Welcome to the Party, LaDarius Gunter
You probably were ready to crap in your pants when cornerback Quinten Rollins went down on Sunday at Washington.
We were.
With Sam Shields already out because of a concussion, we expected to get a hearty dose of Demetri Goodson, who, in a word, is bad.
Instead, the Green Bay Packers turned to rookie LaDarius Gunter.
Gunter was an undrafted free agent from Miami who played as well as or better than both first-round pick Damarious Randall and Rollins, a second-round pick, in training camp and throughout the preseason.
Yet, despite his big-school pedigree, preseason performance and the fact that they’ve played Randall and Rollins extensively, Gunter rarely saw the field and was often a game-day inactive in the regular season.
Gunter, who we like to call Larry — Larry Gunter — played just nine defensive snaps all season.
Then he played 31 in the Packers’ biggest game of the season, recording one tackle and defending one pass.
Tellingly, you didn’t notice our boy Larry was out there like you notice when Goodson is on the field. You notice when Goodson is playing defense because your face is constantly in your palm.
Gunter played exactly like he did during the preseason.
Solid.
Kind of makes you wonder what took so long to get him on the field.
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I can’t believe what I saw with Casey Hayward.
Personally, I peg Casey Hayward & DeVante Adams as sissys…
But Hayward brought it Sunday & DeSean Jackson is callen him “daddy” now.
Heres hoping the Pack can turn-it-on like they did in our playoff run last season.
Hayward has been wrongfully railroaded all year long. He’s had some bumps, but largely I think we need to bring him back.
Along with Guion who I suspected was gone as well, these two have been really coming on as of late.
Hayward and Hyde are the worst starters on our team in my opinion. They are SLOW!
One big problem I had over the years is that the Packers coaches are so stubborn when it comes to their depth chart. They’re so afraid to tweak it until it’s killing the team. Great coaches are proactive in setting the depth chart. They can project the performance based on film and being there watching practice. Not only are we not proactive but we are very slowly reactive. Palmer has never looked good and yet they had to wait until they were desperate to switch to Ryan. Goodson has show nothing except being prone to injury and they took this long to give Gunter a chance. Adams has really stunk it up and they won’t give Abby much of a chance until this Saturday due to injury and not judgement. Even if Shields come back, I’d like to see Gunter rotated in to get fresh legs in the second half.
Buffoon plays favorites, he always has . . . Gunther was a beast in preseason. Goodson has been serviceable as a ST guy. Not much regarding DB though. Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking playing guys who seem to perform far less than one (or more) of their peers that seem to just ride the bench . . .
Before training camp even started I was more excited about him than our first two picks in the draft this year. Graded out as the best preseason corner in the league and we are just now seeing him?? He lacks speed but makes up for it in size and length. Hopefully we can groom him to be our CB that matches up against BIG recievers because that’s one area of concern in our secondary. Too small at CB
Shields when healthy has done pretty damn well at playing much bigger guys. He doesn’t have ideal size, but he’s always played Megatron, Brandon Marshall, Dez Bryant pretty well.
No doubt Shields is an excellent corner but he sometimes get man handled by bigger recievers. What I’m saying is we should have given Gunter more playing time this season. The Cards have Fitz and Floyd, both are big and Floyd gashed us. Not to mention their speedster Brown. We put shield on Brown, Gunter on Floyd (had he been playing earlier in the season) and Randall on Fitz. It doesn’t hurt to have a big corner.
You wear 36, you best be ballin’
Tru Dat
… aaaaaaaand Devante is out for this Saturday due to the sprained MCL.
Good thing we have such WR depth, amirite?
Maybe we will see some more of Janis… Nah
McCarthy walking through the locker room today. “Sitty, I just missed you in the Ol meeting I guess. Didn’t you tell me you wanted to catch passes a couple years ago?”
Goodson=face in palm …so true. Just like all the Vikings fans this week…27 yarder. Still not getting old. Go Carolina!!! Beat that whiny lucky cheater (in college) Pete (I celebrate a missed FG like the fail mary) Carroll….man I really don’t like that guy.
On film, he’s a second rounder. In combine, he’s an undrafted due to poor measurable in every department except size. He plays fast and physical. Film always is better predictor of success than combine. JMike was slow in combine but was uncoverable on the field as well.
Josh Norman also had slow 40 times (4.6 something)and now he is considered one of the top corners in the league. Speed is great, however a 40 time in shorts does not equal a football player.
Joe Vitt deserves a lot of credit for getting all the rookies ready for the fire. GO PACK!
The redskins could have completed some passes against Gunter when he first came into the game. Gunter was playing off in coverage. Gunter did appear to get more confident as the 4 th quarter went on. One of the reasons Gunter was so invisible is Cousins and the redskins offense hardly ever threw or looked to pass to their left, almost all passes went middle to right. Not sure if that is a redskin tendency, however I would not expect Arizona to do the same.
I too don’t understand total emphasis on track 40 times. Just the slightest advantage in reflex makes up easily for 0.2 seconds in 40 time. Speed does not always correlate with quickness.