Cincyfan78
Well-Known Member
Very odd alignment indeed.That was just the Lions being the Lions this year.
It was almost as if they had never practiced a hail mary defense before. Didn't have a single player standing on the goalline.
The funniest part of the hail mary....go check the replay. There is a Lions player standing on the 40 yard line right in front of the packers bench. 20 yards from Rodgers and 40 yards from the end zone. What exactly the hell is he doing there? There has to be a reason why the coaches sat him over there (I can't think of one). And then count the numbers on the field. 3 Lions rushing the passer, 6 Lions in the 2nd zone. 1 in no mans land in the video. That means there was one more Lion playing zone on the bottom side of the field that didn't run to the end zone. Why are they guarding the side line on an untimed down?
There are a lot of situations where I think coaches get unfairly blamed and fired because of lack of talent or players just not performing. But this Lions team is probably the most unprepared team I have seen from an NFL team in quite awhile. Caldwell has more than earned the pink slip that will be handed to him at the end of the season.
I'm not a huge fan of the just rush 2 or 3 guys in that situation. Yeah, you want additional guys in the back line, but only rushing 2 or 3 (as many teams do) just gives the QB too much time and space to even get a throw off. I'd rather send the traditional 4 guys and see if you can force a quicker throw, that ends up traveling less than the needed yardage.
As you pointed out, it could have easily been done by sending 1, or both, of the oddly aligned players. Rodgers wouldn't have been able to scramble as he did, nor get into a full throwing motion (in theory, of course).