NFL 2017 Season Week 13 Picks

ho hum.

Not to pick a fight* (although this is nutcan), but I'm not exactly sure what Jeremy meant when he referred to "a series of busted covereages...". I can take a guess that he possibly means the long TD pass to Davante Adams, the long screen pass TD, and the long Cobb TD pass. I watched film breakdown on those, and I don't think the first two can be described as "busted coverage".

The Adams TD in 3rd Qtr
3rd and 3
Adams runs essentially a go route, but fakes like he's stopping to catch a pass 4 yds downfield (with a pump fake from Hundley). The CB attempts to jump the route, allowing adams to complete the ruse and turn upfield to find himself wide open for a long pass. Oddly enough, Hundley never "looked the CB off"; it was as if he wanted the CB to think he was throwing to Adams 4 yds down field to get him to bite, which he did. This isn't busted coverage, it looked like a play designed to get the CB to give up the route, and it appeared to work to perfection. Really, it was an impressive looking play and execution no matter how you look at it (which is why film breakdowns can be so fun to watch sometimes).

The Jamaal Williams 55 yd td pass
The play was sprung because the Steelers linebacker got himself caught trying to show blitz perhaps a bit too long and then found himself out of position and with a scrum of players between him and Williams once Williams made the catch. The LB didn't miss his assignment, he just played his role badly

The Cobb TD clearly looked like what you might consider busted coverage. No DB paid any attention to Cobb, likely not recognizing Cobb's route as he came from the slot, went underneath towards the sideline, then turned upfield with no one on him.

So the first Adams TD seemed like a play executed to perfection. The Williams screen pass TD seemed to be a result of a Steelers play just doing a bad job of covering his man. And Cobb play was legit busted coverage.

All that being said, don't teams face 2-3 instances of busted covereage nearly every game? Isn't that a sign of a good qb to recognize it? Rodgers can sling arrows into the tightest windows, but he also makes defenses look really bad when he find their busted coverage more often. Hundley's weakness up to this point was that he was never seeing open receivers, even when there was some obvious busted coverage and wide open receivers. That being said, too, I don't know if the Packers will show as the Packers vs Ravens, the Packers vs Steelers, or the Packers as the Cleveland Browns.

*-seriously, not attempting to start something. I just got excited to write out what I saw in film breakdowns on a couple of these plays.