I watched that Family night scrimmage and while you can only take some bits as pieces from that as anything useful, all night I thought it was Za'Darius Smith who was just dominating matchup's. I assumed he was 91 and Preston Smith was 55. Turns out it was flipped, so I didn't notice Za'Darius Smith, but man, Preston Smith looked outstanding.

He lined up over Lane Taylor and absolutely blew by him. He lined up over Bakhtiari and walked him back...and was basically just a wrecking ball.

We've all heard about what Za'Darius Smith is doing in practice.

As for that other time, Taylor was beaten BADLY, Adams came over the line and did a beautiful rip and just blew right past him. One of those pass rushes that just destroys a play. Heck, even if it was a handoff, that was going nowhere.

I really am starting to doubt Taylor makes this teams final roster. Like I said in another thread, the dropoff to...Jenkins or Turner or McCray is just not worth the difference in salary.

Rashan Gary...everything I've seen from him so far, most of which came on Family night, though I did catch a practice because I happened to be up in the area, but he looks so fluid and explosive. It's not hard to picture him playing a 5 technique in rushing situations, but man, I could also see him being able to drop off and cover the flats or a hook zone. He just moves so much better than I thought he'd be able to laterally. Again, just compared to the other guys.

Tony Brown-Absolutely looks good, but all their DB's did. King looked good.


Offensively-
Kumerow looked really good. I did not realize he was 6'4. I remember when he was at Whitewater a friend of mine was raving about the QB and the WR looking like they could be NFL players, naturally I thought he was exaggerating. Obviously, he was not.

Trevor Davis looks like he's taken a big step.

Oh, and my guy, my breakout star for this year or next, Robert Tonyan looks like he could be a real weapon.


So far the pass rush looks relentless.
I'm a little disappointed we're not seeing or hearing more about St. Brown, but it sounds like Adams, MVS, Allison, Kumerow and Davis are pretty well locked in at WR'er.
The DB's, it's hard to really see what you have when you're trying to not go to the ground or take someone else to the ground, so you're not really coming in there and ripping at the ball when they catch it. The perfect example of this was a catch on a deep post with King lined at RCB and Rodgers hit someone(I thought it was MVS, but not positive) for a perfect throw and he went up and made a really nice catch in the air, but King was right on him. Who knows if he breaks that up in the game, but he was in a great position.


I just read about King's hammy. I really hope it's just a training camp thing. They said they don't believe it's an issue, so I won't worry about it until it becomes something more. But this guy has to get on the field this year for 14 games and find a way to stay healthy. It was why I was hoping they'd bring Breeland back. You need some depth when you're counting on a guy who's been injured his first two years and a guy who's undersized to be your starting corners.


All in all, the defense looks like they're really looking great thus far, small sample size though it may be, Tony Brown, Montravius Adams, Raven Green, and even Hollman and Summers looked pretty active. Though the latter I would assume is a special teamers at best for the Packers this year.


This team just kinda feels like that team in 2005 or 2006 that Favre called the most talented Packers team he played on. We had a bunch of really talented rookies/2nd year players like Collings, Jennings, Hawk and then some other players who weren't quite core players, but guys like Jarrett Bush who were extremely important in building a complete team.

Now this team didn't draft guys like Finley, Collins, Jennins that we know of, but they sure went out and spent a lot of money to get some really productive and probably more importantly, reliable pass rushers.


It's just fun to see a team coming together from what little we can see after they ACTUALLY went out and addressed the big areas of concern that even conservative Packer fans like me have called for. I was fine with them just keeping their own guys when they were hitting on draft picks and Rodgers was in his 20's, started to get frustrated when those Pro-Bowl hits became above-average starter picks and then just bad picks and we weren't doing anything about it.


Finally, it's gonna be interesting to see if Crosby holds onto the Kicker job. I have a hard time believing that they're going to let him go this year, but Ficken has a MONSTER leg. Thought I was watching Justin Tucker out there or Greg Z-whatever. Greg the leg. Hit that 63 yarder with about 10 yards to spare.

Of course, you can. If there's ANY position you can actually put any stock in their performance in a scrimmage, it's your front 7 and your OL.

I don't care if they get a sack or not(sacks are actually really overrated stats). But when you see Montravius Adams beat a guy like Lane Taylor as badly and as quickly as he did, why wouldn't you be able to put stock in that?


And they're definitely not just practicing footwork the first 3 seconds of a play. Hell, 3 seconds IS the play. But I'm talking about the team portions, the two-minute portions. Of course, they're playing competitively there. The run blocking is obviously pointless and tells you nothing, but the pass blocking? Yeah, they're going full speed there.


And the guys who are injured like Bulaga weren't out there. So yes, that would be the one area I think you can actually get a look at and actually gauge how effective the guys are.

