The Rest of the Story

Well, we covered "the good" of Sunday's game against Pittsburgh. Now it's time to identify "the bad and the ugly."

I was able to generate a list of ten good things. With a little effort I probably could have expanded it to 12 or 14. The list of bad things will not be so long, but it will be deeper -- and therefore more serious.

So, what was wrong with Sunday's game against the Steelers?

1) Defense. The game was painful from, literally, Pittsburgh's first offensive play to its last. They scored a touchdown on their first play, and they scored one on their last. They were both pass plays. And that fact captures the most alarming element of Sunday's loss. Pittsburgh put up over 500 passing yards against our vaunted defense -- and that without much threat of a running game! They torched us with big-play passes -- like the first touchdown, plus a number of long-yardage conversions. And they picked us apart with short passes, too. In this regard, I think they ignored the tapes of our last 5 wins and studied the earlier film from the teams that had beaten us early in the season, where we noted this weakness before: namely, that you can get 7-15 yards at will against Green Bay by throwing against our linebackers in coverage. Now, not everyone boasts the kind of tight end that Pittsburgh does, but still it is a very troubling weakness.

2) Defense again. Two different times in the 4th quarter, the offense handed the defense the lead. All they had to do was get a couple of stops. These guys came in with the #2 ranked defense in the NFL -- which is not a shabby statistic going into Week 15 of a season. But Pittsburgh moved the ball on them all day, and I saw no evidence of effective halftime adjustments. In the end, they had a team with 86 yards and 2 minutes to go. It wasn't a field goal game -- it was a touchdown. And yet they couldn't seal the deal. Very troubling.

3) Mason Crosby. It's hard not to say that he cost us this game since we lost by 1 point but he left 3 points on the field when he missed that 34-yard attempt in the first half. It's the fourth straight game that he has missed a field goal -- and it's not like these have not been 48- and 52-yard attempts. The guy is unreliable, and something needs to change.

4) Dropped passes. Pittsburgh got all the momentum early on -- forcing us to play catch-up -- largely because we kept going three-and-out in the first half of the game. And our failure to move the ball and make first downs was due, in large measure, to our receivers dropping the ball. This is not the first game where this has been a problem. And if they had done their job (catching the ball is, after all, what they are paid a very great deal of money to do), then we would have been playing from strength rather than weakness from the start.

5) The running game. I get the feeling that "establish the run" appears on Mike McCarthy's list of New Year's resolutions right after "lose weight." He keeps meaning to do it, but it seldom really gets done. I think he just has too great a craving for the passing game, and so Rodgers and the offensive line are put back on their heels from the start. To open with 6 straight passes against the Steelers' defense was especially foolish, since they are notorious for their blitz packages. Even though they didn't register a sack, they abused Rodgers during those first series. We needed to get them back on their heels by establishing the run from the start. And, later in the game, we could have helped our defense a bit by eating up more clock with an effective running game. We scored too quickly in the 4th quarter, leaving the Steelers with too much time in the end.