Reasons to Lose

Well, a few days have passed now. The strong emotions of Sunday have subsided. And now we can offer a more dispassionate evaluation of Green Bay's loss to the Vikings -- the hows and whys of what happened.

Some losses can be attributed to luck -- the way the ball bounced on some fluke play at the end. I believe that we can eliminate that explanation.

Some losses can be attributed to the referees -- some blown call that had disproportionate impact on the outcome of the game. That, too, can be dismissed as the reason for our defeat in this case.

That brings us then to the more common factors in winning and losing: (1) talent, (2) coaching, and (3) execution. To which of these can our pair of losses to the Vikings be attributed?

The issue of talent, of course, invites the question of which team has the better players. This isn't basketball, however, where a couple of superstars is enough to swamp every opponent. Neither is it baseball, where you can field the best players at nearly every position (read "Yankees"). A football team is a big squad, and it's rare that one team is across-the-board better than the other.

In terms of match-ups, it seems clear that Minnesota's special teams unit is both more explosive and more consistent than Green Bay's.

On offense, it's obvious that the Vikings have a top-flight running game, and we don't. I'm comfortable with how our passing game stacks up against Minnesota's, on the other hand. Given the time to pass, that is.

Which brings us to defense. Our defensive backfield is fine, and I'd rather have ours than theirs. But clearly the most glaring difference between the two teams in both of our games has been the performance of the two defensive lines. The Minnesota defense has overwhelmed our blockers, embarrassed our pass protection schemes, and abused Aaron Rodgers. Our defensive line, on the other hand, has looked like it was counting to 10 Mississippi before rushing Brett.

This, then, is where coaching comes in. Even if one team is more talented than another in certain match-ups, excellent coaching can compensate for that. Excellent coaching puts players in a position to win. Russ Tucker of SI.com had a very critical piece this week about Green Bay in this regard. He felt that poor coaching cost us the game.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/ross_tucker/11/04/coaches/index.html

Finally, on the subject of execution, the box score suggests a more evenly matched game than the final score did. In total yards, the two teams were neck-and-neck. The Packers earned more first downs, had a slightly better record on 3rd down, and won the time-of-possession battle. We even had a better per-rush-attempt average!

So what went wrong?

Twice as many penalties for the Packers, and a 6-0 sack advantage for Minnesota.

Not to worry, though. We're going to identify what's wrong, and we're going to fix it.