After a loss so humiliating it caused a full eight months of soul-searching, the Packers’ defense finally gets a shot at redemption Sunday afternoon at Candlestick Park.
There is much to redeem.
When we last saw Green Bay’s helpless defenders and seemingly clueless coordinator Dom Capers on the same field in January, they were almost singlehandedly being run out of the NFC divisional playoffs by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Even though the read-option had been the latest rage in the NFL long before then and Kaepernick was no mystery, the Packers looked like they never had seen a mobile quarterback before on the way to a 45-31 loss.
Kaepernick simply obliterated Capers’ unit on that chilly night in San Francisco, romping for 191 yards (a league playoff record for a QB) as the Niners ran up 323 rushing yards and 579 yards overall — numbers so outlandish for a postseason game that they still look like typos all these months later.
The Packers looked so hapless that night, in fact, Kaepernick later said he could hear their defensive players arguing with each other about their inability to stop him.
The quick Week 1 rematch of these two NFC powers offers no guarantees that the Packers have learned their lesson. But if Kaepernick puts on another display of option mastery, it won’t be due to a lack of preparation.
Not only did Capers and his staff fly to Texas A&M in the offseason for an intensive refresher course on the read option, but Green Bay also used a No. 1 pick on UCLA defensive end Datone Jones, added the role of outside linebacker to end Mike Neal’s job description and — perhaps most importantly — welcomed back very talented defensive tackle Johnny Jolly from a three-year NFL drug suspension.
The Packers also sent a shot across the 49ers’ bow this week when linebacker Clay Matthews said he and his defensive mates won’t be shy about roughing up Kaepernick when he carries out fakes on the read option.
Green Bay will have the NFL’s backing when it comes that, too. League officials told the Packers in training camp that the defenseless-player rule won’t apply to quarterbacks when they’re faking on the read-option, and NFL officiating director Dean Blandino said in a video recently released to the media that the QB “is still treated as a runner until he is clearly out of the play.”
That brought a howl of protest from Niners coach Jim Harbaugh on Friday. He called the rule “flawed” and “biased,” saying a QB should be covered by the defenseless-player rule until he leaves the pocket.
“You’re giving a license now to players to hit quarterbacks at the knee and in the head,” Harbaugh said. “It just seems to be a flip-flop of what the league is trying to accomplish: player safety.”
But as much as the Packers view this game as a chance to make up for last season’s playoff embarrassment, the disconcerting part for Green Bay is that it wasn’t exactly an aberration. Capers’ defense, in fact, was atrocious against the run the second half of the season, —giving up 240, 217 and 167 yards in three games against Adrian Peterson and the Vikings and 147 in a loss to the Giants.
The Packers defense deserves a full season to prove it is truly a changed bunch against the option and the run in general. But a season opener against one of the NFL’s scariest option quarterbacks offers Green Bay a great place to start.
PICK: 49ers, 30-21