I never thought I would say this, but thank goodness for Dan Orlovsky. In a sea of hot takes, Orlovsky has consistently been the ship that consistently brings sanity to insane Green Bay Packers conversations. Let’s not mince words here, Green Bay was absolutely atrocious on Sunday. You would be hard-pressed to find a single positive. But at 3-3, while some are jumping off the ledge, it’s important to bring some reason to the discussion.
Adversity is a part of football. At some point Matt LaFleur was going to lose two games in a row. At some point this team was going to struggle. And although it looks bad now, that doesn’t mean that the Packers are toast. But if it weren’t for Orlovsky, you wouldn’t know that if you tuned into ESPN this morning.
Michael Irvin spent nearly 2 minutes complaining about the Davante Adams trade.
Stephen A Smith first blamed Aaron Rodgers for Adams leaving, and then pointed all his crazy at Matt Lafleur.
Rex Ryan maligned the offensive line.
Then it was Orlosky’s turn. He to first corrected Stephen A, then give a simple and reasonable take.
So I think it’s important to clarify they wanted Davante Adams back. It wasn’t like they wanted to trade him. They tried to keep him. He wanted out. Second of all, right now they are calling their offense like they still have Davante Adams. And that would be my point with Matt Lafleur…Is they haven’t made an adjustment. He’s dropped back 191 times this year and went under center 35 times. So right now you’re calling an offense like you have a superstar on the outside. You don’t and that is fair. That’s why they need to turn that and go way more under center. Utilize play-action way more from underneath there. Because that…when you don’t have dudes on the outside who are one-on-one whoop guys you have to create the voids for them. You do that by play action pass. Play action is way more impactful from underneath than it is in the gun. So their philosophy has to change from calling plays with Davante to it without Davante.
No fireworks. No dramatic claim. Just a good reasonable football assessment. It was such a good take that even Ryan Clark had to agree.
This needed to move to what we see from Kyle Shanahan. You can’t be calling plays like you have an elite receiver on the outside. You also shouldn’t be calling plays in Green Bay like you have Aaron Rodgers at quarterback. We need to call plays in Green Bay like we are playing with a deficit. That we don’t have the skill that other teams have. And it seems like Matt LaFleur hasn’t moved into that. At the beginning of the season it was supposed to be run game, defense, play action pass, allow Aaron to be Aaron in situational football moments. The Green Bay Packers haven’t gotten there.
Although I don’t normally care for Clark, who I believed to still be very salty about his Super Bowl loss to the Packers, I couldn’t agree more on this one. After years of having good regular seasons and failures in the postseason something needed to change. That something should have been to a tougher, more game controlling style of football that, oh by the way, also had one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. To his Kyle Shanahan remark, that’s exactly where this team should be going. That style of football but with Aaron Rodgers instead of Jimmy Garoppolo. That is a Super Bowl recipe.
Who knows where this team is going. For the first time it’s hard to shrug off all the criticisms as media nonsense. Aaron Rodgers is asking to simplify things and Matt Lafleur is responding in press conferences by saying “I dont know what that means.”
Not great. But, if they go the direction Orlovsky is talking about I still believe there is huge potential for this team. And so does Orlovsky. At the end of the segment when Mike Greenberg asked the entire panel if any of them thought Green Bay could still be a contender only Orlovsky raised his hand.
