3-4 Is Only a Start

As much as I'm thrilled with the switch to the 3-4, the Packers have much more work to do before they can be considered a contender again. Few things frustrated me more this year than watching Ryan Grant run the football. Sure, he totaled just over 1200 rushing yards, but aggregates don't do justice to just how ineffective he was this year.

In five different games, he averaged fewer than 3 yards per carry. In all five of those games, he got at least 15 carries. That's bad. Grant had only two runs all year for more than 30 yards. I know he was injured at the beginning of the year, but he showed none of the explosive cutback ability he put on display in 2007. Watching him run was just painful. He broke fewer tackles than this blog's current namesake.

Meanwhile, a certain #32 performed pretty well. B-Jax, as his close and personal friends like to call him (we're pretty tight), averaged a solid 5.5 yards per carry. That's not great, and he often benefited from weaker run defenses since he generally played only in passing situations, but still, he often broke tackles, found cutback lanes, and ran like he cared. The same can't be said about Grant.

I don't know what it is, but McCarthy must not like something about Jackson. The week after shredding Carolina for 80 yards on just 11 carries, Jackson didn't get one carry against Houston. Granted, the Irishman did have a decent game, but come on- not one carry for Brandon Jackson? Unacceptable.

The moral here is not that Brandon Jackson is good, it's that Ryan Grant did not play well last year, and McCarthy continued to stick with him. I don't know if it's because of his contract, but if it is, that's a dumb reason. When the game starts, you make the moves that will help the team win, not the ones that cover your asses for handing out a dumb contract to a guy who played well for half a year.

Defenses will start to figure out Rodgers next year if he doesn't get some serious help from the running game. Even if the D improves, the team might be just as bad if the offense regresses due to lack of a running game.

For all their (rightful) focus on the linemen, McCarthy and Thompson can't let the RB situation carry over from last year.