Boardregeln » As Mike Daniels left his team’s week 11 game against the

Seattle Seahawks Jermaine Whitehead Jersey , the Green Bay Packers were left without one of their — and the league’s — best interior linemen.Many astute Packer fans should already know what Daniels brings to the table, but if you need a refresher, I wrote about him a few weeks ago.After that article was published, Daniels picked up his second sack of the season against the Patriots and continued his run-stuffing ways against the Miami Dolphins a week later.Daniels was well on his way to another very good season until he injured his foot against the Seahawks, sidelining him for multiple weeks.The heir-presumptive to replace him is former 3rd round draft pick Montravius Adams; while Adams has played sparingly so far in his career, he logged a career-high 23 defensive snaps against Seattle with many of those coming after Daniels exited. As the third round pick in Ted Thompson’s final and possibly worst draft, Adams has a pretty high billing to live up to. Let’s review some film to take a quick peek at how Montravius has been used so far and see how he will try to fill the hole left by Daniels.The 2017 season was essentially a lost one for Adams; after undergoing surgery for a stress fracture in his foot, he played in only 66 snaps, and a lot of those snaps left room to be desired.He didn’t generate much in terms of a pass rush, and was late in disengaging from his blocks.There were a lot of plays like this, simply giving up too much ground:Playing in Daniels’ 3-technique spot, Adams was consistently pushed around in the run game and, when he didn’t give up ground, was unable to disengage from his blocker.He definitely has a good first step for a DT, but if his initial pass rush was stymied, there weren’t a lot of moves to try again.With a shortened rookie campaign due to injury, however, there was a built in excuse for his lack of production in his 2017 season.The 2018 season, one filled with promising off-season headlines about getting back on track, has now become a golden opportunity for Adams to prove his worth.Still only playing about 8% of defensive snaps before last Sunday’s spike, the first half of this season hasn’t provided as many results as one should expect.While it was always going to be difficult for Adams to see significant playing time with a starting rotation of Daniels, Kenny Clark, and Muhammad Wilkerson, only 8% of snaps is a bit concerning.When he is on the field, there are signs of improvement, but only time will tell how much.Adams has been used as a clone of Diesel; it even shows up in his pre-snap stance.He predominantly lines up in the 3 technique, Daniels’ main spot.This spot is tasked with taking on double team blocks and eating up space to free linebackers; i.e., you need to be strong as an ox to succeed here.While it generally takes longer for defensive linemen to excel as opposed to their skill position counterparts, Adams’ work so far has been...less than inspiring.Let’s start with the good.Adams has, on occasion, flashed good handwork with his pass rush moves.In notching his first career sack against the Brock Osweiler-led Dolphins in week 10, Montravius displayed a top notch swipe and rip move.Watch how fluid his right arm transitions from swiping the linemen’s hands to dipping and ripping:Active hands are important for an interior lineman, as they unlikely to beat their man with pure speed, and there is less room to work with blockers and your own linemen on either side of you.Against the Vikings, in one of his six snaps on the day, Adams timed the punch of his blocker well and swatted away his hands:Unfortunately there was another blocker there to stop him.On the next series Aaron Ripkowski Color Rush Jersey , Adams showed pretty good handwork and utilized a swim move, but again was stymied by interior help.Montravius has tried to work in the ‘hump’ move as his counter move, a move that Reggie White made famous.(Quick tangent - if anyone ever seriously compares the skill level of Montravius Adams to Reggie White, have them seek immediate medical attention.) Anyway, the general premise of the hump move is to have the defender fear your speed around the edge so much that they open up their base and lose leverage.The defender then lodges their inside hand under the armpit of the blocker and converts speed to power and shoves the blocker out of their way.It’s not easy to execute, and you need good leverage and upper body strength to make the shove.Adams has tried it a few times when he doesn’t really have either:It’s good that his repertoire doesn’t just doesn’t consist of the bull rush, but he clearly needs to work on his pass rush moves if he wants to succeed with any consistency.More importantly, however, is Adams’ ability to defend the run.Mike Daniels exists in Pettine’s defense to take on multiple blockers without losing ground, which frees up linebackers to make tackles.If Adams loses ground on the double teams or gets controlled in one on one matchups the defense will be in trouble.Due to his limited snap count so far in 2018, there haven’t been many instances of Montravius having to defend the run.When he has, the results haven’t been very good.In his limited snaps, Adams hasn’t shown the playing strength needed to hold the 3 technique spot.Here against the Rams, Montravius gets pushed back on the double team block so easily that the offensive linemen don’t