Can we beat seattle?

[Thunder Muscle]

Plus for Seattle, they are in a tough division. You suspect SF will be back strong and the other 2 teams in that division are ones that very well could be sneaky good. Arizona was good this past season already and if St. Louis gets any production out of the QB they aren't that far off, and have some high draft picks again I believe. That is going to be a pretty competitive division.

[El Duderino]

Now, some of it is definitely on TT. Hayward and Daniels are the only real impact defenders he has landed lately. While some of the young guys still have talent and upside, they haven't panned out yet. He has also dished out a terrible contract to Hawk, overpaid for Jones and looks to have probably made a mistake with Burnett. None of those contracts are really crippling though and you absolutely cannot expect a GM to be perfect in who he resigns year to year. If those are the biggest mistakes TT is going to make... then he's pretty damn good.

The trio of Worthy, Perry, and Jones having very little impact has been a killer to the defense being better. Granted, Jones was a rookie and could easily be better next year, while Perry has shown flashes of being good, being terrible, and injured a lot. Both are big wild cards for next year, we need them to be productive. Worthy is a bust. Clearly the defense needs Hayward to both be healthy and play like his rookie year again. If he can and Shields is resigned, maybe Hyde could be tried at safety?

That said, the linebacker core as a whole needs a serious infusion of better talent, speed, and ferociousness. The ILB starters and depth looks abysmal compared to the upper tier defenses. While i'm fine with a Matthews/Perry starting duo at OLB, both have been injury prone at a vital position in a 3-4 scheme. One beef i've had with Ted over the years is nearly all of the backup OLB's have been very raw undrafted free agents who struggled to create pressure when forced to play because they either weren't ready or simply not skilled enough. Then the next year the revolving door of undrafted free agent OLB's is changed. If Neal isn't brought back, we can't have a new set of in over their heads guys backing up injury prone Clay and Perry. That's the key pressure creating position in a 3-4 scheme.

That leaves two other huge question marks. Who knows if either of Raji/Pickett are back next year. If both end up gone, precious draft assets need to be spent there, assuming Ted won't use free agency to land a fatbody NT. The DE position is also thin on talent given Daniels is used inside mostly. That leaves the big glaring hole at safety. I gotta believe that unless Hyde is moved to safety, a pick in the first three rounds is used there because the team can't start any of the scrub holdovers from last year next to Burnett. Watching the Seattle safeties compared to the Packers was like comparing LeBron James to OJ Mayo. Even if one is drafted, i'd like to see a moderately priced veteran brought in for depth so a scrub like MD Jennings never sees the field again. Richardson looked to slow to me to be in the equation.

[El Duderino]

Plus for Seattle, they are in a tough division. You suspect SF will be back strong and the other 2 teams in that division are ones that very well could be sneaky good. Arizona was good this past season already and if St. Louis gets any production out of the QB they aren't that far off, and have some high draft picks again I believe. That is going to be a pretty competitive division.

That's stating it lightly. The NFC West should easily be the best division in football and that makes what Seattle and San Fran did last year even more impressive.

Plus, it's not just the NFC West. It's amazing just how much better the NFC as a whole is compared to the AFC. For starters, the overall QB situation in the NFC vastly trumps the AFC. Manning and Brady are clearly the best in the AFC, but both are old. Pretty much all of the young higher end talent at QB resides in the NFC and veteran guys like Rodgers, Brees, Ryan, Romo, E. Manning, Cutler, Stafford, etc aren't old either.

For example, take say New England. No question they've been a model franchise for over a decade, but it's easier to keep churning out 11-5 or 12-4 seasons playing in the crappy AFC East. It's nearly 5-6 free wins a year. The AFC South was abysmal and Luck is the only competent in the division. Besides Minnesota and Arizona to a lesser degree, nobody else in the NFC has big question mark at QB.

[Newz]

Now, some of it is definitely on TT. Hayward and Daniels are the only real impact defenders he has landed lately. While some of the young guys still have talent and upside, they haven't panned out yet. He has also dished out a terrible contract to Hawk, overpaid for Jones and looks to have probably made a mistake with Burnett. None of those contracts are really crippling though and you absolutely cannot expect a GM to be perfect in who he resigns year to year. If those are the biggest mistakes TT is going to make... then he's pretty damn good.

The trio of Worthy, Perry, and Jones having very little impact has been a killer to the defense being better. Granted, Jones was a rookie and could easily be better next year, while Perry has shown flashes of being good, being terrible, and injured a lot. Both are big wild cards for next year, we need them to be productive. Worthy is a bust. Clearly the defense needs Hayward to both be healthy and play like his rookie year again. If he can and Shields is resigned, maybe Hyde could be tried at safety?

That said, the linebacker core as a whole needs a serious infusion of better talent, speed, and ferociousness. The ILB starters and depth looks abysmal compared to the upper tier defenses. While i'm fine with a Matthews/Perry starting duo at OLB, both have been injury prone at a vital position in a 3-4 scheme. One beef i've had with Ted over the years is nearly all of the backup OLB's have been very raw undrafted free agents who struggled to create pressure when forced to play because they either weren't ready or simply not skilled enough. Then the next year the revolving door of undrafted free agent OLB's is changed. If Neal isn't brought back, we can't have a new set of in over their heads guys backing up injury prone Clay and Perry. That's the key pressure creating position in a 3-4 scheme.

