The Packer Pundit

4 keys to beating
the Detroit Lions

Force Kitna to make mistakes
Lions quarterback Jon Kitna has put up some impressive numbers this season. His 3,484 yards are fourth in the NFL, and he has a respectable 14 touchdowns. But he also has been as mistake-prone as any quarterback in the NFL. His 19 interceptions are the second-most in the NFL, behind only Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger, who has 20. Kitna also has been sacked 49 times, most in the NFL. If the Packers can put Kitna on his back and force him into an interception or two, they will be in good shape to win.

Stuff Detroit's running game
With running back Kevin Jones on injured reserve, the Lions will have to rely on an inexperienced backfield. After Jones, Kitna is Detroit's leading rusher with 98 yards. With Jones out, the Lions must rely on Arlen Harris or Aveion Cason, who have just 26 carries for 93 yards and one touchdown between them. If the Packers can take advantage and shut down Detroit's depleted running game, they should be able to win.

Help out Driver
One of the reasons the Packers' passing game was so effective in Sunday's win over the San Francisco 49ers was Brett Favre was able to throw the ball to receivers other than Donald Driver. Driver had one of his best games of the season with nine catches for 160 yards and a touchdown. Greg Jennings had five catches, Ruvell Martin had two and six other Packers had one catch each. If Favre can spread the ball around, the Packers' passing game will be effective.

Run the ball
While Ahman Green was held to less than 100 yards against the 49ers, the Packers still rushed for 139 yards, thanks to 77 yards by Green and 69 on just seven carries by backup Vernand Morency. If the Packers can run the ball effectively, they'll be able to control the clock and the tempo. It also will open up the passing game and make Favre more effective.

Packers Place Montgomery On Injured Reserve,
Re-Sign Francies
The Green Bay Packers Saturday placed defensive end Michael Montgomery on injured reserve. Ted Thompson, Executive Vice President, General Manager and Director of Football Operations, announced the transaction. To replace Montgomery on the active roster, the team re-signed wide receiver Chris Francies from its practice squad. Francies, a 6-foot-1, 193-pound rookie from Texas-El Paso, had spent seven weeks on the 53-man roster before rejoining the practice squad last week, when the team acquired wide receiver Carlyle Holiday. Francies had two catches for 16 yards in his first regular-season stint with the Packers. Montgomery, the Packers' first of two choices in the sixth round of the 2005 NFL Draft, sustained a knee injury during the practice week before the team's Dec. 10 victory at San Francisco. A 6-foot-5, 275-pound player out of Texas A&M, Montgomery finished the year with 21 tackles (15 solo), 11/2 sacks and one pass defensed. Taking Francies' spot on the practice squad is offensive tackle Travis Leffew. A teammate of Packers guard Jason Spitz at Louisville, the 6-foot-4, 292-pound Leffew had spent the first 11 weeks of the 2006 season on Green Bay's practice squad before being signed to the 53-man roster of Dallas. He will wear number 61.






