No team inflates opposing sack numbers like the Green Bay Packers. (Jared Allen will have to thank them in his Defensive Player of the Year acceptance speech.)
The Buccaneers had eleven sacks all season before Sunday, then dropped Aaron Rodgers six times. The return of tackles Mark Tauscher and Chad Clifton appeared to help in the first half, as Rodgers stayed clean. But Tauscher then went down with a knee strain in the third quarter and the carnage started.
Packers coach Mike McCarthy was asked if he’d be open to getting suggestions from other coaches or friends to help fix the problem.
“I think anytime you are in problem solving, it’s about applying solutions. It’s obvious what has gone on in our particular failures in that area,” McCarthy said. “There are other options as we move forward, and those are some of the things we’ll look to in certain situations. We don’t need wholesale change.
“We may need to adjust some things and that will be our focus. But as far as going outside the building, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I have all the answers, but I’m very confident in the issues that we’ve had in pass protection, that they are correctable.”
McCarthy hasn’t corrected anything so far. The Packers have taken seven more sacks than any team in football. The other top eight teams in sacks allowed all have losing records. The folks around the Packers are tired of hearing McCarthy say the same things each week.
After reading the above quote, Greg A. Bedard of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tweeted “Does McCarthy realize how infuriating that is for Packers fans to hear -- or even Aaron Rodgers and the receivers?”
McCarthy is either delusional or not doing a good job fixing the correctable mistakes, which certainly include Rodgers’ penchant for holding the ball too long. McCarthy will likely have to make adjustments this week without Tauscher’s help -- there is only a “slight” chance the right tackle could play.
Your turn, Cowboys.