Mike McCarthy and the Green Bay Packers know they need to prepare in every single facet of the game if they want to beat the New England Patriots on Sunday night.
That includes special teams, which is the bread and butter of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.
“Well, their special teams unit has always been excellent,” McCarthy said at his Friday press conference in Green Bay. “You just go back through their history and the importance Coach Belichick has always put on that unit back to his Cleveland days. It’s a big part of it. You have to be ready schematically, but I think our preparation has been solid; we’ve gotta be ready for the wrinkles. But at the end of the day, this will come down to matchups and winning those 1-on-1 battles.”
Don’t be surprised if a big special teams play ends up swinging Sunday night’s game. As McCarthy acknowledged, the Patriots perennially have one of the top special teams units in the NFL. The Packers, meanwhile, well, not so much.
Pro Football Focus ranks the Packers’ special teams unit No. 29 in the NFL, which is more of the same for Green Bay. All you have to do is go back to the last time these two teams met at Gillette Stadium when the Packers inexplicably allowed Patriots offensive lineman Dan Connolly to return a kick 71 yards. New England turned that into a touchdown right before halftime and then won the game by four points.
Special teams also infamously bit the Packers in the backside in 2015 during the NFC Championship Game when they allowed a fake field goal touchdown to the Seattle Seahawks. Later in that same game, Green Bay flubbed an onside kick return that would have iced the game, and Seattle won in overtime.
This season, the Packers were burned by a game-changing special teams gaffe in Detroit when officials ruled a bouncing punt hit a Packers player and the Lions recovered deep in Green Bay territory. Just last week in Los Angeles, Green Bay allowed the Rams to extend a drive when punter Johnny Hekker found Sam Shields for a drive-extending first down on a fake punt. And then, with a chance to get the ball back and give quarterback Aaron Rodgers a shot at a game-winning score, Ty Montgomery inexplicably took a kickoff out of the end zone before fumbling and killing Green Bay’s hopes of winning.
“I don’t think there’s any question that this is a group that has a lot of experience,” Packers special teams coordinator Ron Zook said of the Patriots earlier this week. “Very, very talented. Very well-coached, one of the better groups in the National Football League. … It’s a great challenge.”
For more grades, advanced statistics and more at Pro Football Focus, go to ProFootballFocus.com.
