“In Year 2, Capers has Packers sold on his 3-4 philosophy - NFL” plus 1 more |
| In Year 2, Capers has Packers sold on his 3-4 philosophy - NFL Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:27 PM PST There are reasons why Packers outside linebacker Clay Matthews -- the NFL sacks leader with 11.5 -- is having a special season, why recently little-known cornerback Tramon Williams might be playing better than most cornerbacks in the NFL, and why an injury-depleted Green Bay defense has allowed just 10 points over the past three games. Those reasons might also lead the Packers to the Super Bowl. "Everyone has bought in," a Packers team source said. This isn't the same old football-speak about everyone being on the same page. The translation is that in Year 2 of defensive coordinator Dom Capers' version of the 3-4 defense, players understand their roles. They know that in certain cases they have to occupy two blockers so Matthews has an unimpeded path to the quarterback. Williams and fellow cornerback Charles Woodson have to be incredibly efficient in man coverage at times to allow disguised stunts to work effectively. To pacify egos, something Capers and his staff found out last season, those who sacrifice stats and making plays also have packages designed for them to flash. That's a huge deal because if players don't feel like they're being put in position to succeed, they won't always give you premium effort (see Albert Haynesworth). Last season, a lot of players in Green Bay were reluctant to embrace the change from the 4-3 front because it marginalized their playmaking skills. Outside linebacker Aaron Kampman's showed displeasure with having to move from defensive end to outside linebacker, a change that did not play to his pass-rushing strengths. Several other players weren't pleased about the switch either, but that's changed now. "Guys weren't always receptive, but now they understand that there is a role and packages for everybody," the source said. "Guys are playing so unselfish, and they're realizing that when they do their jobs so someone else can make a play, it's just as rewarding." Green Bay is second in points allowed (14.6) and 12th overall in yards allowed (323.4). They've forced 21 turnovers, including 15 interceptions -- three of those returned for touchdowns. Players also trust Capers. In the Packers' 31-3 victory over the Vikings last week -- Brad Childress' last game as head coach -- Green Bay's game plan worked as it was drawn up. Early on, the Packers dared Brett Favre to throw by stacking the box to stop Adrian Peterson and locking up the wide receivers on the edges in man coverage. Nothing new compared to what most teams do. They held Peterson to 72 yards. In obvious passing situations, Green Bay also ran zone blitzes that applied pressure to the defense's left -- Favre's right -- because Favre prefers to break containment in that direction, and his mobility moving back to his left isn't what it was, the source said. Pressure also was schemed to be applied up the middle because Favre isn't as comfortable on the move, the source said. Adding to things, Green Bay's defensive backs were able to knock Minnesota's receivers off their routes. Also playing into things, the Vikings' offense wasn't overly diverse, the source said. The same could be said for the 8-2 Jets, who were shut out by the Packers on Oct. 31. That won't be the case Sunday when Green Bay travels to Atlanta to face the 8-2 Falcons in what could turn out to be the game of the week. Not only are the Falcons nearly unbeatable at the Georgia Dome (QB Matt Ryan is 18-1 as a starter at home), they have the best offense the Packers have seen this season, the source said. "They have plays they can run two ways, they have run-pass options on so many plays," the source said. "They have so many looks. (Offensive coordinator) Mike Mularkey has put together some serious stuff. The quarterback is really comfortable, and he gets rid of the ball. They are really good. "The offensive line is really good, collectively. Individually, there isn't a Pro Bowler there, but as a group they block through the play, they're tough and they work really well together." And then there's wide receiver Roddy White. "He's a complete player," the source said. "He's doing things like catching the curl and hook routes he wasn't so good at a few years ago and his yards after the catch, he's really good once he gets the ball in his hands." Based on what Green Bay has done at times this season, I'd expect Williams to tail White for most of the game, which won't be easy because the Falcons use White from every receiver-eligible spot on the field. The Packers are looking forward to the challenge, which leads us to the main reason why the defense is playing at such a high level. "On Victory Monday (this week) there wasn't an empty meeting room," the source said. "Guys were in there watching film and really preparing. That's been the most incredible thing about this, the way guys have taken to preparation and film study on their own. They really want to be good." The contagious work ethic can't be taken lightly. How else can you explain why a unit that has been hit hard by injuries is arguably playing its best with several frontline players on the shelf? Thoughts on FrazierFor the past few years, I've heard people from various teams tell me Leslie Frazier has been one of the most impressive people they've met after he's interviewed for head-coaching jobs with their teams. Yet, they didn't hire him. I've always wondered why, but I can't say that some teams, like Atlanta, hired the wrong guy either. Frazier takes over a tough situation in Minnesota after the firing of Brad Childress this week, but it could be a lot worse. He has a talented team with players who respect him, who could win enough games to increase his viability as someone who really deserves a shot. Minnesota faces beat-up Washington this week and has seemingly winnable games against Buffalo and Detroit, as well. The Giants, Bears and Eagles are on the schedule, too, and those games won't be easy. But it wouldn't stun me if the Vikings knock a few of them off to toy with those teams' playoff hopes. What will be interesting is if Frazier will be back in Minnesota; it's debatable whether he'd even want the job. There will be a significant roster overhaul, and taking over a team with an unstable quarterback situation -- as it stands now and could be worse next season -- could be the worst thing someone like Frazier could do. A new front-office structure could also be forthcoming. And when a coach is hired before a GM and feels obligated only to the owner, issues could arise. I have a feeling that Frazier is going to do pretty well with the Vikings the rest of the way, but his future as a head coach will be with another team. Dansby mans upWe always here players and coaches say, "Adversity doesn't build character; it reveals it." Well, from the media's perspective, we can sometimes judge certain players or locker rooms by how they respond to wins and losses. If a guy speaks after a bad game or bad performance as well as when things are going well, we tend to think of him as a "stand-up" guy. If not, we in the media start to questions things. In Miami's locker room following its loss last Thursday to Chicago, the media had every right to question things. Only a handful of players -- and when I say handful, I am not exaggerating -- were in the locker room when the media contingent entered, and only a smidgeon of those players spoke: Jake Long, Richie Incognito, Tyler Thigpen, Cameron Wake, among them. So was linebacker Karlos Dansby, a high-priced free-agent acquisition who understands his role as a leader. After a speaking to a scrum of reporters, Dansby and I chatted for a while and he was really bothered by the defense's performance. He didn't want to mention all of the injuries that have befallen the Dolphins, but he said he had to in order to emphasize the unit's failure. Defenders watched as player after player on offense went down with injuries, yet the defense didn't help by making stops and allowing whoever was left on offense a shorter field to work with, Danby said. They didn't force the turnovers or seize the opportunities to make big plays when they presented themselves, he added. A lot of players say that in a canned, rehearsed kind of way, but I've known Dansby for a few years and this was as sincere as he's ever been. He was bothered by what happened on his side of the ball, and I've got a feeling he's not going to let the rest of the defense off easy this week as Miami prepares for the Raiders. With all of their injuries, I think the Dolphins' playoff chances are through, but Dansby is the type of guy who is going to hold all his teammates accountable the rest of the way. Follow Steve Wyche on Twitter @wyche89. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Experiments in Field Philosophy - New York Times Blogs Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:01 PM PST
Back in September, Joshua Knobe of Yale University, writing here at The Stone, outlined a new experimental approach to doing philosophy in his post, "Experiments in Philosophy." Philosophers, he argued, have spent enough time cogitating in their armchairs. Knobe described how he and a group of like-minded colleagues in the discipline have undertaken a more engaged approach, working with cognitive scientists and designing experiments that will "test" people's intuitions about traditional philosophic puzzlers such as the existence of God, the objectivity of ethics and the possibility of free will. The result: new, empirically-grounded insights available to philosophers and psychologists.
