I know there are still 9-10 minutes left, but now is the time to take out the starters. Charles Woodson should not be on the field, nor should Collins, Barnett, Raji, etc. Driver and Jennings and Finley should sit – Clifton, Wells and Tausher too. Put in the back-ups now and give them some real game experience.

That was a huge play. I’m really glad McCarthy game him that chance. The best was that Driver, Jennings, Barnett – all those guys ran out on the field to celebrate with Crosby. He needed that big-time, especially if we’re not going to pick someone else up. I must say, if we’d picked up one of those older guys, they may not have had the leg to make a kick like that in the cold. (I still think we should have picked one up for insurance but…)

Great game- Seattle sucks but we’ve played really well.

I’ve been impressed that Seattle started pumped up and seemed to want to win. But they are not good.

Go Carolina. How great is that!

• Seattle, frankly, is not good. They do have a veteran QB in Hasselbeck who has been decent in his past, but is not that good now. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he lasts maybe 1 more season in Seattle, if that. I would wager they will be trading for a QB or drafting one in the next year. But Hasselbeck’s lack of production hasn’t totally been his fault this year – in fact some would argue it is mostly the fault of a banged up O-Line. If I’m not mistaken they’ve gone through at least 3 starting left tackles alone this year. Their line is so bad that break-out 2008 rookie TE John Carlson has been relegated to a role as essentially another O-lineman to help in protection and it still doesn’t work – and in the process his receiving talents are being wasted. It was only last week that he finally got some attention, but of course, they were already getting crushed by Tampa in Seattle.
• Following up on the previous point, in the first half especially, Dom Capers should blitz the ____ out of Hasselbeck. We should EXPECT to force 3+ turnovers in this game. Hasselbeck has thrown several picks this year and the team fumbles too.
• TJ Housh is a solid WR, but has not had that great of a year. He is not a danger after catching the ball despite his insistence that he is. He also has proven to be a tool this year by being unnecessarily outspoken at times.
• Justin Forsett is a good RB. How Jim Mora justifies continuing to start Julius Jones is beyond me. He is slow, has no juke moves, and is injury prone. Forsett, on the other hand, has done well with his opportunities. We need to especially keep an eye on Forsett catching passes out of the backfield.
• Offensively, we should be able to run over these guys and throw past them. The Seattle D just isn’t that good. Grant will continue his late season run and I’d be surprised if Rodgers doesn’t throw for 3+ TDs.
• A quiet key to this one may be special teams. We don’t want to give them a short field or a TD on a return or something because those are the kinds of things bad teams can pull off to keep games close.
• I hate to be so confident like this – especially when Jim Mora’s last team marched into Lambeau facing a Packers’ team that historically had never lost a playoff game at Lambeau, and beat the Packers soundly (Mike Vick, Falcons). But something just tells me that this will end up being what I’m going to start calling a “formality” game – a game that is on the schedule that has to be played, but probably doesn’t need to be played because the odds of the underdog winning are ridiculous – kind of like playing the Washington Generals.
• I’m really looking forward to a dominant defensive performance. I think as much as the defense tries to comfort itself with the thought that the Pitt game was an aberration, they were embarrassed big-time. And they should have been. So, I can’t help but think our guys are going to come out charged up and ready to take care of business.
• Packers 45, Seattle 13.

Just wanted to wish all readers a Merry Christmas. We truly appreciate you and your comments, the discussion, the insight, the hilarity. I really mean that. We really appreciate it. It is so much fun to write posts knowing that those reading them are to a person (except for an occasional Bear fan commenter), intelligent, thoughtful and as into the Packers as we are. It’s just plain fun.

Again, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and…Go Pack Go!

Read here from ESPN’s Jeffrey Chadiha. Nice article on Charles Woodson. We at Packergeeks have done our best to highlight just how good this guy has been this year – even nominating him for NFL MVP. For anyone who has watched multiple Packer games this year, you know that Woodson doesn’t just do the stuff that national writers often focus too much on like getting picks, forcing fumbles, scoring defensive TDs. He does all of that yes, but his presence on the field fundamentally changes the game so significantly, it is nothing short of remarkable that he does this from the cornerback position. Importantly, Dom Capers needs to be given some credit as he clearly works with Woodson to design plays/schemes that bring out his strengths. But Woodson in the end, deserves credit for just playing like he has. Man am I glad he changed his mind about coming to Green Bay – and judging by Rodgers’ quote, he is too. Following is the Rodgers quote in its entirety:

“I don’t mean to offend anybody by saying this, but he’s the best football player I’ve ever seen in person. I’ve never seen anybody dominate a position the way he has.”

From pittsburghlive.com”

On receiving any feedback regarding his decision to go for a controversial onside kick against Green Bay:

“I don’t look for feedback. I just try to win football games. My 8-year-old asked me what I was thinking. … I told him to be quiet.”

Sorry – just realized I never did put up my post yesterday on Crosby. I essentially just said that we should at least bring in competition. I know that McCarthy wants Crosby to feel supported during his season-long slump and that part of McCarthy’s reason for being so firm in his commitment is that McCarthy doesn’t want Crosby’s confidence to dip any further. But the fact is, if Crosby continues hurting us, he needs to sit and someone who can do it more effectively needs to be our kicker. In the post, I went on to list options: Dave Rayner, Mike Vanderjadt, Morten Andersen – and I noted that John Carney and Matt Stover both would likely be available soon.