even have to peel off him to block Blake Martinez; they simply push Adams into him (right side of clip):A little bit later on in the same game against the Rams, Adams again was victim of a combo block, this time going to the right.Adams improved on this one a bit; while he still gave up way too much ground, his arms were extended which allowed him to read the ball carrier, shed the block, and go in for a tackle.Without Kenny Clark knifing in or Clay Matthews holding his ground, though, Todd Gurley would have had a much wider lane to run through.Nobody is going to be 100% against double team blocks; as much as I laud Daniels for his run stuffing ability at the 3 tech, he gets beat sometimes too.That’s just how the position goes.Daniels rarely gets beat one on one though, and Adams hasn’t yet shown the ability to consistently win the one on one battles.In this clip against Washington, Adams does a good job getting his hands extended against the guard.His eyes are up and locked on to Adrian Peterson - all good things.Where he screws up is in shedding the blocker; instead of cleanly disengaging, he stands straight up and tries to cut off Peterson’ path with his feet instead of his hands.His blocker is still attached, Peterson reads Adams’ mistake, and runs in the hole that Adams just vacated.He essentially blocked himself; had he stayed lower and actually shed the block instead of leaving his gap responsibility, he would have had a good opportunity at a tackle.Adams played better against Seattle.This clip shows what he should have done against Peterson and the Redskins:There’s great arm extension and placement; even though the guard originally starts out with better leverage than Adams, Adams’ hands hit low enough that when both players extended themselves Adams ended up with better leverage.He didn’t give up an inch vertically, and he didn’t jump out of his gap to attack the ball carrier, instead waiting until the running back chose his hole and then shedding the block.If Reggie Gilbert hadn’t taken everybody out, Adams could have made the tackle.He also managed to win a double team block with Seattle backed up on their own goal line too; while Seattle backed up in their own end zone, Adams hunkered down and didn’t budge against both the guard and tackle.If he can manage to continue taking on double team blocks like the above clip, he should hold up OK.Unfortunately, there just isn’t a lot of evidence out there yet as to whether or not that will happen.The lack of big playing time makes it hard to place where Adams is at in his progression.Heck, against the Patriots https://www.thepackersfanshop.com/Demetri-Goodson-Jersey , Adams played a then-season-high 13 defensive snaps and the Patriots called quick pass plays before Adams could make any impact on 8 of the plays, while one other was the Edelman to James White pass.There are good flashes of talent, particularly while rushing the passer, but there have also been some poor plays.Has he not seen the field because the coaches realize he’s not that good? Or is it because the group in front of him is deep and better than average?Either way, it’s make or break time for Adams in the next few weeks.He can play well against the run, he can get blown off the line of scrimmage, or he can do just OK — time will tell which of those is most reflective of his ability. Over a two-week span, we at Acme Packing Company are breaking down the 2017 Green Bay Packers position-by-position. Today we conclude the analysis with a look at the Packers’ special teams units.Kicker: Mason Crosby30/37 Field Goals (81.1%) 34/36 Extra Points (94.4%)Looking at the stats of Mason Crosby’s year, it doesn’t fall far from his career percentages. Crosby has a career percentage of 80.4% on field goals and 98% on extra points. Those looking in from the outside wouldn’t think anything of that but those of us who watched this year know it’s a different story. Call it extremely bad luck as every kick, except for the missed PAT against Buffalo, had a major ramification on a game. Crosby’s first miss came at the end of regulation against the Vikings, that game ended in a tie. The infamous game in Detroit, Crosby missed four field goals and one extra point. That’s 13 points left on the field in a game the Packers lost by eight. He missed a field goal in the first quarter against Seattle when the Packers lost by three, and he missed a field goal with under two minutes left to go in the three point loss to the Cardinals. That’s a rough year.It was also a down year for Crosby on kickoffs. He only had touchbacks on 41 of his 83 kickoffs. That’s a 49.3% and the only kicker that had a lower percentage than that was Sam Martin in Detroit (46.5%).If we turn to the positives, Crosby was 5-7 from over 50 yards with a long of 53. He missed just two field goals and one extra point in Green Bay. That is an accomplishment in itself. With the bad weather and wind that can fill Lambeau Field, Green Bay is one of the toughest places to kick in the league. Crosby also bounced back well from that disastrous Detroit game. The next week, he went 3/3 on extra points and 4/4 in field goals including the game winning field goal against San Francisco. He wound up as the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week for that performance.Punter: JK Scott71 punts, 3,176 yards gross, 44.7 gross average, 38.8 net average, one blocked punt, nine touchbacks, 19 downed inside the 