Bears 20, Packers 17

A lot of things went wrong last night for the Pack Attack, but the biggest thing was obviously the penalties. The Packers set a franchise record for most penalties in a game with 18. Somehow that's not really surprising, especially on defense. We had three rookies starting on D, two of which were undrafted free agents. Frank Zombo, outside linebacker, had a helmet to helmet roughing the passer penalty on the same play that Cutler threw an INT to Nick Barnett. Later, safety Morgan Burnett was flagged for a pass interference on another Cutler INT to Nick Collins, both of these were game changing calls. The offense looked just as bad penalty wise. The biggest mistake was a a holding call Mark Taucher had on Peppers as Rodgers threw a TD to Finley. As ESPN analyst Keyshawn Johnson would cay, c'mon man! These three penalties stand out for obvious reasons but that was just the beginning of our problems. You cant have more penalties than points and really expect to win. If karma existed, it would be biting us in the backside right now.


Our defensive secondary needs to grow up, quickly. Luckily, Al Harris is looking good in his recovery and should be more than ready to go for the Minnesota game in week 7. Where has Charles Woodson been? Aside from three pass interference calls this season and just a couple nice tackles, he hasn't done a thing. Although no attention means he is doing his job and shutting down receivers, he's also not making any stand out plays. Let's get an interception pretty soon, Charles. Where's your keen sense of tracking the ball? Sam Shields has potential, but unfortunately he got pushed into a starting position way too quickly for an undrafted rookie on one of the leagues premier defenses.


Clay Matthews, or "The Clay Maker" as I like to call him, didnt have the game everyone was hoping for last night. He had 3 tackles and 0 sacks, and got shut down by backup tackle Kevin Shaffer on multiple occasions. His anticipation was still there and was swarming around the ball all night, but he just never quite got there. What happened? Did he stop juicing this week or something? I mean, the pass blocking for the Bears was ok, but Clay should have easily had 3 more sacks last night.


Special teams... wow... maybe someone should have warned Tim Masthay not to kick the ball to Hester. What has happened since week 1 when we finally looked like we fixed our special teams problems? We had more penalties and our return blocking was very below average. Jordy Nelson was returning kicks to the 40 and 50 in Vickadelphia, and nothing against the Bears last night? I dont get it. Maybe McCarthy should spend an extra half hour on special teams at the end of practice instead of ten minutes. Oh, and maybe someone (Bulaga) should have blocked Peppers on Crosby's late 37-yard field goal attempt... I think that is the only negative thing I have had to say about Bulaga yet this season, for the limited time he's seen, he's been pretty solid.


ESPN NFL analyst Trent Dilfer says the Packers are "panicking"  because of a lack of a running game and Aaron Rodgers is "under an immense amount of pressure now." Maybe Dilfer got knocked around a few too many times in his career, because he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. So we had 63 yards rushing rushing last night, who cares? Only two teams in the league focus mostly on rushing, Tennessee and Minnesota, and thats only because their QB's can't figure it out and connect with their receivers. I guess CJ2K and AP are pretty good, too. But seriously, this is a passing league now. There's no way so many teams would be scrambling for quarterbacks if they were just handing the ball off all the time (no pun intended). I would have liked to see us go after Marshawn Lynch, but its not entirely necessary. Rodgers look phenomenal last night, and even got the Bears to bite on play action. When our qb can throw for over 300 yards and rush in a touchdown himself, Kuhn and Jackson will do just fine. 


I stole this from Kevin Seiferts' blog over on espn.com, but thought it was appropriate to throw on here: [Nick] Barnett acknowledged that the Bears "were the better team today" but not "a better team than us period." He added: "Honestly, I feel we have a better team. I feel we have better players. But they played better today. That's my personal opinion, and I feel we can play a lot better than we played today."  


No doubt the Pack are the best team in the NFC, but we have a lot of work to do before we can start bragging about it and planning for the playoffs. Most importantly, we need to fix the penalties and put even more emphasis on special teams. Given we wont see Peppers again until week 17, but we still have to play the likes of Jared Allen, DeMarcus Ware, and Jason Taylor...  The league is just so upside down right now, but its only going into week 4. How are the Bears, Chiefs, and Big Ben-less Steelers the only 3-0 teams left? Ridiculous...