NFL Week 10: The wake 'n' bake Santonio Holmes version

I'd add the Bears, just because for whatever reason, they are the one team seems consistently able to shut down or slow down Rodgers.

 

I guess I just don't see a team beating Green Bay by trying to trade bullets, because nobody does what Green Bay does as well as Green Bay does it. It will take someone stylistically different. (And I'm a transplanted cheesehead too, so I am not particularly rooting for the 49ers, but that looks like the most interesting matchup to me.)

 

On here we would disagree, because it has always seemed to me that the Bears' main defensive weapon in slowing Rodgers is Mike McCarthy.

 

If the Bears make the playoffs, that would be a dangerous game for the Packers. You never want to face a team from your own division in the postseason.

 

I think you're nuts if you believe the Giants will get up for this game the way did against the Patriots or they will against the Eagles.

A road game against a Niners team that has been awful for a few years now sandwiched between the Pats and Eagles is a recipe for a loss for the Giants. Yes, the Niners have been very good this year (better than the Pats and Eagles), but given their recent history, this isn't the type of game the Giants will "get up" for.

Every time people start talking about the Giants as an elite team, and that's how they're being talked about in the NFC right now (Peter King ranking them sixth in football, for example), they lay an egg. I'd be willing to bet they'll do the same this week.

 

I should point out that the Saints were one bad play call at the goal-line and a 2-point conversion away from taking the Packers to OT in the final seconds of the opener. And that was after Green Bay had put up 42 points. So I think there are a couple of teams that could be successful matching scores with the Packers.

 

The problem with the Bears is that while the defense plays better than most against the Packers' offense, that's more than offset by their offense playing worse than most against the Packers' defense.

 

That run thing, IllMil, I have not gotten that sense at all. The numbers certainly don't bear it out (4.6 YPC), and they have really only shut down the Bears when Chicago was under the Mike Martz shut-ourselves-down philosophy.

Packers are a riverboat gambler defense. They get a lot of takeaways, including one or two that turn the tide in their favor, but I haven't seen them stop many people. And at least four times they have let a team march down and turn a comfortable margin into a one-score game in the fourth quarter.

 

Yeah, but even that game, I felt the Packers were pretty well in control for most of it. New Orleans would scare me as a road game, but I feel pretty good about the Packers at least getting back to the Super Bowl. There, who knows what could happen.

They might be a riverboat gambler defense, but they have also been able to gut it out in every key moment they've needed to. They stopped New Orleans, San Diego and Carolina at the end of games, they shut down Atlanta the entire second half. To me, their defense has looked more lackadaisical than bad. Who knows if Mike Neal can be healthy, but if he's as good as advertised and as good as he's been in very limited time, he could be a huge addition for Green Bay.

 

If I had to predict the NFC title game right now, it would be the Saints and the Packers.

I would be very happy to be wrong and have the Niners in there.

 

I have not exactly become a Niners fan, mostly because the time I've lived out here has been one big ball of suck, but damn is it nice to have something decent to watch on TV every Sunday. The Raiders being functional only makes it more so. There have been years where division races are being decided all over the league and the only two games we get that day are also-ran 1 vs. also-ran 2 and also-ran 3 vs. also-ran 4. Almost enough to make me pony up for Sunday Ticket.

 

It's funny, because growing up just outside of both cities we had the best of both worlds. This was obviously long before DirecTV, but the Niners and Raiders (even when they were in LA) were on locally so that meant we got both games on I guess it was NBC and CBS at the time. I have no idea why it was like that, but I wasn't complaining...

Of course, for the most part, both teams were good at the time, so you actually wanted to watch both teams.