That leaves two other huge question marks. Who knows if either of Raji/Pickett are back next year. If both end up gone, precious draft assets need to be spent there, assuming Ted won't use free agency to land a fatbody NT. The DE position is also thin on talent given Daniels is used inside mostly. That leaves the big glaring hole at safety. I gotta believe that unless Hyde is moved to safety, a pick in the first three rounds is used there because the team can't start any of the scrub holdovers from last year next to Burnett. Watching the Seattle safeties compared to the Packers was like comparing LeBron James to OJ Mayo. Even if one is drafted, i'd like to see a moderately priced veteran brought in for depth so a scrub like MD Jennings never sees the field again. Richardson looked to slow to me to be in the equation.

I agree with a majority of this.

There are some safeties I like in the draft. I think one of Clinton-Dix or Pryor will be there at 21 and I think they both have a chance to be excellent players. The more I watch and read about both of them, I am actually starting to like Pryor more.

That being said, this particular draft seems to be deep at corner and the Packers in general are deep at corner. One of the things I have been considering is what if we let Sam Shields go and instead use that money on Jarius Byrd? He's one of the best safeties in the NFL and I bet he gets a deal that is either similar or a little less than Shields given that safety isn't as highly paid of a position. I like the idea of keeping home grown talent, but this may be a situation where replacing Shields with a player of similar quality at safety might be more valuable.

Then in the first round you can focus on a DT/NT prospect like Nix or Hageman. Or you can grab an amazing value pick like Bradley Roby (CB) who was initially supposed to be in discussion as a top 15 pick before he had a down year. You could even attack the OLB position and go after a guy like Dee Ford.

It's just my opinion... but I think I'd rather go into next year relying on one of Hyde/House/Rookie to become a legit starter at CB and having Byrd at safety as opposed to having Shields at corner and relying on Richardson/Burnett/Rookie(s) at safety.

[CousinOfDeath]

Yeah, their offense isn't that good and we have a QB that can actually throw the ball.

[CousinOfDeath]

Here we go again. Another year where we fall short and another off-season of these "can we beat this unstoppable NFC West team" topics and comments. For all the talk about how "dominant" Seattle has apparently become, they were inches away from losing the NFC title game, and beat New Orleans by a "whopping" 8 points at home.

The funny thing is that I actually think we match up better with Seattle than we do with SF. Seattle would never get away with playing so many single safety looks against Aaron Rodgers and our offense. Russell Wilson doesn't have enough playmakers to win a shoot out against a top tier offense either. Their team is built to front-run. Yes, they have a fantastic defense, but look at how Atlanta (specifically Roddy White) torched them in the playoffs last year. They rely so much on press coverage that when matched up against big-physical receivers (something that Erick Decker, Thomas, and Welker are not) and a QB that can stretch the field vertically (something that Peyton isn't great at anymore), they aren't as great as all the hype would let you believe.

They just matched up very, very, very well against this Broncos team. I understand the desire to put them on this pedestal after such a blowout SB win, but what happened to that 2000-2001 Ravens team (that had a much better defense btw) in the immediate years after winning it? Like John Fox said after the game, they just ran into "a buzz saw" of momentum and inopportune matchups. Us GB fans, of all people, should remember all the premature "dynasty" talk immediately following our SB win in 2011....

The dynasty talk happened before Nick Collins got injured.

[CousinOfDeath]

Dude is on point with that post.

Just because they'll have to start making cap decisions, doesn't mean that they'll make bad cap decisions. They are just as likely (or more) to make great decisions and continue drafting well.

TT has handed out some rather poor contracts to Tramon (completely forgivable), Burnett (much less so), and Hawk (inexcusable) that have eaten away at available cap space. And he's stopped drafting at an elite level. That's why we've "fallen behind."

Ted's biggest problem isn't that he's not showing enough "urgency" now, it's that he didn't show enough "urgency" 3 years ago when both Rodgers and Clay were on top of their games, making a relative pittance like Wilson and Kaepernick are now.

He "fell behind" because the most important player on the defense was taken away from him in the middle of his prime.

[El Duderino]

That being said, this particular draft seems to be deep at corner and the Packers in general are deep at corner. One of the things I have been considering is what if we let Sam Shields go and instead use that money on Jarius Byrd? He's one of the best safeties in the NFL and I bet he gets a deal that is either similar or a little less than Shields given that safety isn't as highly paid of a position. I like the idea of keeping home grown talent, but this may be a situation where replacing Shields with a player of similar quality at safety might be more valuable.

i could get behind doing that, but Byrd should have a number of teams vying for his services and that's just where i can't see Ted getting a deal done. The Woodson signing is the only time Ted has ever spent good money on a free agent.

One reason why Ted hasn't signed a free agent since Pickett is from everything i've read, he sets a price for any free agent and if a player wants any more than that, it simply won't happen, even with lower tier free agents. As a general philosophy i'm fine with being careful in free agency, but maybe here and there it's worth it to spend a little more than you'd prefer to potentially plug a weakness.

With a player of Bryd's caliber though as the clear best safety available, Ted's very methodical approach in free agency of almost always waiting for a players price to drop to a near exact amount Thompson can accept very likely wouldn't work in landing an in demand talent like Byrd. Odds are pretty high that he'll get signed in the earlier stages of free agency by a team/GM aggressively perusing him, not something Ted has ever done. Even in the Woodson signing, Chuck waited to long and was left with few options, thus he very reluctantly took the Packers offer.

Who knows, maybe Byrd won't get any big offers early in free agency so Ted's style of playing it slow until he gets a really fair price could actually happen or he shocks the world by aggressively perusing Byrd, but i'd bet heavily against either happening.