Mike McCarthy column:
6th-grade girls basketball team
got me into coaching
By Mike McCarthy
To ultimately choose coaching as a profession, you have to have caught the coaching "bug" at some point in your life. For me, it was my first coaching experience at age 20, when I realized I liked coaching, and I thought I should see at some point whether I was any good at it. In my college years, my youngest sister's St. Rosalia's sixth-grade basketball team in Pittsburgh needed an assistant coach. My family always was very involved in St. Rosalia's basketball program, and I had a cousin who played on the team, too, so I thought I'd help out. It turned out the head coach had never played basketball, so I tried to sell him on a lot of my ideas, starting with how to structure practice. We didn't have our own gym and we only had it for an hour-and-a-half, so we had to make the most of our time. We had four or five plays that we ran, a couple of defenses and a full-court press. The head coach would let me run a lot of the drills most of the time. I would scrimmage with them, and I loved seeing all of our players get better, little by little. We weren't very good when the season started, but we won a few games here and there and just kept improving. It was really a neat experience, and it taught me that when people buy into the plan and you can motivate them to execute the plan, you're going to have success. At the end of the season, we made the playoffs by finishing second in our division to St. Bartholomew's. We started to put together a little streak, winning some tough, close games and always playing hard. Well, the next thing we knew, we had advanced to the Pittsburgh diocese championship against St. Bartholomew's, the grade-school basketball dynasty in the city. We had played St. Bart's four times during the season, and they had routed us each time. In sixth-grade basketball, it's a pretty good day if you can score 35 points, but we were getting beat by 30-plus points every time we played St. Bart's. Now we had to play them again for the championship. It was a true David-vs.-Goliath matchup, and not just because their guards were as big as our center. These St. Bart's girls never had lost a game all through their grade-school careers. Before the game, the head coach and I were looking at the trophies. One was about 4 feet tall, and the other one was about a foot tall. I asked him where he was going to fit that big thing in his house, and he looked at me like, "It's not that big." Then I said, "What are you talking about? It's 4 feet tall! We're going to win the big one." -- More






Looking for balance
Green Bay would like to throw less, run more
By ROB REISCHEL / Special to Packer Plus
Posted: Dec. 14, 2006
Scott Wells was discussing the state of the Green Bay Packers' offense last week. And the Packers' starting center opined about his utopia. "Personally, I would rather be equal in both the run and the pass," Wells said. "That means you have a two-dimensional offense. We are too one-dimensional right now. We've got to get back to having more balance." Just days later, Wells got his wish. Green Bay achieved what every offense longs for: balance. In the Packers' 30-19 victory at San Francisco Sunday, Green Bay threw the ball 34 times and ran it that exact same number. That marked just the second time this season that Green Bay ran the ball as often as it threw it. The only other time came in a 31-14 victory over Arizona, when the Packers called 39 running plays to just 25 passes (60.9%). Aside from that, Green Bay has been about as one-dimensional as a team can be. The Packers are second in the National Football League in pass attempts with 38.4 per game. And Green Bay is throwing the ball a whopping 59.45% of the time. That's a far cry from the run-first team Packers head coach Mike McCarthy hoped to be when the year began. And with his rookie season nearly complete, McCarthy's offense still seems to lack an identity. -- More



Green closing in on Taylor's rushing record
By Rob Demovsky
greenbaypressgazette.com
Ahman Green has been known to conduct an entire interview without looking up. He'll untie his shoes, cut the tape off his ankles, check messages on his cell phone — anything to avoid eye contact. But when the subject of records — one record in particular — came up last week, Green's eyes opened wide and a smile came across his face. The Green Bay Packers running back needs 238 yards to surpass Hall of Famer Jim Taylor as the team's all-time rushing leader. Taylor, who gained 8,207 yards in his nine seasons with the Packers from 1958 to 1966, is among an elite group of NFL running backs who have rushed for at least 8,000 yards with one team. If Green gets merely 30 yards on the ground today at Lambeau Field against the Detroit Lions, he will become only the 22nd NFL player to join Taylor in that 8,000-yard club. A total of 37 NFL running backs have hit 8,000 yards, but 16 of them did so with more than one team. "Oh yeah, (Taylor's record) does interest me," Green said after a practice last week. "It's in the back of my mind every game and every day. I know I'm close." Taylor also is aware of Green's progress toward his record, but claims he doesn't much care. In a telephone interview from his home in Baton Rouge, La., Taylor said today's NFL doesn't interest him much, "I did what I did when I did it," Taylor said. "It's hard to compare it to this or that, and it's almost impossible from my perspective (because) I don't watch a whole lot of it. I guess I've just lost some interest. I just loved to run the ball. I was just one part of an offensive unit, just 1/11th of that unit. I just tried to be the best football player I could be for the Green Bay Packers." -- More



