Last week, Mike McCarthy was asked about some of the things they do during the bye week. His response: “We spend a lot of time on us, on self-scout.” Well with no games this week to grade, this was a bit of a self-scout week for me as well.

When I go about grading games every week, one of the things I try really hard to do is not get any outsider input until after my article is posted. I don’t check Pro Football Focus’ grades during the week, I stay away from Ben Fennell’s amazing film breakdown article, and I generally try and stay away from the other great film guru’s breakdowns as well. When I’m grading I want the grades and the thoughts to be organic and ultimately my own.

Once the grades are posted I then go out and review what others were saying about the Packers’ performance. I review PFF’s grades, and see where we differed. Generally speaking, PFF and I are generally within the same ballpark with our grades… except for two fairly large exceptions.

Those two exceptions are HaHa Clinton-Dix and Blake Martinez. Pro Football Focus grades HaHa Clinton-Dix as an 87.7; their third highest graded safety behind only Earl Thomas and DJ Swearinger. Blake Martinez grades out as an 80.6 for them, and their 9th rated inside linebacker. Meanwhile HaHa grades out as a -3.70 for me, the third lowest defender on the team, and Martinez has just a slightly positive grade with a +0.60. Both players have obviously been polarizing figures for fans as well.

So this week my goal was review my grades, and allow you all the opportunity to judge for yourself. I re-watched every HaHa and Blake snap of the season this week, and below are the standout plays… the good, the bad, and the ugly if you will. I’ll make some comments below, but for the most part I’m going to leave you judge for yourself. Today, you get to be the grader. So go ahead, watch the tape, and assign your grades below in the comments. Without further ado, here’s the tape:

HaHa Clinton-Dix

Effort

Big Plays

Touchdowns Allowed

Coverage

Run Defense

Open Field Tackling

Blake Martinez

Run Defense

Pass Defense

Open Field Tackling

Screen Defense

Blitzing

When I went back and reviewed everything, ultimately, I felt pretty good about the grades that I assigned. The effort plays with HaHa are really the plays that are so frustrating. At the same time, he has a handful of the biggest plays on defense this season. Then again, he also has a handful of brutal missed tackles in the open field and was involved in multiple touchdown plays. There are some big positives, but on a play to play basis he’s very inconsistent and the effort plays are damning.

For Blake Martinez there is a trend. If you didn’t notice it, go back and look again. When he’s clean, he looks pretty good. But he is incredibly dependent upon Clark, Daniels, and the linemen up front keeping him unblocked. As soon as things get messy, Martinez really struggles. He’s been great at diagnosing plays, but he has to be more aggressive and find ways to be a playmaker.

I know there’s a lot to take in this week, but I hope you enjoyed the videos; hopefully you have a better idea of how you feel about Blake and HaHa after reviewing the tape!