I’m glad we have nine days before our next game. I need the extra time to recover!
Last night’s thrilling opener at Lambeau against the New Orleans Saints was exciting, nerve-racking, exhilarating, tense, incredible… and now I am exhausted!
I am remembering in the scene in Apollo 13 in which the astronauts have to do a ‘controlled burn’ to get them in proper position for reentering the earth’s atmosphere. They had to do it without the aid of computer navigation, and the scene shows the incredibly intense, frenetic, and high-stakes moments of this burn. And when it was complete, the drained Jim Lovell character says, “Let’s hope we don’t have to do that again.”
That’s how I feel after last night’s game. We got the win, but I hope we don’t have to go through that again.
The potent Saints offense put up an alarming 477 yards against our great Dom Capers defense. And if they had made it 478, we might be feeling quite different today.
But they didn’t, and that is key. While the Saints’ offense had their way much of the night, especially passing the ball, in the end our defense kept stopping them when it counted. Wayne Larrivee, the voice of the Packers, noted after the game that Green Bay scored four touchdowns on their four trips inside the red zone. The Saints, by contrast, scored only one touchdown on their five opportunities inside the 20. How huge is that?
Mark Belling (WISN radio in Milwaukee) made his annual season predictions for the Packers on Thursday afternoon, and I was somewhat disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm. One of his points was that we had not improved ourselves at any position. But perhaps he had not factored in Randall Cobb and a dramatic upgrade in the return game.
What a debut by a rookie!
Don Banks (SI.com) has written a great summary and analysis of last night’s triumph, including this report on Cobb:
Thursday night's game could have been subtitled "A Star is Born,'' because that's how much "wow'' factor Cobb adds to the Packers' offense. The acceleration he showed on his 32-yard second-quarter touchdown reception was eye-opening, but the former Kentucky Wildcat simply blew folks away with his team-record 108-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. Cobb exploded into the open field after appearing to be all but stopped by Saints tacklers, giving Green Bay its first kickoff return for a touchdown since Allen Rossum took one 92 yards in 2000.
"It was amazing,'' said Cobb, of his NFL debut. "The feeling of being at Lambeau Field and coming off a Super Bowl, I was just doing anything I could do to contribute and I was trying to make the most of my opportunities tonight.''
Mission accomplished. The second-round pick is a huge addition to the Green Bay arsenal. I'm not sure how much veteran Packers receiver James Jones is even going to get on the field if Cobb stays healthy and productive. Until tonight, no rookie NFL history had ever had a scoring reception and a kickoff return for a touchdown in his team's season opener.
"You've got to be excited about Randall,'' Packers head coach Mike McCarthy said. "He's shown that from the first day of training camp, his ability. When other players talk about a player having a chance to be special, he's one of those guys. He's very raw, but he's picking up our system, and he knows what to do when he gets the football in his hands and how to get open. He's a gifted young man with a lot of good football in front of him.''
I heard Cobb interviewed on the radio after the game: what a great kid! Humble, team-oriented, self-deprecating. He admitted that he had made mistakes on both of his scoring plays. And he shared that he spent part of the day leading up to the game watching a video sent to him by his pastor.
In the end, it’s hard to measure what a huge victory that was. The Saints aren’t the only great team in the NFC, but they’re clearly one of the top three. They were also the team that made such a point of practicing together during the offseason. They were the next most-recent Super Bowl champs. They were one of the teams most eager to get back on the field and avenge the way their 2010 season ended (remember that they were upset by the like 3-13 Seahawks in the playoffs). It was an immensely important night emotionally for the Packers and for the city of Green Bay, so much of which would have been spoiled and deflated by a loss. And at the end, when it comes time to determine playoff seeding and home field advantage, this opening-night victory may prove to be an enormous factor.
So it really was a great game. And I hope we don’t have to go through that again.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment