Christl/Baranczyk analysis: Peterson's big day not the end of the world

But back to Peterson and Sunday’s game. While it’s a half-full rather than half-empty assessment, the Packers contained him on 86 percent of his carries and that’s not a bad body of work against one of the great backs of all time.

Run defense

On Peterson’s 82-yard run, the Vikings lined up with two tight ends but no wide receiver to the right. Against that alignment, unless the defensive call was outside the norm, the cornerback on that side would have contain. But Tramon Williams didn’t run up to fill the gap. He allowed the right guard to pull and block him four yards up-field. That prevented the inside backers from having enough time to scrape. Then Burnett and Jennings both missed tackles.

If Williams would have attacked the play and pulled the guard out along the line of scrimmage, it might have given A.J. Hawk a better chance to get there, although he got turned by the fullback, and Burnett a better shot at Peterson.

On Peterson’s 48-yard run at the start of the second half, the tackling again was atrocious. It started with Mike Neal and Hawk whiffing when they were slow to get off blocks, and then Burnett, Brad Jones and McMillian not wrapping up on tackles in that order.

Burnett had two interceptions, but he had a rough day tackling.

On Peterson’s 23-yard run, Jones got blown up in the hole by the fullback and Hawk wasn’t nifty enough to get through the trash. On the backside, McMillian took a bad angle and took himself out of the play.

But those plays aside, Ryan Pickett and B.J. Raji, as usual, maintained the line of scrimmage, and Neal was an improvement after he replaced Jerel Worthy. Worthy’s game is quickness. Neal is bigger, stronger and can put his head in the blocker’s chest and hold his ground.

At inside linebacker, Jones was driven into the ground on one of Peterson’s runs and missed a tackle on another, but he did enough where he filled gaps and was in the hole. He’s certainly more physical than Hawk. Like the Giants last week, it appeared the Vikings picked out Hawk and ran what they call an “iso” play where the fullback led through the hole and blocked him.

Hawk takes on that lead blocker, but he almost never blows him up. What you want from that backer is to light up the fullback at the line, so there’s no crease for the back.

Overall, the Packers had good gap responsibility and didn’t over-pursue, which usually are keys to stopping a back like Peterson. They just failed to finish three plays.

How many times did Peterson’s feet stop behind the line? That’s usually a sure sign of good run defense. But Peterson is rare in that when he does it, the play isn’t over.

Don Barclay

His performance was certainly serviceable, especially in the running game. Sometimes players do better when they’re thrown into the fire than they do when they have all week to think about it and get nervous. But when T.J. Lang comes back, it’s hard to believe the Packers won’t at least consider keeping Barclay at tackle and putting Lang back at guard.

Evan Dietrich-Smith is no better than Barclay. He has bad feet and bad hands. So why not play Barclay? For instance, on James Starks’ 22-yard touchdown, Barclay didn’t block a soul. The defender messed up by trying to avoid him and taking an inside pursuit angle when he should have gone outside.

But give Barclay some credit. He was out there leading the play. That has been a problem for the Packers going back to the last years of Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher, and still is with Marshall Newhouse — getting the tackles out to the second level.

Barclay isn’t likely to improve the big picture. Newhouse is still going to have good feet, but bad hands. That’s why he overextends in pass pro – to compensate for it. Jeff Saturday is still going to be 37. But it’s not like the Packers made drastic changes to help Barclay.

They did what you’d expect after the Giants’ game. They ran more pro set or some version of it with John Kuhn and also used Kuhn as their third-down back for blocking purposes. They had a tight end on the line or in the backfield all the time. And they kicked up the three-step game with Aaron Rodgers. One, two, three and the ball was gone.