Take the record, Hornung says
Packer's scoring title has stood for 46 years
By TOM SILVERSTEIN / journalsentinel.com
Posted: Dec. 16, 2006
The Green Bay Packers' "Golden Boy" is ready to let go. His record has stood for 46 years - "longer than Babe Ruth's" - and he's ready to accept the fact that someone else will be listed ahead of him in the National Football League record book. However, it still matters to Paul Hornung that his record - 176 points scored in one season - occurred during a 12-game schedule in 1960 and that the soon-to-be record-holder, San Diego running back LaDainian Tomlinson, will have needed at least two more games than that to break it. But Hornung's done fighting it. Records were made to be broken, and he's willing to step aside after nearly a half-century. "You know the NFL called me about four years ago, and they were debating what to do," Hornung said in a telephone interview from his Louisville, Ky., office. "They said, 'We're going to have a problem with your record because there's more games being played.' I said, 'I don't care what you do. What the hell's the difference?' (They) said, 'Well, you averaged 14.7 points per game; we're going to go by that system. If teams are playing 16 games, whoever wins it will have to average more than 14.7 points per game.' But they decided not to do that. I said, 'I don't care one way or another; my record lasted longer than Babe Ruth's, that's good enough for me.' " -- More






Perfect sendoff for Favre?
Next year's playoffs
By Mike Woods
We get the idea you all hope Brett Favre will be the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers until he's 56. Sad as it is, we understand some of you actually think that's possible. The reality is, this could be it for The Beloved One. Then again, last Sunday's demolition of San Francisco undoubtedly will give the legions of faithful hope that a return is possible. I'll tell you what also is possible. Despite that this is not a good team at present, it's quite possible it could be a playoff contender next season. At 5-8 and with three weeks left, the Packers haven't been mathematically eliminated this year. But they won't make it. Despite looking completely inept and incapable at times this season, however, it wouldn't take a whole lot to improve enough to become a contender next season in the NFC, the 90-pound weakling of professional football. (For this argument, the 11-2 Bears are excused.) There are nine teams ahead of the Packers in the NFC, but the gap between the 5-8 Packers and the rest of the Average Joes is rather small. It wouldn't be a stretch to say, provided Favre returns in 2007, the Packers could be a playoff team. (We now pause to address the "Is Favre Holding Back Aaron Rodgers?" debate. Perhaps he is. That said, even though Rodgers has been limited to two appearances in mop-up duty the past two years, he has shown us next to nothing. At present, he's displayed little promise. Until that changes, there's little reason to rush the future.) In any event, a trip to the playoffs would be a more appealing way to exit as opposed to what Favre has endured the past two seasons. -- More



KGB should be brought back
By Pete Dougherty
Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila has seen his last days as an every-down player for the Green Bay Packers. Last week's game at San Francisco proved the Packers are better off with a bigger, stouter player such as Cullen Jenkins at right defensive end on running downs. There's no turning back now. But converting KGB into a part-time, pass-rush specialist raises questions about his future. He's due a $5 million base salary next year, and General Manager Ted Thompson must decide in the offseason whether he's willing to pay a starter's salary to a part-time player — even though that part-time player has the crucial role of pressuring and sacking the quarterback. Will KGB's pass-rushing numbers improve enough — he has only five sacks in 13 games — without the wear and tear of playing run downs to make him worth $5 million in 2007? Or, perhaps the more pertinent question is, can the Packers find a comparable rusher for $5 million or less? In 2003, the Packers signed KGB to a seven-year, $37 million contract that included an $11 million signing bonus after the Philadelphia Eagles made a spirited run at him in restricted free agency. He had 25½ sacks the two previous years combined. Because of the big bonus, his base salaries through this year were reasonably low. But next year, his salary balloons to $5 million, then $6.15 million in 2008 and $7.3 million in 2009. I appraised three pro scouts of KGB's circumstances and asked each whether he would retain KGB for next season at $5 million if he were running the Packers. I got three different answers. -- More







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