Well, sure enough, the Saints just cut John Carney. He didn’t light the world on fire this year (13 of 17), but he’s a veteran who proved to be a brutally difficult cut for the Giants last year when Tynes came back because he was so good. I say bring him if we can get him – maybe even consider keeping 2 kickers. (At worst, he might be able to offer Crosby some veteran mentoring that he has seriously lacked in his first 3 years.) We’re at a critical time in the season when another miss from Crosby could be devastating. No, there’s no guarantee a new guy will be any better, but it would be hard for a new guy to be worse.

From what I’ve been able to figure, our playoff picture is not too complicated. Ok, as I study this, it is a bit complicated. Remember that Philly has already clinched a playoff spot, though it’s possible they could lose the division title yet to Dallas. But Philly beat the NYG 2x this year, so they own the head-to-head tiebreaker against NYG:

• Packers are in and clinch the #5 seed if we win our last 2 games no matter what other teams do.
• Packers are in if we win 1 of our final two games and the Giants lose 1 of their final 3 games.
• Packers are in if we win 1 of our final two games and Dallas loses 1 of its final two games.

How can the Packers still be elimintated?

• Packers could be out if we lose both of the last two games, Dallas wins at least one of their last two games and the NYG win at least 2 of their final 3 games. (In this case, the Packers would lose a common game tiebreaker to the NYG – thanks in large part to the embarrassing TB loss).
• Packers could be out if we lose one of the last two games, Dallas wins both of their remaining games and the NYG win all 3 of their remaining games. Again, we’d lose the tiebreaker to the NYG.

• Our prevent defense was successful in that in prevented victory for us. The coaching staff would probably counter that they were getting “enough” of a rush, but I just don’t think so. A few blitzes and at the very least keeping Matthews in there to rush the pass every time would have been smart. Or Bishop – who would have had fresh legs. Yes, playing the regular defense we’d been playing all game may not have been the answer either considering it was so bad – but at least putting Roeth under more pressure might have prevented some of the easier completions they ended up getting.
• Not sure why a guy like our CB Josh Bell was in there anyway on that last play.
• AJ Hawk hurt this team today. He’s fine against the run – in fact, the last few games, I’d say he’s been very good. But he is an absolute liability in coverage. Heath Miller had 7 catches for 118 yards – several against Hawk.
• Pitt clearly did their homework on us. They got more yards passing than any other team has against us this year and it didn’t seem too hard. They primarily went after Tramon and Jarrett Bush and Hawk – and that last pass came against recently acquired Josh Bell.
• While Ben Roeth gets sacked a ton, when he does buy time and shakes free, he often causes huge damage because his WRs don’t stop running around. Hines Ward does that extremely well, despite the fact that he’s a jackass. It’s so frustrating because many times we had Roeth dead only to have a huge pass completed on us.
• Rodgers was fantastic. Our offense came around in the second half, though we never did get the running game going.
• We have to be excited about Finley. He’s getting the ball because he’s getting it done. Great job especially in the second half by all of our WRs and Finley. Great job.
• It’s weird, whenever I watch the Packers, I get this feeling like we never really have control over games. I think that may be due in good part to not imposing our power on other teams with the run game and/or establishing legit rhythm on offense. We just seem out of sync – though the good thing is that we’re managing to score points in the face of that. (Better rhythm in the 2nd half though.)
• Remember who missed a 34 yard FG. Mason Crosby. Kicking field goals isn’t easy – especially at Heinz Field. But I’m not kidding when I say that if there were such a thing as teleporting, I could have set down my beer (an Esser Pilsner – highly recommend it), walked on the field and probably made that one. Playoff teams need playoff kickers and we should be keeping close tabs on John Carney, Matt Stover (or maybe Adam Vinatieri) – and maybe even give Jason Elam a call despite him having a poor year in Atlanta.
• Clay Matthews is a beast. Great game. Not sure why Brad Jones (who also had a nice game) lost so much playing time to Poppinga at the end of the game. Poppinga had one nice play, but was thrown about on the rest of the plays.
• I’m pissed we lost that game. We came back and fought hard. But putting a prevent defense out there just plain didn’t work. Pitt marched down the field and scored a TD. Yes, it was a bit unlucky and if Cullen Jenkins makes that sack, which there was no excuse for missing, we likely would have won. Our defense definitely needs to go back to work and figure out why Pitt was able to use us like they did. And our offense needs to do a much better job of figuring out how we can get into a better rhythm.
• But at the same time, I’m not suicidal here. This loss hurts but I hope it’s one the team can analyze and then forget quickly. We didn’t get crushed or anything, we lost to a wiley bunch of Super Bowl veterans/a quality coaching staff and we still have a very good shot at the playoffs – which I think continues to be a realistic basic goal for this regular season. For those dumb enough to take any comfort in my predictions, I’ll offer this prediction: Packers 45, Seahawks 13.