Travis Beckum scores the first Giants TD as he gets past Packers safety Morgan Burnett in the first quarter. Credit: Tom Lynn

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Green Bay - At this time a year ago, after 12 games of the 2010 season, the Green Bay Packers knew who they were defensively.

They ranked ninth overall in total defense, allowing 316.4 yards per game and just 5.1 yards per play. When the regular season ended, they were roughly the same defense, up a few slots to fifth overall at 309.1 yards per game and virtually the same in yards per play.

Now, 12 games into the 2011 season, the Packers rank 31st in total defense, allowing 397.8 yards per game and a league-worst 6.3 yards per play.

Just as the '10 Packers had established their identity, it appears the '11 defense has established its own. It seems unlikely that this far into the season, a unit that has been relatively healthy all year is going to see any dramatic improvement.

In the dramatic 38-35 victory over the New York Giants on Sunday, the defense allowed 447 yards - the eighth time this season it has allowed 400 or more - including plays of 67, 51, 42 and 22 yards. It also forced two turnovers, including linebacker Clay Matthews' 38-yard interception return for a touchdown, raising its league-leading interception total to 23.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Packers defense.

"We kind of have the same script here," coordinator Dom Capers said. "We go out like we saw on that first series. They hit a big play over the top on us (a 67-yard touchdown pass). Probably for the most part, it's technique. We're playing a lot of the same things we always play.

"Technique, and then we didn't do a good job of tackling on the play. But then we come back just like we have a lot of games with a few great plays. Clay's interception for a touchdown is one of the best plays you'll see with his pressure and him timing his break on the ball."

Then there's the 2-minute drill at the end of each half.

In the first, Matthews sacked quarterback Eli Manning, causing a fumble that teammate B.J. Raji recovered, setting up the offense in scoring territory. In the second, the Giants drove 69 plays in nine plays for a touchdown and subsequent two-point conversion that tied the game with 58 seconds left.

As much as Capers would love this to be the defense that spearheaded the team's drive to a Super Bowl XLV title, his job the final four weeks of the season is to go on defense with his defense. Instead of being the attack unit it was last year, he's going to have to play more of the percentages with this unit.

"I think you've seen us play with a little more split safety," Capers said of a safer zone defense. "We had more seven-in-the-box on the run than what we've had in the past. When you do that, you see a little bit more of those runs come out of there.

"As we go along, we'll continue to make those adjustments until we feel we get it the way we want it. Every defense is different, and every game and who you're playing is different."

A constant throughout this season has been the number of big plays the secondary has given up. In just the past five games, the opposition has struck for plays of 20 or more yards 19 times.

The most frustrating part for Capers is that many of them are coming on the same routes, which means that opponents are seeing what other teams are doing to the Packers and repeating it over and over again. For some reason, Capers can't get the entire unit to both react to it and defend it.

"I think that people study tape and whatever you put on tape you're going to see," Capers said. "I think our guys know that. If there's a play or a route or that type of thing that maybe you've had a problem stopping it, you're going to see it and you're going to see it until you do stop it."

Which is exactly why Capers can't understand why his secondary can't defend a post route it keeps seeing over and over again. Most of the time, the defender has been cornerback Tramon Williams, who a year ago almost never gave up big plays.

But the opposition has seen a disconnect between him and safeties Morgan Burnett and Charlie Peprah with that route and Williams keeps getting beat on it. It happened on the 51-yarder to Hakeem Nicks and the 42-yarder to Victor Cruz on Sunday.

"It's a coverage everybody in the league runs and a route everybody in the league tries to beat the coverage with," Capers said. "We just have to play it better and understand that you're going to see that route against that coverage."

Capers wasn't specific about what technique was not being followed to properly defend that play, but he was clear on what it takes to stop it.

"You have to play the ball," Capers said. "The ball is in the air a long time and you have to be able to play the ball."

If the issue is that Williams and the safeties aren't communicating as well as Williams did with injured Nick Collins, then it's probably not going to get much better, because Collins has been out for two months. If they haven't solved the problem by now, it seems unlikely they'll solve it anytime soon.

The one thing that did encourage Capers some on Sunday was that Matthews played arguably his best game of the season and nose tackle B.J. Raji displayed consistent pass rush for the first time this year. Matthews is healthy and Raji has been seeing fewer snaps to keep his legs fresh.

Manning was sacked only once and hit three times, but he did encounter some pressure in his face without Capers having to blitz on every down.

"I think one of the biggest differences was that we got really good pressure out of B.J. inside," Capers said. "We ended up having pretty good pressure I thought on Manning."

The thing that coach Mike McCarthy is counting on is the defense's resiliency. Until Sunday, it had been put in some tough situations at key moments of the game and come away with big stops. That wasn't the case at the end of the game Sunday, but McCarthy doesn't see that as a downward trend.

"We didn't stop them last night, but our defense has been put in that position time and time again," he said. "I think we've done a very good job overall, if you take the adversity situations in the football games that we've won. I would say we grade out very high in that particular category."