The experimental philosophy movement deserves praise. Anything that takes philosophy out of the study and into the world is good news. And philosophy will only be strengthened by becoming more empirically-oriented. But I wonder whether experimental philosophy really satisfies the Socratic imperative to philosophize out in the world. For the results gained are directed back to debates within the philosophic community rather than toward helping people with real life problems. "Getting out into the field" means leaving the book-lined study to work with scientists, engineers and decision makers on specific social challenges. Rather than going into the public square in order to collect data for understanding traditional philosophic problems like the old chestnut of "free will," as experimental philosophers do, field philosophers start out in the world. Rather than seeking to identify general philosophic principles, they begin with the problems of non-philosophers, drawing out specific, underappreciated, philosophic dimensions of societal problems. Growing numbers of philosophers are interested in this kind of philosophic practice. Some of this field work in philosophy has been going on for years, for instance within the ethics boards of hospitals. But today this approach is increasingly visible across a number of fields like environmental science and nanotechnology. Paul Thompson of Michigan State has worked with and challenged the food industry on the application of recombinant DNA techniques to agricultural crops and food animals. Rachelle Hollander, now at the National Academy of Engineering, worked for years at the National Science Foundation to integrate ethics and values concerns with the ongoing work of scientists and engineers. And at my own institution, the University of North Texas, we have worked with the U.S. Geological Survey and the small community of Silverton, Colo., on problems of water quality, the legacy of 19th- and 20th-century gold mines; helped the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission develop a management plan for the Great Lakes; and assisted the Chilean government in creating a UNESCO biosphere reserve in Cape Horn.
Note further that "field" areas also include government offices in places such as Washington, DC and Brussels. So, for instance, my research group is in the midst of a three-year study funded by the National Science Foundation that is examining the process of peer review for grant proposals. Science agencies around the world are struggling to bring assessments of the larger societal impact of proposed research into the peer review process. In this study we meet regularly with the users of this research — the federal agencies themselves — to make sure that our research helps agencies better address societal needs. The "field" can even include the lab, as when Erik Fisher of Arizona State speaks of "embedded philosophers" who, like embedded journalists of recent wars, work daily alongside lab scientists and engineers. Field philosophy has two roles to play in such cases. First, it can provide an account of the generally philosophical (ethical, aesthetic, epistemological, ontological, metaphysical and theological) aspects of societal problems. Second, it can offer an overall narrative of the relations between the various disciplines (e.g., chemistry, geology, anthropology, public policy, economics) that offer insight into our problems. Such narratives can provide us with something that is sorely lacking today: a sense of the whole. Field philosophy, then, moves in a different direction than either traditional applied philosophy or the new experimental philosophy. Whereas these approaches are top-down in orientation, beginning in theory and hoping to apply a theoretical construct to a problem, field philosophy is bottom-up, beginning with the needs of stakeholders and drawing out philosophical insights after the work is completed. Being a field philosopher does have its epistemological consequences. For instance, we take seriously the temporal and financial constraints of our users. Working with government or industry means that we must often seek to provide "good-enough" philosophizing — it often lacks some footnotes, but attempts to provide much needed insights in a timely manner. The willingness to take these constraints seriously has meant that our work is sometimes dismissed by other philosophers. Across the 20th century, philosophy has embraced rigor as an absolute value. Other important values such as timeliness, relevance and cost have been sacrificed to disciplinary notions of expertise. In contrast, we see "rigor" as involving a delicate balance among these often competing values. To put it practically, field philosophers need to learn how to edit themselves: sometimes what is needed is not the 7000-word scholarly article but rather a three-minute brief or a one-page memo. Make no mistake: field philosophy does not reject traditional standards of philosophic excellence. Yet in a world crying out for help on a wide range of ethical and philosophical questions, philosophers need to develop additional skills. They need to master the political arts of working on an interdisciplinary team. Graduate students need to be trained not only in the traditional skills of rigorous philosophical analysis but also in the field rigor of writing grants and framing insights for scientists, engineers and decision makers at the project level. Finally, a field approach to philosophy may also help with the challenge facing the entire academic community today. Underlying the growing popular distrust of all societal institutions lies a social demand for greater accountability for all those who work in the industry of knowledge production. This is most obvious among scientists who face increasing demands for scientific research to be socially relevant. But with budgets tightening, similar demands will soon be made on philosophy and on all the humanities — to justify our existence in terms of its positive and direct impacts on society. Field philosophy, then, serves as an example of how academics can better serve the community — which after all is said and done, pays the bills. Robert Frodeman is professor of philosophy and founding director of the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North Texas. He is author of "Geo-Logic: Breaking Ground between Philosophy and the Earth Sciences (2003), co-editor of the "Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy" (2008), editor of the Oxford "Handbook of Interdisciplinarity" (2010). This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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