Actually it's not. Not since the Cow's had a SB winner had an elite RB. Oh, I take that back. M Faulk was elite but they didn't even use him in the SB. He got about the same amount of carries as Starks did.

My study is on elite players and the effect on the game. Elite Ds I count as a whole unit. I know that seems weird but that's kind of how it has to go. Reggie White can't cover WRs. Someone else had to do it. I had to count it as a unit.

So you want an elite D. No, it's no guarantee. You specifically pointed out examples of teams with lousy Ds that won the big one. It happens. But as my earlier post showed, the vast majority of SB winners had a team with a top 6 D, and over half were in the top 3.

Now you can win without an elite QB. That happens too. You're a heck of a lot more likely to win with an elite D, and elite QB, and a lousy RB than any of the other combinations of the 3.

That's what I'm getting at. You can have a mediocre RB back there and win it all, and like Dexter said, the past 20 years have featured a lot of average and mediocre RBs with SB rings. Average to mediocre QBs with SB rings? Eli Manning, that Ravens guy. Even Brad Johnson is actually a pretty good QB (check his stats). I know he's ugly and that's one reason he's underrated.

You keep thinking I'm saying you don't have to hand the ball off at all.

EDIT: Urgh. Forgot T Davis but I'm probably trying to block him from my memory. :xcensoredx:

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EDIT: Urgh. Forgot T Davis but I'm probably trying to block him from my memory.

Tell me about it. I was there. Fat legged dude ran all over us. Technically I should say he ran around us. Most of his big gains came going outside of the tackle on the other side of Reggie.

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Yeah, Sean Jones' retirement really hurt us. We had the #1 D the year before. It dropped a bunch of spots. I think we were like 4 or 5 or 6 that year.

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1 to 5 is not a bunch of a spots, lol.

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I'd rather be #1 at something than #5. That's just me though.

If you go back to my D wins SB thread, you'll see the list is pretty big for SB winners with #1 Ds.

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I don't care about 1 or 5, as long as the championship is won by the Packers, all else is irrelevant.

That's just me though.

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Understood.

But Macbob's whole point about running more is he believes it will increase our chances of success whereas I believe having the best D will increase our chances of success and offense is secondary to defense anyways, and rushing success is secondary (by far) to passing success.

We all want the same thing - for the Packers to win the Lombardi year after year. The argument is how to accomplish that.

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No--you are miss-characterizing my comments. I liked our offense this year--McCarthy's 56/44% run-pass ratio was right in the sweet spot, historically.

And I agree that the D is most important, and an elite QB is more important than an elite RB. From an earlier post in this thread:



What I disagree with are statements like:



and



and



and


The stats clearly don't support that last one.

All of those quotes are just from this thread alone.

Here's another:



Frankly, in my opinion, we already have an elite D, we already have an elite QB (D was #2 in 2010, QB was #3). We have an elite TE. We have an elite WR (Jenning). I wouldn't be upset at all if Ted were to try and improve our running game.

Not so that we'd run it more, but so that when we did run it we'd be more effective. The D would have to pay more attention to our run, and that alone would make our passing game more effective.

edit: Like D, the running game is a team category, and can be improved through multiple avenues--improving your OL being the most effective, in my opinion.

But here's the catch Macbob - often you have OLs made for running or ones made for passing. Rarely OLs are good at both. Do you really want a better OL at running if it might be worse at passing (protecting Aaron)?

Careful what you wish for.

Now, I do stand by my statement that rushing success is irrelevant. Heck, especially with this team. We already proved we can win a SB with 11 RB rushes. You can even say 13 if you include Aaron's 2 kneel downs.

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Yeah, we won it, but we wouldn't have without the 3 turnovers. The elite QB and the passing offense by itself wasn't going to be sufficient if the elite D had not gotten those 3 turnovers.

Let me ask you this--did you think our offense was better in the first half or the second half?

I thought we were clearly better in the first half. And in my opinion, it's no coincidence that in the first half we had a more balanced attack, rushing 7 times for 35 yards.

We had a respectable run game, and then completely abandoned it in the second half--we only ran it 4 more times. The announcers noticed and commented on it during the game.

We abandoned the run, and then started to struggle offensively. We did not convert a single 3rd down play in the 3rd quarter--we were 0-4.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with a team that relies solely on one player--even if he is an elite QB. If we lose Rodgers (due to concussion, broken foot, etc) , or he has an off-game we're toast.

I'd much rather have a more balanced offense. If the other team has a top 10 run defense but are weak against the pass we can exploit them. But conversely, if they've got a top 10 pass defense but their run defense is weaker than a wet paper bag, then we can have our way with them as well.

John Elway--an elite QB--could not win the Super Bowl until he had a good running game (Terrell Davis) to take some of the offensive pressure off of the QB.

In my opinion, the more diversified we are the better. I want to be able to beat the Patriots in their own stadium with Flynn at QB, and we won't do that without a running game.

We almost pulled that off this year when McCarthy came out and committed more to the running game (37 passes, 35 rushes). It was that game that McCarthy committed more to the run and kept it up through the playoffs (until the 2nd half of the SB).

Our offense was able to keep the Patriots offense sitting on the sidelines, when they did get on the field they were cold and out-of-synch for sitting for an extended period. Our D had an easier time of holding them, which put them back on the bench for another extended period of time. And we would have won it without a comical special teams gaff at the end of the 1st half where we let an OL man lumber down the field in slow motion returning a kickoff to inside our 5 yard-line.

Earlier in the year, it was the games where McCarthy completely abandoned the run that we lost to teams like Chicago (13 carries, 45 passes), Washington (13 carries, 46 passes), etc. As noted in threads during the season, in the games we were winning we were maintaining a healthy pass/run ratio of 50s/40s, and in the ones we were losing our pass/run ratio shot up to 70s/20s.

And the pass/run ratio in those losses wasn't because we were losing those games--we were ahead in each one at the end of the 3rd quarter, except for the Miami game.

It was a conscious decision to abandon the run, and it bit us big time.