My fourth and final unsung hero is familiar to anybody who has had even the most passing interest in top pass rushers over the last decade or more. Packers outside linebacker Julius Peppers had himself a nice game on Sunday in a win over Washington even though many of his best plays ended up with a teammate's name bellowing over the loudspeaker.
I'm going to say off the bat that Peppers' stats probably wouldn't wow you. Just three tackles, by my count, and not a single sack on the day. He did, however, also have two pressures, another play where he all but gifted a sack to Clay Matthews and he also had two hits on the quarterback.
Peppers also flushed Kirk Cousins from the pocket and into a Mike Neal sack on fourth down late in the fourth quarter, after Peppers beat Trent Williams around the edge while running an Ex game with Matthews. That play all but ended any chance of a comeback by Washington, but I bet most folks didn't even notice it was Peppers who forced Cousins to leave the comfort of the pocket in the first place.
There was another play that Peppers made Sunday that maybe wasn't so impressive at first glance, but it was huge in the grand scheme of things. With 3:57 left in the first quarter, Washington led 5-0 thanks to a safety forced by their impressive rookie defensive lineman Preston Smith, and a field goal on the drive after the Packers punted to them because of the safety. The Packers went three-and-out on their next drive. I imagine there had to be a whole lotta "here we go again" thoughts starting to filter in on their side line.
To say Green Bay's offense and Aaron Rodgers had looked out of sorts lately would be a major understatement. What they needed was to get some positive plays going to get their confidence back before the game got out of hand. If Washington would have scored a touchdown on the first play of their next drive, I'm not sure that the Packers wouldn't have started panicking a little on offense. Hell, I'd have definitely expected it to happen with the way this season has gone for them.
Quiet as it's kept, it did almost happen on Washington's next drive.
If you didn't watch the game and just looked for the play-by-play to get a feel for what happened, the first play of that drive just talks about Cousins being sacked by Matthews, fumbling the football and recovering it for a loss of 12 yards. Not ideal, but not the end of the world either. What's not explained in the play-by-play is that Washington wide receiver DeSean Jackson was wiiiiiiiiiide ass open on that play. When I say wide open, I mean both safeties are running forward as DJax runs past them ... wide ass open. We have all seen Jackson run past safeties who were actually trying to cover him deep. This was supposed to be easy money.
Washington wanted the Packers to believe they were running the football to start that drive, so they put an extra offensive linemen, Tom Compton, in the game as a tight end and went with a play action fake to running back Alfred Morris. The fake was so good it got both Packers safeties to bite up on the run leaving absolutely no one covering the deep area of the field.
I can't be sure if it was Packers safety Morgan Burnett or his amigo on the back end Ha Ha Clinton-Dix or both, who fucked up on that play. What I can tell you is that if Cousins had any time at all to get the ball to Jackson, you could have struck up the band before the ball even left his hand. Hell, I could have made that throw with no pressure and I feel like a senior citizen most days at this point in my life.
Only problem was there wasn't any time to get a pass off, not even with Washington leaving Compton in to help pass block. Not when the guy they asked Compton to block one-on-one is also the guy who is currently tied with Jared Allen for the lead in career sacks among active players.
FUCKING MISTAKE!!!
I don't even know how to describe this bullshit blocking technique Compton tried, but needless to say it didn't work well at all. Compton was way too aggressive trying to take on Peppers who was already at an advantage because of his width. Peppers didn't even need some kind of great move to get around Compton, he just got off the ball and turned the corner so fast that Cousins had barely finished his drop back, before he had to take a step backwards to avoid him.
Peppers' overzealousness trying to get to Cousins as quickly as possible did indeed keep Cousins from being able to make that throw down the field to DJax, for what might have been the easiest touchdown pass all season. But it also had him just out of control enough to where he couldn't change directions to sack Cousins after he side-stepped him. Luckily for the Packers, Matthews was there to clean up Peppers' mess and take Cousins down for a sack and that loss of 12 yards.
Needless to say, Washington went three-and-out on that drive after the big loss on third down. I'm not sure anybody paid it a second thought since the announcers never bothered to show just how open Jackson was on that play almost right from the snap. I get on bad announcers a lot these days, and after seeing Jackson streaking down the field all by himself on the all-22, I just can't understand why they wouldn't have let the home audience see that in real time. Even on the TV copy, if you know that both safeties bit on the play-action fake, you can tell that Jackson is going to be wide open. But somehow it kind of slipped under the radar and the game just went on.
On paper you might not even know whether Peppers was on the field for that play. But the film gives you the truth plus all the context in the world. It's hard not to wonder if that game has a different ending if Washington gets out to a 12-0 lead on the strength of Kirk "YOU LIKE THAT?!" Cousins hitting DJax deep for a touchdown. Hell, maybe folks would have even forgive Jackson for that earlier mistake on the touchdown that wasn't.
Peppers' pressure made sure that non of that ever happened and the Packers were able to bounce back from their poor start to win and advance to the next round.