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Green
Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) gets ready for a
huddle during the first half of the Packers' NFL football
game against the Minnesota Vikings on Monday in
Green Bay
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Aaron Rodgers was impressive in his
regular-season debut as the Green Bay Packers' starting quarterback,
thanks in large part to the big men who stand in front of him.
The Packers' offensive line fended
off one of the fiercest defensive fronts in football in their 24-19
victory over Minnesota on Monday night, holding the Vikings without
a sack and keeping highly touted new defensive end Jared Allen from
making a tackle.
Generally free from pass-rush
pressure, Rodgers was 18-of-22 for 178 yards and a touchdown.
Not bad, given the fact that the
Packers were missing starting center Scott Wells because of a lower
back injury and were toying with their starting guard lineup late
into training camp.
But despite their success in pass
protection, the Packers' line committed too many penalties Monday,
giving Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy a chance to keep his
team grounded going into Sunday's game at Detroit.
"We have a lot of work to
do," McCarthy said Tuesday. "I say it all the time, and I
mean it. We'll correct it with the players tomorrow. It's important
to get it corrected. We don't ever sweep anything under the rug
around here. That'll never change. Because we feel like we're going
to go into a hornets' nest up there in Detroit with their home
opener."
Green Bay was penalized 12 times
Monday night, and another two penalties were declined by the
Vikings. Of those 14 total penalties, eight were committed by
offensive linemen — including five in the first quarter.
The Packers had 114 penalties last
season, fourth-most in the league behind Arizona, Oakland and
Cleveland. It didn't keep them from going 13-3 and advancing to
within a win of the Super Bowl, but coaches identified the problem
in the offseason and tried to fix it in training camp.
McCarthy said an internal study by
the Packers' coaching staff revealed that penalties have been a
particular problem for the Packers in their most high-profile games.
"That's unfortunate, because we
identified it, we talked about it during the course of training
camp," McCarthy said. "We have officials at every
practice. But we definitely need to fix that, because that's been a
common mistake that we've made. Maybe I need to take a look at my
part of it. Maybe I had them too pumped up for this one. I don't
know. We need to do a better job with the penalties."
Under McCarthy, the Packers' coaching
staff draws a distinction between pre-snap penalties, the false
starts and delay-of-game penalties that make any coach want to throw
his clipboard, and what McCarthy calls "combative"
penalties — actions that toe the line between aggressive play and
breaking the rules, and might be a little more forgivable.
"There's combative penalties you
learn from. There's combative penalties you have to do without, when
it has poor judgment involved," McCarthy said. "We'll go
through all that with the football team."
Beyond that, McCarthy seemed inclined
to excuse right guard Tony Moll from one of his penalties Monday
night, even though it directly cost the Packers points.
Moll was called for being illegally
downfield in the third quarter, wiping out what would have been a
68-yard touchdown pass to Donald Driver. The Packers' playbook
includes several run/pass options called at the line of scrimmage,
and Moll seemed to be caught run blocking when Rodgers expected him
to be pass blocking.
"Those are some tough
penalties," Moll said Monday night. "You can look at the
ones that we got, they were combative. We were really trying to work
hard. You're trying to really beat up your guy or get after him.
There weren't a lot of holding calls, the offsides, those are the
ones that really get you down. Of course, they hurt, but I think
these are the type we can live with. The penalties that we had,
they're definitely tough and hard to swallow. But, at the same time,
they were guys working hard. They weren't little cheap fouls."
Packers right tackle Mark Tauscher
said it was an "ugly" game all around but expected the
penalty problems to get fixed.
"We were sloppy," Tauscher
said Monday night. "It's kind of a first game, you're playing a
lot more. I think we weren't very fundamentally sound, obviously.
When you get that many penalties, from a fundamental standpoint, we
weren't as sound as we needed to be."
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