Simpleton
DCC 4Life
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2013
- Messages
- 17,491
The key difference in 2014 was that Rodgers was slightly injured and wasn't playing as well as he is now, but with that said he was 24/35 for 316 yards, 3 TD's and no INT's, so you can't really do much better than that. Other than that you have to say that there is more working in our favor, both in terms of their offensive personnel and our defensive personnel.
They had Jordy Nelson who had a career year in 2014, Eddie Lacy actually gave them a credible running threat (over 1,100 regular season yards and over 100 in the playoff game on 19 carries), and they had Josh Sitton who also was at the top of his game at that point. Other than Sitton they have the exact same OL, although I guess you could say that Bakhtiari and Lang have improved since then. You could also argue that Adams is better now, and perhaps Jared Cook is more of a threat at TE, although I think it's clear that the losses of Nelson/Lacy (as he was playing in 2014)/Sitton are more impactful than those improvements.
On the flip side, in that game our defense was heavily reliant on guys like Sterling Moore, Nick Hayden, Jeremy Mincey, George Selvie, Josh Brent and even Ken Bishop. Guys like Henry Melton and Terrell McClain were injured, forcing Bishop and Brent in to the lineup and they actually played a decent amount of snaps, even Jack Crawford was out too. I think it's clear that our current DL is an upgrade over Mincey/Selvie/Spencer/Hayden/Crawford/Bishop/Brent/rookie Lawrence. Then of course you have Lee who is a major addition, as well as Jones on the back end.
This Packers team hasn't really added any major pieces since 2014 like we have as far as Lee, Jones, Elliott, and perhaps Irving or Collins, they are more or less the exact same team on both sides of the ball and have only improved as far as players like Adams and Bakhitiari getting better internally.
They had Jordy Nelson who had a career year in 2014, Eddie Lacy actually gave them a credible running threat (over 1,100 regular season yards and over 100 in the playoff game on 19 carries), and they had Josh Sitton who also was at the top of his game at that point. Other than Sitton they have the exact same OL, although I guess you could say that Bakhtiari and Lang have improved since then. You could also argue that Adams is better now, and perhaps Jared Cook is more of a threat at TE, although I think it's clear that the losses of Nelson/Lacy (as he was playing in 2014)/Sitton are more impactful than those improvements.
On the flip side, in that game our defense was heavily reliant on guys like Sterling Moore, Nick Hayden, Jeremy Mincey, George Selvie, Josh Brent and even Ken Bishop. Guys like Henry Melton and Terrell McClain were injured, forcing Bishop and Brent in to the lineup and they actually played a decent amount of snaps, even Jack Crawford was out too. I think it's clear that our current DL is an upgrade over Mincey/Selvie/Spencer/Hayden/Crawford/Bishop/Brent/rookie Lawrence. Then of course you have Lee who is a major addition, as well as Jones on the back end.
This Packers team hasn't really added any major pieces since 2014 like we have as far as Lee, Jones, Elliott, and perhaps Irving or Collins, they are more or less the exact same team on both sides of the ball and have only improved as far as players like Adams and Bakhitiari getting better internally.