nice talk. Driver will retire after this season and have some other place with the Packers. He's too well-liked to disappear into the sunset.

He's already dropped off. But with potential injuries, as others have said, it would be nice to have Driver in the Playoffs for 2012.

Based on the season to date, I think this question can be split into two separate questions:

1. Why isn't DD on the field more. I think this is at least partly a question of play calling. If they go to three wides, its going to be Nelson/Jones/Cobb or, when Jennings comes back, Jennings/Nelson/Jones or Jennings/Nelson/Cobb. (IMO Cobb has become such a weapon, especially on slant-type plays which used to be part of DD's bread-and-butter, that he's going to come on the field before DD now.) And Jones is playing like some of us thought he was going to be playing a couple years ago. So that leaves 4 and 5 wides, neither of which is being called as much this year, despite MM's susceptibility to calling too many passes.

What I don't understand is that when they do go to >3 wides, they use Finley as the #4 so often and Driver so little. Which naturally leads into the second question ....

2. Why isn't DD being targeted more. My gut here tells me it is partly that McCarthy and, more so, Rodgers, are more homed in on Finley. Rodgers has always had a bit of a tendency to look to Finley too often, and McCarthy for whatever reason has been calling fewer plays that fit DD's skill set (quick slants, really crisp patterns) and more that fit Finley's.

And it might also be that Driver simply hasn't been able to get separation. Has anyone looked at the film on this? It's just a guess on my part, and would go a long way to answering why it is that Rodgers/McCarthy have the tendencies just stated.

From another thread.

Finley is a bigger target than Driver, and based on the very small sample size we have from Driver so far this year, Driver drops the ball a lot more than Finley. But this very well may be a product (in part) of not getting enough snaps.

Déjà vu.

i must have missed some driver drops then, what the hell

Wait. What? I'd like to see the stats on that since Finley is dropping the ball literally every game. I think Driver has only been in/thrown to on a handful of plays all year and one of those was a 26 yeard TD up the middle against da Bares.

Credit to ProFootballFocus -> Zero2Cool:


Obviously that is a very small sample size for Driver, and I don't know how this "Drop rate" is calculated, as 2/6 = 33.3%, not 40%, but the targets and receptions seem sound. And I seem to recall at least 3 drops from Driver so far, but a "Drop" may be subjective (If it hits you in the hands but a defender knocks it loose with a strong punch, is it a drop?). Regardless, you can see Finley targeted 6 times more than Driver has, but with only 3x the drops. Obviously two catches in a row could dramatically change these figures for Driver, but the fact is that he's dropped (at least) a third of the passes thrown his way.

Out of six targets, five were catch-able. Of those five he dropped two. 2 out of 5 = %40

Rodgers threw one to Cobb over the middle, bounce off of Cobbs hands, Driver had to jerk his body back just to have a shot at it, but he did and got his hands on it... but didn't catch it. Since Driver wasn't the target, I'm not sure that counts... also Driver showed great body control just to react and get in a position to put his hands on.

Why isn't there a catch-able list? ...

They're adding the receptions and the drops together to get the catch-able amount.


So their formula for drops is

(100/(R+D))*D = D%

Where
R = Receptions
D = Drops
D% = Drop percentage

There is, I just didn't put up there in the graphic.