I won't make a habit of posting Packer stories in the outdoor forum, but it is just so nice to win a big game every once in awhile that I couldn't resist.Unleashing the HoundsPackers defense has fun dogging Cowboys' RomoBy Tom Silverstein of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Nov. 16, 2009.jpg-packers16(4).jpg)
The Packers defense hounded Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo all game long. (Mark Hoffman Photo)Green Bay — When the Green Bay Packers' defensive coaches met to review their smashing performance in a 17-7 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, a good part of the discussion wasn't about Xs and Os.
It was about Es - as in emotion, energy, enthusiasm.
"Guys were excited," safeties coach Darren Perry said. "We talked about it postgame and this morning about just the feeling, the look in the guys' eyes. They were having fun. And a big game like that, when you can take the edge off by having a lot of fun, it makes it that much easier for guys to go out and play loose.
"That's kind of what we had yesterday."
The Packers' near shutout of the Cowboys - they held them to 131 yards until midway through the fourth quarter - was a model for how the 3-4 defensive scheme is supposed to work. Defensive coordinator Dom Capers took the saddle off the pressure package and sent numerous blitzers from all over the field at Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.
Privately, and sometimes publicly, players had been expressing a desire for Capers to let them loose and play the aggressive style they were promised would become the Packers' defensive signature. Over the first eight games, Capers focused more on stopping opposing teams' running attacks, making sure his unit didn't get trampled on while learning a new system.
Facing a critical juncture in the season, Capers dusted off some blitzes he hadn't used this season and applied consistent pressure on the Cowboys, sending everyone from inside linebackers Nick Barnett and A.J. Hawk to cornerback Charles Woodson to safety Nick Collins. The Packers sacked Romo five times and chipped in three other tackles for loss in holding the Cowboys to a season-low 278 yards.
Now that he's seen what his unit can do when turned loose, is Capers going to keep his foot on the accelerator?
Maybe.
"These guys know we will be as aggressive as we can be and have success," Capers said of his fourth-ranked defense. "I've never been around a player yet that doesn't like to be aggressive. And we certainly like to dictate the tempo of the game and I thought we were able to dictate the tempo of the game yesterday."
But many coordinators have promised to blitz aggressively only to back off because of the risk factor, so what he said Monday won't necessarily hold true next Sunday. Capers said he was able to blitz so much because the Cowboys became predictable, eschewing the run early in favor of a pass-happy attack.
Another reason Capers might dial down his blitz calls is that the next opponent, the San Francisco 49ers, have running back Frank Gore, whose 64- and 80-yard touchdown runs this season can scare the ink off a coordinator's play sheet. The downside of blitzing is that if the offense has the right play called, there can be a huge hole for a running back.
It's one reason Capers refused to blitz Brett Favre in the two Minnesota Vikings games; he feared running back Adrian Peterson would scorch him.
"That's the thing, you have to make sure you're gap sound," Perry said. "When you zone pressure, sometimes guys get out of their gap too quick. If you're slanting the wrong way, you get creased. You have to be conscious of that. That's why if a team is running the ball, you have to be a little more selective than when you pressure and when you don't."
When he joined coach Mike McCarthy's staff this past off-season, Capers sold the defense as a pressure-oriented scheme and told outsiders that the Packers had the personnel to run it. The problem, however, was that even after a very productive training camp, some players weren't comfortable in their new positions and others were wondering when all the blitzing would occur.
On Sunday, the focal point of the pressure aspect of the defense, the linebackers, showed up as it hadn't before. Barnett, Hawk and rookie Clay Matthews sold out on every blitz and looked like someone had finally removed the tether that was holding them back. Hawk, in particular, looked like a different player.
"He's finally responding," linebackers coach Winston Moss said. "So give him credit. Whatever, through preparation and just having constant patience to do it and maybe him not being in there and getting really, really frustrated, now he probably understands that, you know what? Nothing's ever guaranteed. If I want to stay on this field, I'm going to have to be productive. Nothing's ever given and it's earned now."
Part of the reason why the inside linebacker blitzes against the Cowboys were so successful is that Capers adjusted them so they became less predictable than earlier in the season. The Cowboys countered that blitz differently from other teams, and Capers was able to find the ideal way to attack them.
If the Packers are going to develop into a pressure team, they're going to have to keep coming up with new ways to send blitzers because what they did last Sunday will surely be defended better next Sunday.
"That's what we set out to do from Day 1," Perry said of being an attack defense. "Now some teams will block us up a little bit differently than others and you have to be able to adjust. We have to be creative enough where we show some different looks, and looks they haven't seen before.
"As long as we do that and keep that in mind, I think we can continue to be just as aggressive as we were this past Sunday."
Now it's in Capers' hands to decide whether that will be the case.
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