I really doubt they'd do that. They're really no need to. He's extremely athletic and has all the physical tools to play CB. I'd say being a Corner is akin to be a starting pitcher. You only get moved to safety(or the pen) if you can't hack it at your current position. Given that Brown's a guy who can run a sub 4.4 40, isn't real physical and has been getting work with the 1st unit, I doubt they'd want to play him at safety.

There's also the fact that despite scoring a 31 on the Wonderlic, he apparently doesn't pick up schemes very quickly. That comes from him, so I'm not picking on him and I wouldn't know. He likely would have been drafted if not for the stupid failed drug tests(of which there were at least 3) and the on-field mental errors which he dealt with both at 'Bama and last year. But he's working with Tramon, he seems like he's maturing and he has a ton of natural ability.

I don't think there's any question you're right about his ball-hawking ability and how explosive he is though. They apparently really like Savage, Amos, Greene and if they were to move someone to safety or play them in both places, I'd think Josh Jackson would be a more likely candidate. He's far more physical, he lacks the ideal speed to play outside. And then obviously Tramon could play FS as he did last year. One of the benefits of having Amos out there is that you know you can put him at Free or Strong safety and he's going to know where to be. You absolutely have to have that player who can get the secondary in position.


I'd probably put turnovers atop the list. Remember in the early 2000's when we had Ed Donatell as our DC before he was the scapegoat for the infamous 4th and 26 Freddie Mitchell play, our team was always among the league leaders in forced turnovers. We had some talent on defense, but not a lot. He just played a real bend, don't break style of defense and it resulted in us giving up a ton of yards but then getting a ton of turnovers.

The fact that we had the best running back(arguably) in franchise history and an elite OL really nullified Favre's proclivity to turn the ball over.

But whatever order you want to put them in, it's hard to argue. If you're holding guys to 3 points every time down, you're going to lose to a Rodgers led team. If you're forcing turnovers, same. If you're getting off the field on 3rd downs, same.

The ONLY real area the Packers have been good at in recent years is the short-yardage run defense. They've been able to stack teams up in short-yardage situations, but they've been unable to create turnovers, get pressure and they sure haven't been able to get off the field on 3rd down.


I think it's really as simple as Bulaga. If he's healthy, or relatively healthy, the Packers have a stacked OL. If he's not, there are question marks.

We keep hearing about some of their tackles, how good Light has looked and how he's probably earned a spot. de Beer looks like he could be a capable tackle. I think Adam Pankey is going to be a long time starter in this league and I think he can play all over the place. And then of course you have Billy Turner who they signed, presumably in part because he's a backup tackle.


But as things stand now a starting OL of Bakh, Bulaga, Linsley and then two of Jenkins, Turner, Taylor, McCray, Madison, whoever wins the two jobs at guard, that should be as good of an all-around OL as we've had since we had Clifton, Tauscher, and company.

It's deep, they MUST believe Jenkins is going to be an immediate starter and he should be if you pick him as high as they did, so that'd leave one spot left for a lot of talented guys. And while Pankey and McCray may not have looked great last year, remember how bad Lang looked at times early on? Same with Sitton? The majority of the fan bases wanted both of them gone.



Well, as fans who really pay close attention, it's a yearly thing, but I think you're right, this year they're likely to have to cut some guys who are certainly going to make other teams 54 man rosters.

I just listed the depth at guard we've got. I don't know if we've got any studs in there, but I think we'll cut a few who can at least be serviceable in the NFL.

OLB'er...I know this uncommon in the NFL and more a baseball thing, but should we maybe consider trading Fackrell? His 10.5 sacks last year was soo incredibly lucky based on his pressures and QB hits, but a long, athletic OLB who is young may bring back a decent draft pick and I honestly don't think he's as good as either of the two FA's we brought in named Smith, Gary. I like Gilbert better and then we have a couple of young guys who look impressive.


But this year is definitely going to be different with so many draft picks and free agent signings. I think we could potentially see some pretty surprising cuts/trades. Lane Taylor as I've mentioned, I think he's a good guard, struggled a bit last year, but hard to imagine the gap is real big between he and Patrick or any of the other options. WR'er, St. Brown looks like he's been bumped down the depth chart quite a bit.

I'll bet we see at least 4-5 guys we cut end up on another teams 54 man this year if not more.

I was still holding out SOME hope that he'd figure it out this year.

I can't fault the Packers for taking an athletic tackle in the 2nd round, but it really sucks to look back and see Deion Jones picked just a couple spots behind him. He would look GREAT in this defense. Not much of a run stuffer, you'd want to play him with a bigger, more physical LB'er, but great in coverage.


Anyway, apparently, the Packers backup tackles have looked pretty good. So...hopefully Bulaga stays healthy. If we can keep both of our tackles healthy this year, our offense should be in really good shape. But the drop off from those two is so huge, we're gonna need to keep Mercedes Lewis on this roster just in case.