Thought it time to retire the other thread since things start for real on Thursday night.
One thing that hasn't been talked about a bunch that i have seen is that the NFL has declared run/option QB's as fair game once they start to run and are no longer considered anything but a running back at that point. After Kaepernick annihilated the Pack last playoffs with it, I had wondered how Capers would scheme to stop it moving forward.
Clay Matthews was on the radio this morning and here is how they are now approaching it.
Quote:
“One of the things that the referees have told us is that when these quarterbacks carry out the fakes, they lose their right as a quarterback, a pocket-passing quarterback, the protection of a quarterback,” Matthews said on Mike & Mike. “So with that, you do have to take your shots on the quarterback, and obviously they’re too important to their offense. If that means they pull them out of that type of offense and make them run a traditional, drop-back, pocket-style offense, I think that’s exactly what we’re going for. So you want to put hits as early and often on the quarterback and make them uncomfortable.”
“I can tell you right now, we started from Day 1 in OTAs when we came back in the offseason working on this read-option, pistol, fake offense for lack of a better term,” Matthews said. “We’ve definitely been working on it. You see this trend with quarterbacks you mentioned, Kaepernick, RGIII, (Seattle’s Russell) Wilson, so it’s around the league now. It’s definitely a part of offenses, so it’s something to have in our defensive game plan, something to game plan for. We’ve been working on it, especially after what we saw last year in the playoffs specifically and then opening up the season with two of these quarterbacks. We’re ready. We feel good about it.”
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