Their faith is buttressed by news that Gilbert Brown will be available for normal duty against New England. But the recuperating nose tackle provides only 360 pounds of solution to a two-ton quandary. And while the Packers subtract injuries, they also lose alibis. This is the defense they'll have to live with for the rest of the season, bruised or not. If it doesn't start to get dramatically better against New England, there's no reason to think it will grow muscles in December.
Nobody understands that better than Shurmur.
After several days of exhaustive evaluation he and his colleagues decided that the problems so far haven't been the people who are missing, but the ones who are there. We just all have to do better, coaches and players. It's too easy to get a hold of that injury thing and say that's the problem. Obviously it's a factor, but you can't adopt that as a reason why a group of people isn't as effective as it should be. Shurmur discounts the first and minimizes the second when he says the Packers don't feel compelled to change much.