Honestly, this has been bothering me since Mike McCarthy took over as head coach of my beloved Packers, so the title of this post could easily read “Does Mike McCarthy have the killer instinct to go all the way?”
My historical evidence is purely anecdotal, but during the Holmgren/Favre Super Bowl years, it seemed like the Packers didn’t change their offensive strategy until they got up by three scores. Only then would they get a little more conservative and start working the clock with the running game. Several times over the past three seasons the Packers have had semi-control of a game only to let things slip away by playing too conservatively with a substantial amount of time remaining.
Case in point, towards the end of the second quarter of Sunday’s win over Philadelphia, leading 14-0, Green Bay just stopped the Eagles on a third-and-7. There was almost two minutes on the clock when Jason Avant was tackled on the Packers’ 11-yard line. With two timeouts remaining, McCarthy sat on his hands as the Eagles ran the clock down to 1:15 and kicked a field goal to cut the lead to 14-3.
Last week, I suggested to our readers that they enter PlayoffBlitz’s playoff fantasy contest and the (playoff) Week 1 results are in.