20 (26.7%)JK Scott was a fifth round draft pick in 2018 and made last year’s punter, Justin Vogel, expendable. Oddly enough, looking back at Vogel’s stats from 2017, they were almost identical punters. Vogel had a slightly higher net average but the potential of Scott was worth the draft pick. Scott’s long frame lets him generate a lot of power out of his leg and his most noticeable trait is that he rarely lets his plant foot come off the ground when he punts. While his average (44.7) is in the lower half of the league, the biggest positive is that he gets a hang time close to five seconds. That led to 26 fair catches, which was second in the league. Hopefully, new special teams coach, Sean Mennenga, can work with Scott to improve his distance while keeping that hang time.Long Snapper: Hunter BradleyBradley was selected in the seventh round in 2018 and replaced the trio of Brent Goode, Taybor Pepper and Derek Hart from 2017. Goode was a mainstay in Green Bay since 2008 but it was time to find someone younger going forward.Bradley had a very good year as far as long snappers go. While he did have one bad snap that lead to a blocked punt, he did not have the same consistency troubles that Pepper or Hart had last year. Bradley doesn’t offer much in the realm of covering kicks as he ended up with only one tackle but very few if any long snappers provide much in coverage anymore. Kick Returners: Ty Montgomery, Bashaud Breeland JK Scott Jersey , J’Mon Moore, Jamaal Williams, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Trevor DavisOne of the biggest flaws of the 2018 special teams came in the return game. The Packers had absolutely no one who provided a consistent return game or even pose a threat to opponents. The best returner the Packers had was Trevor Davis. While Davis has the speed and shiftiness to be a very good returner, he was snake bitten with injuries all year. Davis only got into two games midway through the season where he only got one kick return for 20 yards. With Davis succumbed to injuries at the start of year, the Packers turned to Ty Montgomery. Montgomery returned kicks last year and has been very average at best. Montgomery averaged 20 yards on his ten kick returns. Montgomery was traded to Baltimore after he decided to take a kick out of the end zone and fumbled with just over two minutes left in the game versus the Rams. That denied Aaron Rodgers the chance to run the two minute drill and the Packers lost by two points.After the Montgomery trade, the Packers tried many faces on kick return but never settled on one person more than the other. Bashaud Breeland got the most returns with eight but averaged only 21.6 yards per return. Jamaal Williams, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Davis got their chance but also only averaged in the low twenties per return as well. If there is a little hope it might have been with J’Mon Moore. While he only had four returns on the year, he averaged 25.5 yards per return. While that’s nothing to go crazy about, with more work, maybe being a return man could be in Moore’s future. At least it could give the Packers an option after Davis in 2019.Punt Returners: Tramon Williams, Randall Cobb, Trevor Davis, Jaire Alexander, Josh Jackson, Kevin KingPunt returner was just as big an issue as the kick returner. With Trevor Davis injured most of the year, the Packers didn’t have many options here either so they seemed to try anyone. While it was only two games, Davis was the best returner. He had four returns and averaged 11 yards per return. The Packers did try some of the young players with Jaire Alexander, Josh Jackson and Kevin King. Jackson and King only had three attempts on the season but all were fair caught. The electric Alexander, how had a history of being a good returner in college, only got four attempts and averaged 6.3 yards per. For the most consistency, the Packers turned to Tramon Williams and Randall Cobb. Williams got the most chances as he had 12 returns for and averaged, a team leading, 6.9 yards per attempt. When he was healthy, Randall Cobb also got some punt returns. Cobb averaged 6.6 yards on his seven attempts. Not much to brag about with these two as far as average went but they stepped up when the Packers needed them and tried to give the team a spark like when they were younger.Overall Grade: FLooking at the main special teams players in Mason Crosby, JK Scott and Hunter Bradley, giving a F might be a little harsh. Between the three of them, I probably would have been more generous and given a D. However, we have to look at the bigger picture here. With the mess that was the return game adding into the poor coverage teams that Ron Zook lead out there week after week, the only option was to give an F.I can’t remember a time when the coverage and return games were so poor. From all the successful fake punts against, to the fake field goal against New England, the Packers just never seemed prepared or had given the proper time to practice for what each team threw at them. Gladly, it lead to the end of Ron Zook as special teams coordinator. Sean Mennenga takes over in 2019 and he will have his hands full. Let’s hope he gets Mason Crosby back on track and keeps developing JK Scott. Still, the biggest concern will be in the return game. Getting Trevor Davis healthy will be a big help, otherwise the Packers need to put a high priority finding someone in free agency or the draft.