Adrian Peterson is a monster! I was one of those people who said he should not have been a top pick because his upright running style would make him too easy to bring down in the NFL, where he would not physically outclass opposing defenders like he did in college.
He can outclass the 2008 Green Bay Packers defense as much as those Big 12 defenses he faced. There is no delicate way to put this: The Packers' run defense stinks.
The Minnesota Vikings ran the ball 41 times and gained 220 yards on the ground against them Sunday. Peterson accounted for 192 yards on 30 carries, a 6.4 yard average.
On the bright side, the Packers held a pretty good back in Chester Taylor to 29 yards on 10 carries. They also stopped Peterson on a key fourth-down play.
The pass defense was stellar, exposing Gus Frerotte for the journeyman backup he really is. He was 15-28 for 151 yards and a touchdown, but he also threw three picks, including one returned for a touchdown. Moreover, that 47-yard touchdown came when Taylor broke a tackle on a short pass by backup middle linebacker Desmond Bishop and was gone.
Bishop also had an inexcusable unnecessary-roughness penalty later in the game, and the Packers lost this game as much because of penalties as failure to stop Peterson. When you are playing your ninth game of the season, the reliance on young backups is no longer an excuse: Coach Mike McCarthy needs to shoulder the blame for this frequent problem.
He also channeled Mike McCarthy or Mike Nolan in making his first replay challenge of the year.
Adrian Peterson ran for a 29-yard touchdown to give the Vikings the eventual final margin, 28-27, with 2:22 to play. While it looked like the Packers may have stopped Peterson as much as a foot short (replays were inconclusive), there was no way they would stop him on a first and goal from there.
Winning that challenge would only have allowed the Vikings to run more time the Packers needed to answer with a field goal. Losing it cost the Packers a timeout that might have been useful to drive a bit further. Mason Crosby missed the 52-yard field goal wide right in the closing seconds.
There were a lot of coaching blunders on both sides of the ball.
5 comments Last one added 7 months ago — Leave a Comment
Rich Friday 7 months ago
With Barnett gone, the Bears will snuff out the Packers season next week, while Favre gets more laughs at Ted.
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MJ Kasprzak 7 months ago
Favre probably is the kinda guy who is laughing at us despite the suffering of former teammates, but that was still the right move. Favre will be retired in two years and Rodgers will be winning playoff games. If we'd kept Favre, Rodgers would be winning those games for someone else.
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David Arreola 7 months ago
I wanted to puke watching this game. If it weren't for the picks and our special teams, we would have been embarrassed beyond belief.
Our defense went from great...to BAD real fast.
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Tim Seeman 7 months ago
even if they had changed the call to illegal forward pass, that doesn't get counted as a safety...on TMQ on ESPN.com, Gregg Easterbrook explains that the game's logbook said "intentional grounding in the endzone for a safety" because that's the only way it can happen (save for a holding penalty). suddenly, the margin of defeat becomes the margin of victory (if everything else is constant, which is really not plausible, but you know what i'm saying)
also, david...the bears have won division titles depending on TAINTS (Touchdowns After INTerceptions, a Sports' Guy creation) and various other forms of return touchdowns. there's nothing wrong with it, as long as the offense can give you just enough to win the game...sunday, the packers needed about five more yards to make the field goal easier for Mason Crosby
they do need to run more...i think they can do it on the bears...that D isn't what it's been in the past
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MJ Kasprzak 7 months ago
That D dominated the fourth-best running attack in the game Sunday, but it's not as good statistically as the Vikings, who we did okay with when we tried.
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